Last Post, My Review.

This book was definitely a good choice for the class, it was really well written, but it also really is historically accurate (sometimes, a little too much for me). Either way though, whether you thought the book was amazing because of how realistic it was, or horrifying, there's no taking away from the fact that Remarque really did make some points that were so true to the real feelings of WWI soldiers. When he was describing the war scenes, I almost felt like I was there. A little too close to the actual war. I think this is great for an author to be able to do this. His descriptions of the battles, the bombardments, and Paul's moments of horror were so vivid and clear that you could almost hear the bombs, or see the men around Paul. He describes the scene after an attack, "into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers..." I can imagine the ground, covered with the picture of soldiers, torn apart and silent, but then hear the rest of the commotion when he continues to describe the scene. At one point he says "My hands grow cold and my flesh creeps; and yet the night is warm. Only the mist is cold, this mysterious mist that trails over the dead and sucks them from their last, creeping life." When I read this and while I'm reading it again, I shivered and get goosebumps. It's so creepy, and the mood is so chilling that I honestly feel the cold. Remarque clearly explained the thought process of a soldier, and even though the book was a little too graphic for me, I do think it was so necessary to read it, because otherwise I wouldn't have really known what it was like for them, or what war was like, or how they felt when they came home. This book (tehe) disillusioned me to the real facts of war, coming from a real soldier himself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Maria_Remarque
This is the wikipedia for the author. I really thought it was interesting to read about him, and where he came from and his story. One thing I read was really interesting, he was injured in the leg, arm, and neck during the war. Sound familiar? Same thing happened to Paul.

Paul, the War, and the Enemy

   Throughout the book, we see Paul struggling with his view on the cause of the war and the humanity of the enemy. I always imagined that the soldiers saw the enemy as the enemy, and that was all. I also imagined that the soldiers were always behind the reason for the war. But, in the story the men all talk about how they think the war is ridiculous, and that a very slim number of people chose to start it and will never see the real horrors. The leaders of the countries chose to go to war with each other because they were "offended" by another country. On page 204, Tjaden actually says "Then I haven't any business here at all... I don't feel myself offended." This, I think, perfectly describes the mind-frame of a lot of the soldiers who were there. They didn't feel any offense from another country, so why should they be there? Why should THEY be fighting the war? Kat says, "There must be some people to whom the war is useful," and Tjaden replies, "Well, I'm not one of them," to which Kat says, "Not you, nor anybody else here." I think this proves exactly that none of these men really felt the effects of the war, other than the fact that.. you know.. an entire generation of men was lost with no real positive benefit.
   Now there was the issue of the enemy. Paul had a problem with trying to dehumanize these people after having close encounters with them. On page 104, in the very beginning of his story, he says that the bayonet is pretty much outdated, because there are now weapons like spades and bombs to charge with instead. It's easier, kills faster, and you risk less. If your bayonet blade got stuck in some other soldier's stomach, or even worse his rib cage, you had to work to pull it out, which increases your risk of getting shot in that time period. Then, as the story goes on and Paul realizes that these are other men. They have the same lifestyle he does. They might even have wives and children and families to go home to, to provide for, that are waiting for them to come home. When he meets the Russian prisoners in the camp he's guarding, and he meets the violinists, he sees that they've got passion and spirits just like he does. Just like everyone he knows. So he sees that they can be equally as broken. Then, there's the issue of when Paul is forced to kill the French soldier in the bomb shell. He had this plan to kill anyone who jumped into his bomb shell while he was trying to stay hidden until nightfall. Little did he know, killing a man with his hands, watching him suffer for so long, and then seeing him die would leave him a mess. He'd never personally killed a man before. He seriously had problems with this. He started thinking of his wife and his daughter, and promised the man he'd write to them. Even though later on Paul had to forget about this man, he knew that he would always stay with him somehow. That experience would haunt him forever. Paul saw that these enemies really weren't enemies at all, but comrades just like him that just happened to be over a border.

Picture above and at top left:These men were from all different nations, and on Christmas  1914 there was a truce decided between the soldiers, that they would stop the war for the day and try to socialize. This shows how Paul thought, that these really weren't enemies whatsoever. They were just people.

Kemmerich's Boots

   Earlier on, I had brought up Kemmerich's death and its significance. I never really thought about what his boots could have symbolized, even though they ended up being more important throughout the story than Kemmerich. It wasn't until Remarque brings up Muller's death that I realized just how important they were. On page 279, he says "Muller is dead..... Before he died he handed over his pocket-book to me, and bequeathed me his boots    the same that he once inherited from Kemmerich. I wear them, for they fit me quite well. After me Tjaden will get them, I have promised them to him." Muller was one of their best friends, just as Kemmerich was, but instead of cherishing and keeping some of their favorite things safe    the boots    they thought of their usefulness and made the best of them.
   The sad part is, this isn't wrong. We think of one of our best friends dying, and we'd probably think that we'd want to keep their things safe and perfect forever. Some people won't even touch a person's room for years after they die. They'll leave it the way it was the day they died. Here, someone dies, you have to move on. There was no sensitivity. There was no grieving period. There was no remembrance. All there was was making use of something the dead couldn't.
   Another important thing about the boots was that even before these men were dead, they counted on being killed so strongly, that they promised their things to each other. When Paul says he's promised his boots to Tjaden, it seems a little weird, but in the war this wasn't unusual. The men would rather have their things go to good use than be taken by the enemy or thrown away or rotted in the ground.
   The last symbolization of these boots was that they showed how brief the lives of these men were. A pair of boots lasted longer than three men's lives, possibly more seeing as though we know Kemmerich stole them from the English troops. I think this is a clear way of showing how quickly the war killed, how many the war killed.

When death happened in these numbers, there was no time to grieve. You had to move on. This is a German cemetery.

The Full Book and Disillusionment

   So, throughout the book we were supposed to think of disillusionment and how it applies to WWI and the story. In the beginning of the book, the men are talking about Kantorek, their old teacher, and how he talked up war to be this brave and glorious thing. Now, while the men have seen war, felt the pain and now know horrible death it can cause, they know it's not as glorious as he made it seem. Plus, while the men are out risking their lives, living in the filthy, rat ridden, louse filled soldier's quarters, or even worse in the trenches, Kantorek is safely at home with his books, filling more young minds with the false idea that war makes you a hero.
   When the men came home, like Paul Baumer came home on leave, they weren't recognized as front line soldiers who risked everything for their country, they were expected to follow orders from higher commanding men who had no clue what the front line was like. The only people who showed any attempt at respect were some school teachers and other men, but they were ultimately clueless and ended up offending Baumer more than anything. He was changed. Even though he wasn't dead like so many, his livelihood and spirit was killed, so he didn't feel the glory, or the heroism of being a soldier. He just felt alone. I think this is something that only the soldiers could know, only they could be disillusioned to the reality of what war really was and what it really did.

http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg268/23gointoend/?action=view&current=2965.mp4
This is what war was actually like, not parades and shiny new outfits.

All Quiet- Chapters 1-4

    So, for me, this book starts off really slow. I was having a really difficult time getting into it and understanding what exactly was going on. The significance of Kemmerich's dying was sort of confusing to me at first, and I thought it was just thrown in there to be something emotional or interesting. When he died though, I started to think it was more of an image of all of the men who died like this. When Baumer says "The whole world ought to pass by this bed and say: "That is Franz Kemmerich, nineteen and a half years old, he doesn't want to die. Let him not die!", I thought of all the young people who didn't really want to die, but did so quickly in this war.
     When it gets to the point where the men are on the front line of the battle, and there's the war scene, am I the only one who found this really depressing and scary? I was sitting there reading this, shaking because it was such a clear description of what war was really like. Remarque didn't hold back and pretend like the war was this thing that was bad, but the people around you dying were just random people. He started up the storyline with the young boy who was scared of the first battle, who Baumer sort of takes in, then the next thing you know that kid is dying. It was real. I liked that about the book, but in a way I didn't, because it was just a little much for me.

 these images reminded me of what I imagined the battle scene to be