All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

This book was very eye opening. I had seen the movie as part of the movie challenge and decided that I was going to read it, because I loved the movie. The book has the same surmise as the book and only differs in length but other than that everything is the same. Now the book if you didn’t read the movies premise is about a group of German classmates that go to war together. One by one as they fall to the experiences of war, they discover that people have made seem as something glorious when in reality it is a nasty , self-loathing experience. They also find that when they express themselves to the people coming home, they are treated like traitors by the very men who praise war in all its forms but have never themselves been in one. The story is told mostly through the point of view of the soldier Paul. The story whether read or viewed always makes me want to cry, its one of those pieces which neither glorifies war nor negates war. It is only a story about a boy who had no desire to enter into a conflict that had little to do with him, and how he pays for the consequences.  The end of the book ends in the same way, with Paul reaching for the butterfly. This butterfly that represents memories forgotten, friends long gone and of unreachable peace in the soul.  This is the plight of the solder, according to the author, the inability to rest the troubled soul of the warrior. Paul, after seeing so many horrors, when he comes home cannot be at ease as he used to be. His innocence has been taken and so his love for the simple things of life. He has faced the harsh reality of the war and cannot be at peace with the chaos and self- destruction he sees in his home. In his home his infirm mother is battling with cancer and he cannot do anything.  He does not know how to face the unseen enemy ailing his mother.  Paul is a hero at the end of this novel, but one of those nameless heroes’, a name on a wall of thanks. The author makes you see both sides of the war and he brings war to the true harsh reality, that we are sending our brothers, fathers, sons, lovers, and friends  to a battle that is not there’s but that they shall fight for.