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I have read many great war novels, and this one has moved to the top of my list.The main theme of the novel is war sucks, and Remarque gives you plenty of reasons why. This book was excellent. The cover of the copy I have says it is "the greater war novel of all time." While it is hard to say anything is the best ever, this book makes a close run. Also, while telling the story the author is able to show the struggles with poor command, insufficient hospital care and a soldier's struggle to return to a normal life. All of which are ideas which have been repeated through most wars and war novels.
This book to me is pretty close to perfect for its kind. Another thing that the novel was great at doing was showing how war changes a soldier. They are constantly either in the trenches fighting for their lives or facing the monotony of day to day life for a soldier. This is a war book and the best one I have read. This has been called the greatest War Novel ever and I think that it is because it doesn't glorify war in any way shape or form, it instead casts a penetrating light on it and forces all men to see it for what it is. Everyone is a victim.
This was powerful because it illustrated how there are no real winners in war.
The battle descriptions are graphic and terrible without being distasteful.
I felt such compassion for all of these men, even the ones who weren't such nice people, because of the hell they endured.
It concerns the happenings of a group of German soldiers in WWI, especially the main character named Paul.
They often have difficulty adjusting back to civilian life and many of them probably never do.
I think the author managed this because he never lost sight of the human element of combat and showed both the physical and psychic carnage that it could cause.
Many of the soldiers were only boys or not much older and, in one particularly moving segment, the author even shows Paul's sympathy for an enemy soldier.
And these were German soldiers who would become the Nazi war machine later on and that didn't matter in the least because they were human beings first.
But sadly, war seems here to stay.
Very well-written book, with lots of details of the war from a German soldier's perspective. A must read.
This is not Tolkien (no offense to a great author, of course); when we make war, we're fighting against other humans, not some scary enemy who has no feelings and is pure evil. Basically, it pulls no punches, sugarcoats nothing. I read this in hight school, and yes it was an assignment,(fortunately my literature always made us think about the books we read instead of gripe about them in ignorance) but I loved it. Overall the writing was captivating and the story is still relevant. The author is telling it like he knows it from being there - war is hell, no matter what it's fought for, no matter whose side you're on. Reading a book from the point of a German fighter and seeing how they were all just lost kids too brings it home. It really opens your mind if you let it. All leaders should read it before considering such a grave undertaking as war.
The doomed and fatal youth of Paul, Haie and Albert mean something to me now. I certainly wasn't really old enough to feel the poignancy of my own mortality-- death at that age was restricted to grandfathers and other people. Too young, I think, to understand it. And the dying horses still upset me, but I guess that's hard-wired into my personality.
Sort of, at least-- I'm pretty sure that I didn't know what a Front was besides some general sense of the Front Line. I first read this book when I was quite young. Boys that age shouldn't die on the battlefield. It finds its modern heirs in films like Jarhead. I honestly think that I felt more for the dying horses than for the dying men.
If you have a decent sense of teenagers and young adults and then try to imagine them in these situations which required such patience and bravery-- it makes the casual reader feel small. It isn't a terribly complex book; many plot points feel obvious. What I took away with me then was the anti-war message and a lingering sense of the grim awfulness of the Front. All Quiet on the Western Front is possibly the most influential modern novel of war. Reading it now as I approach middle age, this feels like a good place to appreciate the book more.
I say "appreciate", since I am not sure that anyone who hasn't been in a battle situation can claim understanding. Its repeated message of the patterns of boredom and casual violence find its echoes through later books and film. It tends to be worth celebrating more for the honesty (raw) of its story than for the craft and distance of the writer.Recommended, particularly to those with an interest in WWI or the military novel.
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