Escaped the Shells
Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is famous as one of the most powerful war stories of all time. It is a story, not of nations, but “of men who, even though they may have escaped the shells, were destroyed by the war.” The novel centers on Paul Baumer and his classmates, through whom Remarque depicts a generation of men that enlist for their idealized notions of war, but quickly degenerate into "weary, broken, burnt out, rootless [men] without hope.” Through Paul’s eyes, Remarque shows the inhumanity in this, man’s first war, called for by no higher entity or cause. Paul and his generation were denied a transition between childhood and adulthood and upon entering the war at such a young age, they gained their identity as soldiers and once the war is over, their identity is all they have to live on. . . .
“We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. Slowly Baumer begins to realize that death and the war aren’t intangible forces, but actual characters in his life, characters that are his life. we defend ourselves against annihilation. Paul has no actual association with anything in the war except for his own mortality and his diminishing group of friends. Paul feels no malice towards his imposed enemy, nor does he feel any belonging to the cause of his ally. When one of his friends brings up the Iron Youth, Paul exclaims to himself, “Yes, that's the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth! Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress.
Common topics in this essay:
Paul Baumer, Slowly Baumer, Youth Germans, Youth Youth, Western Front, ENEMY IDEA, Youth Paul, Iron Youth, iron youth, soldiers war, baumer classmates, characters life, escaped shells, rapid maturity, |
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