Paul Baumer

4 Pages 1068 Words

Paul Baumer—All Quiet On The Western Front

The story of Paul Baumer, the narrator from the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque, is one of the stories that have a great impact on my life. The story centers on Paul Baumer, who enlists in the German army with glowing enthusiasm. But in the course of war, he is consumed by it and in the end is “weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope.”
Baumer and his classmates who enlisted into the army see the true reality of the war. They enter the war fresh from school, knowing nothing except the environment of hopeful youth and they become mature with the war, which in the end is their only home. So then they lose their innocents. In the end, everything they are taught: are not the slightest use to them because the only thing they need to know is how to survive. Along with that, they need to know how to escape the shells as well as the emotional and psychological torment of the war.
Baumer has “grown accustomed to it; war is the cause of death like influenza and dysentery. ” Deaths are more frequent, more varied and terrible." He has rid himself of all feelings and thoughts. His emotions are hidden deep within himself, along with the soldiers who fell prey to them. His dullness protects him from going mad at the sight of a slaughtered or butchered friend. He wants to live at all costs so every expression of his life must serve one purpose and one purpose only. For the cost of life is the death of his emotions, his survival depends on it.
Every shot that fires, a soldier must face the possible certainty of death. Whenever he looks into the eyes of an enemy soldier, he does not see a man, but sees death staring back at him. What can you do but fight back? He cannot and will not coexist with you. It does not matter that he is a man of your same distinction; it does not matter if he has a mother, a father, a sister or a brother. All that matters is that h...