All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque in his realistic novel All Quiet on the Western Front, written in 1928, dramatizes how the unrelenting power of war ultimately results in the death of childhood and the birth of manhood in the men of the war. Paul Baumer, the protagonist, has a first hand view of the destructiveness of war, which took his companions, his life and his innocence. With the loss of innocence of the young men came the foreboding of death. With the foreboding of death came the harsh reality of the destructiveness of war. On the front on the eastern side of France in 1916, the romantic ideals of the nineteenth century are challenged with the reality of trench warfare. In All Quiet on the Western Front, the truth is let go, the truth that war is not a romantic saga that is fought for their country, but an unrealistic blood bout that destroys everything. Remarque uses the idea of loss of innocence to show that the boys of the war had become men in a few months and to show when one of the comrades died they felt a little bit of the person die away with them. This brings them to the disintegration of all the hopes and dreams of the soldiers. The destructiveness of the hopeless war took the innocence
People dying, people's lives and souls being taken from them, it is all from the brutality and hardship of the war, which is caused by one thing, the innocent death of one person. The people have lost their reverence of the authority, and have begun to fight back; they lost their innocence and are now challenging their leader. The innocence lost by the boys on the western front has changed them into men, forlorn and forgotten. The hopeless war took the innocence away from the men and brought them to await only one thing, death. Annihilation of the mere souls of all the men in combat, made them seek pleasure in sex or alcohol for there was nothing else that would give them the pleasure leaving reality (war) and going to a short eutopia. Remarque uses the theme to reveal the changes in the lives of the soldiers for they see their past as a vague, unreal dream. When someone died wearing those boots they had to accept the fact that there was no way they may help the person anymore, so they were not just boots anymore, but they were little bits of companionship and innocence that were fading away quickly. Paul Baumer says it best when he described himself and all the soldiers on the western front- "we are forlorn like children and experienced like old me, I believe we are lost. The boots were a sign of brotherhood but when they involved people dying and the companionship fading fast, it was a sign of innocence being lost, of innocence being brutally taken straight from the heart and soul of the soldier. However, the most significant example of this theme appears in the boots of Kemmerich which symbolize death and ironically the brotherhood and fellowship of the soldiers. The young soldier had met something unmentionable, disreputable and indescribable, it was the thing he began to fear, it was death. This brings to the readers' attention the minds and hearts lost because of the mentally disturbing war experiences they encounter. The innocence of the soldier made Paul understand how he felt the first time he came to war. The war damaged the soldiers not only physically, but mentally, and it brought them to an understanding that they are cannot be afraid of anything, not even death.
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