All Quiet On The Western Front

3 Pages 739 Words

All Quiet on the Western Front
By: Erich Maria Remarque

This tale of war takes place in a time where death and violence were part of people’s everyday lives. The battles fought during WWI were both brutal and grueling; the fighting lasted for a total of four years. During this time of war many young men were forced to defend their countries and in most cases this resulted in giving up your life in honor of your country. For most of these young it would be the first and last time that they would see combat and were a little naive before entering the war. They had hopes of honoring their countries and defeating the enemy, but during this war many of them came to realize that the battles they were engaging in would turn out to be pointless as neither side was gaining anything from the war. Millions and millions of casualties resulted from this war with no real outcomes except for the fact that many countries population sizes largely decreased.
For Paul Baumer the story began when he was convinced to join the army by his schoolmaster when he was just a teenager. A this time I do not thin that Paul knew what he was getting himself into and would learn this listen very quickly once he joined the war. Paul went under strict training and during this time he was able to make new friendships that would come to be all he would have. When Paul was ready he took to the front lines where he would battle in trench warfare. This was a brutal type of warfare that consisted of long intertwining trenches more than six feet into the ground at some spots and was very cold, dirty, disease filled, and bloody. This first look at how the war was really being fought must have scared all of the young men and opened their eyes as to the way war really was, and that war was not as glorious as it would have been made out to be before they got to the front lines.
Luckily Paul received guidance from a veteran of war named Stanislaus Katczinsky w...