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All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
World War I General Information:
The First World War (1914-1918) was fought by two European alliances.
The "Central Powers" consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. The
"Allies" were Britain, France, and Russia. The United States entered the war on
the side of the Allies in 1917.
The Western Front ran approximately 300 miles across the face of Western
Europe, from Belgium to Switzerland. The front consisted of opposing trenches,
sometimes only yards apart. The trench warfare of World War I lasted for three
years and took several million lives. The Battle of the Somme, an attack by the
Allies trying to break through the German lines, took more than four months.
The allies gained only six miles. British and French casualties were 95,675 Britons
killed and 60,729 Frenchmen killed. The defense cost the Germans 164,055
soldiers killed.
The trenches were muddy and often flooded with water. The bodies of
dead and wounded men and animals fouled them. Corpses lay in the “no man's
land” between the trenches. Enemy snipers, rats, lice, and stench from the
decaying bodies contributed to the misery of the trenches. Toward the end of the
war the German soldiers had little food.
An attack was preceded by bombardments, some lasting for days. In
order to mount an attack, soldiers carrying rifles and packs had to go "over the
top” of the trenches. Once in the no man's land, they faced barbed wire
entanglements, machine guns, bombardment (often by their own misdirected
guns), grenades, poison gas, and fire from the opposing trenches.
The Western Front was in stalemate until the United States entered the
war. Fresh troops, along with abundant hardware and supplies, tipped the scales
decisively in favor of the Allies. An armistice was signed on November 11, 1918
and the Treaty of Versailles was imposed on Germany in June 1919. The conflict
was one of the bloodiest in history; ten million soldiers were killed along with an
estimated ten million civilians.
Novel Summary:
All Quiet on the Western Front is narrated by Paul Bäumer, a young man
of nineteen who fights in the German army on the French front in World War I.
Paul and several of his friends from school joined the army voluntarily after
listening to the stirring patriotic speeches of their teacher. After experiencing ten
weeks of harsh training and the unimaginable brutality of life on the front, Paul
and his friends have realized that the ideals of national pride and patriotism for
which they enlisted are simply empty expressions. They no longer believe that
war is glorious or honorable, and they live in constant physical terror.
Biographical Information on Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970):
Remarque fought in World War I and was wounded several times, once
seriously. During the years following the war, Remarque suffered from bouts of
depression. Realizing that this depression stemmed from his involvement in the
war, he decided that he would try to come to terms with his emotions through
writing. Though the novel is not an autobiography, Remarque drew heavily from
his own experiences, both before and during the war.
When the novel was published in 1929, it sold more than one million
copies and was translated into twenty-three languages. When Hitler and the
Nazis came to power in Germany, the book as banned for its anti-war message.
The Nazis publicly burned Remarque’s books in 1933 and took away his
citizenship in 1938.
Characters in the Novel:
Paul Bäumer - A young German soldier fighting in the trenches during World
War I. Paul is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He is, at heart, a kind,
compassionate, and sensitive young man, but the brutal experience of warfare
teaches him to detach himself from his feelings.
Stanislaus Katczinsky –A soldier belonging to Paul’s company and Paul's best
friend in the army. Kat, as he is known, is forty years old at the beginning of the
novel and has a family at home. He is a resourceful, inventive man and always
finds food, clothing, and blankets whenever he and his friends need them.
Albert Kropp - One of Paul’s classmates who serves with Paul in the Second
Company. An intelligent, speculative young man, Kropp is one of Paul's closest
friends during the war. His interest in analyzing the causes of the war leads to
many of the most critical antiwar sentiments in the novel.
Tjaden - One of Paul’s friends in the Second Company. Tjaden is a wiry young
man with a voracious appetite, and he bears a deep grudge against Corporal
Himmelstoss.
Kantorek - A pompous, ignorant, authoritarian schoolmaster in Paul’s high
school during the years before the war. Kantorek places intense pressure on Paul
and his classmates to fulfill their "patriotic duty" by enlisting in the army.
Corporal Himmelstoss - A noncommissioned training officer. Before the war,
Himmelstoss was a postman. He is a petty, power-hungry little man who
torments Paul and his friends during their training. After he experiences the
horrors of trench warfare, however, he tries to make amends with them.
Franz Kemmerich - One of Paul's classmates and comrades in the war. After
suffering a light wound, Kemmerich contracts gangrene, and his leg has to be
amputated
Müller- Another of Paul’s classmates. He inherits Kemmerich’s boots.
Detering- A farmer in civilian life, Detering has a fondness for nature and
animals.
Joseph Behm - The first of Paul’s classmates to die in the war. Behm did not
want to enlist, but he caved under the pressure of the schoolmaster Kantorek.
His ugly, painful death shattered his classmates' belief in the rhetoric of
patriotism.
Gérard Duval - A French soldier whom Paul kills in No Man’s Land. Duval is a
printer with a wife and child at home. He is the first person that Paul kills in
hand-to-hand combat, one of Paul's most traumatic experiences in the war.
Items to Remember:
Themes:
Symbols:
Below is the epigraph from All Quiet on the Western Front. Read the epigraph,
and answer the following questions. Be sure to give thorough explanations for your
answers.
This book is to be neither an accusation nor a
confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not
an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It
will try to simply tell of a generation of men who, even
though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by
the war.
- Erich Maria Remarque
1)
Using a dictionary, define “epigraph.” (Be sure to find the most relevant
definition.)
2)
Remarque says that this book is not intended to be what? What does he mean by
this?
3)
In the second sentence, Remarque describes the intended purpose of the novel.
Explain this statement.
4)
Why do you think that Remarque included the first sentence? Why did he not just
limit the epigraph to the second sentence?
5)
From your interpretation of the epigraph, what would you say is the central theme
of All Quiet on the Western Front?