All Quiet on the Western Front

This is a re-read of this classic First World War novel about a group of German ex-classmate soldiers in the trenches in the latter part of the Great War. This is a more modern translation from the mid 1990s (the previous version I read eight years ago was the original translation done shortly after the novel's first publication in Germany in 1929). While both translations are very good, the more modern translation was, I felt, particularly superb at describing the experiences, the sights, sounds and smells of life in the trenches for the ordinary soldier. Much of these experiences apply equally to the ordinary soldiers on all sides (interestingly, and perhaps inevitably, on both sides the ordinary soldiers seem to tend to think show more conditions are better for their counterparts in the opposite trench). The narrator Paul Baumer is not a poet or a political animal, and for him peace means the absence of the noise and tension of bombardment, the peace and quiet of his home and his books. This makes the novel all the more powerful in its message of peace without being preachy. A deserved classic. show less

Esta obra narra la cruda realidad de la Primera Guerra Mundial desde la perspectiva de Paul Bäumer y su grupo de jóvenes compañeros. Los fragmentos exponen el brutal contraste entre la nostalgia por la juventud perdida y la deshumanización necesaria para sobrevivir en las trincheras. Se detalla la ineficacia de las figuras de autoridad, como maestros y oficiales, quienes impulsaron a una generación hacia un conflicto que terminó por destruirla emocionalmente. La narrativa resalta la profunda camaradería surgida ante el horror, la agonía de los heridos en hospitales de campaña y el sentimiento de aislamiento absoluto al intentar regresar a la vida civil. Finalmente, el texto reflexiona sobre el destino de una generación show more perdida, marcada para siempre por el trauma, el instinto de supervivencia y la sombra de la muerte. show less

Enlisted by the patriotic pressure of their community, Paul and his just-graduated classmates attempt to survive the seemingly unlimited depravity of the Western Front of WWI: "Life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death; - it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct - it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought - it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude - it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of show more nothingness. Thus we live a closed, hard existence of the utmost superficiality."

I was surprised at how many times a passage/incident/phrase made me smile - even amidst horror there is kindness and humor (albeit of a darker variety). But still: "It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is." Fuck.

Would have been fascinating/depressing to witness Paul's re-immersion into or further isolation from society following the armistice, but... war. show less

There are many distressing things about All Quiet on the Western Front, but one of the things which made me flinch the most was knowing that it was written in 1929—only a few short years after the formation of the Nazi party, only four years until Hitler would be named Reichskanzler. That knowledge makes Remarque's observations on people's reactions to authority even more striking, and it's easy to see why he was hounded from Germany when the Nazis came to power. I'm still not quite sure if the switch in POV at the end works from me—I felt on first reading as if it took away from the sustained intensity of the previous part of the book—but this is still an immensely powerful book, and one which should be required reading.

All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the most devastating anti-war novels I have read, not because it argues against war, but because it quietly dismantles every justification for it.

What struck me most is that although Erich Maria Remarque writes from the German side, the novel never feels national. There are no “good” or “bad” sides here. Instead, it speaks for everyone in the trenches. The soldiers could be French, British, or German—it does not matter. Their experiences collapse into the same reality: exhaustion, fear, and the slow realization that their suffering serves no meaningful purpose.

The novel strips war down to its most basic truth: the deaths are useless. The injuries are useless. The sacrifice is not part show more of some larger noble design, but part of a machine that consumes young men without explanation or reward.

Because the story is told in the first person, there is no distance. You are not observing the war; you are inside it. Every moment of fear, every small comfort, every loss is immediate and personal. That closeness makes the novel difficult to read at times, not because it is complex, but because it refuses to let you look away.

What remains after finishing it is not a sense of resolution, but a kind of quiet devastation. The novel does not try to explain the war or justify it. It simply shows what it does to the people forced to live through it—and that is enough. show less

What more can I say about this book that hasn't already been said, other than saying that (for me) it lives up to its immense reputation. A semi-autobiographical retelling of Remarque's time on the German front line during World War I. We follow a group of school friends - who at eighteen were coerced into volunteering in the army - as their bodies and spirits are ground into dust among the horrors they face. I discovered that I had a false assumption; that the vast majority of the novel would take place on the front itself. Instead, Remarque somehow finds space to tackle a majority of situations that soldiers found themselves in, whether that be: on the front lines, the doldrums and boredom behind the lines, military hospitals show more following injury, illicit interactions with civilians, going home on temporary leave, experiencing the slow death of a friend, or the suffering of non-humans.

All Quiet on the Western Front is emotionally moving on many wavelengths, whether that be despair, grief, fear, yearning, or the momentary windows into peace between stints in the trenches. I found myself easily pulled into the moment. Yes, many moments are incredibly graphic and distressing, but not superfluously so. Powerful, absorbing, and memorable.

Something that separates Remarque's perspective from other war novelizations that I've read is that he distinguishes the unique difficulties of being conscripted at such a young age. He has envy for the older solders around him, those with families, careers, and a broader range of life experience. If they are fortunate enough to return able-bodied from the mustard gas, shrapnel, bullets, disease, and explosions of the front, they return to a formed existence: something other than a soldier. By comparison, the main characters in All Quiet on the Western Front have nothing to return to. No skills outside of surviving the battlefield. When they return from the front, they continue to exist as soldiers, patted on the back for their service, weakly acknowledged for their sacrifices, but have no support system to fall back on. They return hollow and without purpose, more liable to linger in their PTSD. Remarque's emotional analysis of these young veterans is both tender and ahead of his time.

I had some apprehensions for this translation (the oldest one published, by A.W. Wheen) but I'm happy to say that I found it highly readable and effective. No wonder it was so popular at the time. Curious to see how other translations effect the reading experience, but totally satisfied with this one by itself. show less

Damn Remarque! He builds a beautiful and whole account of Paul's experience during the Great War, covering all facets of the soldier's experience without giving the reader too much. It feels hard to judge a classic, of course it's got to be good on some level it's been around this long right?, but I did enjoy the instances in the company that showed how much of the boys' youth had been taken away and as all the men drop like dominos at the end the title comes back around in a truly effective gut-punch. There's certainly an aspect of choppiness to the narrative, one could skip chapters without losing too much and come back to them, but it demonstrates the author's ability to capture these concentrated instances in the war and mimics show more narrator's own blurred chronology. show less