Erich Maria Remarque's war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people's lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front and the lives of people on the home front. The war affected the way soldiers saw human life. The soldiers got used to seeing people being killed. They were everyday events. All the images around them, of soldiers being blown to pieces and being in the horrible conditions of the trenches, were engraved into their minds. These are tragic memories that they will never be able to get out of their heads, and will haunt them for the rest of their lives. All the men are paying a price for fighting in the war. It's the hidden cost of war that will leave them changed for the rest of their lives.
             Paul Baumer came into this war a young innocent boy. He was to naive to know the affects that war has on people, especially himself. The war makes Baumer open himself up to realizing that death is common and that human life can be taken away in an instant. He first learns this lesson when his friend, Kemmerich, dies. Baumer shows his emotions by saying, "I become faint, all at once I cannot do any more. I won't revile any more, it is senseless, I could drop down and never rise up again" (pg. 32). The death of Kemmerich is Baumer's first major experience with emotions of sadness. He is getting the wrath of the war, that hidden cost that comes with every war, which affects each and every soldier. Death is becoming a common event. Baumer begins to feel that soldiers are being thrown out in the trenches just to die and that there is no point in fighting. He sums it up in this quote, "We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down" (pg. 113). Baumer also sees that the wa...