All Quiet On The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, is a war novel that doesn't glorify the war effort, but denounces it as the cause for human deterioration. It also places much emphasis on the idea that even though a man can be trained to not have feelings, they do come out every now and then in often dangerous ways.
             Paul Baumer is a living testament of a man destroyed by the war, not by the gunshots or the shrapnel, but by the horror all around him or as he explains the concept as, "Death is working through from within." He had to witness many of his comrades, his classmates, his friends die before his eyes (to endure such a thing is truly a torture of the mind). He had to listen to people crying out in pain as they slowly died, minute by minute, hour by hour; he even listened to the sounds of dying livestock as a bullet would pierce them in the intestines or other terminal places. And to further destroy his spirit, he was brought so close to peace and then had it stripped away, or otherwise known as "leave" in the war.
             If one was to cite one of the mental beatings that Paul had faced in his life, one should tell the story of his injured comrade, Kemmerich. Since his school days, Kemmerich and Paul were very close friends and were both under the teachings of Kantorek, the schoolmaster. Ironically, he was a supporter of the boys going into war and yet taught them many things that would be useless to them in the heat of battle. Paul despises his teacher for the fact that innocent youth, like Kemmerich, had their lives stripped away at such a young age. With Kemmerich having an gangrene-infected amputated leg, Paul watched as his old friend died before his very eyes and nobody else but himself really caring whether he was alive or not. The doctor was only concerned about having an extra bed, and his other comrade, Muller, only wanted the army boots that came with his death. That lack of comp...