Paul Baumer, with the help of his comrades, fights the French and English armies on the Western Front of WWI. In Erich Maria Remarque's novel, "All Quiet on the Western Front," Paul has to deal with the destructiveness of war in order to help his friends and the German Army win the war. In the novel, war corrupts the men and ruins their lives, forcing them to commit acts that they would not have dreamed of doing before the war had begun. Through the deaths of Gerard Duval and Paul himself, the destructiveness of war will be shown. As the war begins to slow down, Paul gets away from the troop and jumps into a hole for cover. While he waits for the enemy to evacuate the area, a Frenchman leaps into the hole, and without thinking Paul kills him. But as he thought about it, Paul realized that it might not have been a good idea to kill him. The Frenchman, named Gerard Duval, didn't try to kill Paul and Paul had no true right to kill Gerard. As Paul stares at Gerard's dead body he says to the Frenchman, "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response, It was the abstraction I stabbed, But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of you hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and you r face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us..." Paul considers it murder to kill Gerard because he was innocent. Paul says that Gerard can take his life because Paul's life is ruined and worthless now because of the war and the devastation it causes. As the final sentence rang throughout the land: all quiet on the Western Front, Remarque states that in the end Paul has die
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