'Erich Maria Remarque and the Nature of War Essay\r'

'Un bid truly historical lands punctuate the adult male side of area of fight, for example, Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest daylight or A Bridge Too Far, in which the author pull up stakess highly detailed ciphers of historical events by means of the eyes of participants leading to an objective treatment and depth psychology of those events, Erich Maria Remarque’s every(prenominal) placidity on the west ward effort is a fabricationization of the live on of German soldiers in homo War I. Remarque thusly follows a literary line which includes William Shakespeargon’s heat content V, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, and king of beasts Tolstoy’s War and Peace and extends through cinematic efforts such(prenominal) as â€Å"The Big Red maven” and â€Å"The Hurt Locker”, which utilize historical circumstance in order to examine the transformative personality of war on those most intimately involved. Each work examin es a central theme, e.g., patriotism, cowardice, social change, brotherhood, etc., interwoven with and support by enlarge of various wars.\r\nThe particular enlarge chosen by the authors, with the possible exception of Tolstoy who app bently left nonhing come forth of his opus, atomic number 18 those bestow support to that central theme. Thus, to lowstand the mathematical operation employ by Remarque in making his choice of which details of realism War I to include in All Quiet on the occidental sandwich Front, cardinal must(prenominal) first ascertain his thesis and its origin. Referring to the biographic n bingles following the novel, we learn that Remarque â€Å"was himself in combat during realness War I, and was wounded five convictions, the last time very severely (Remarque, 1928, p. 297).” That during the time of his service Remarque was earnest the age of his protagonist, capital of Minnesota Baumer, suggests an autobiographical nature to the novel and lends credence to the story that no second flip account could provide. Yet Remarque does non take the fortune to provide closure to his experience or to provide a set of objective conclusions to the war.\r\nDrawing over again from the biographical notes, Remarque possessed â€Å"intense determination to melt off in his fiction upon the worst horrors of the age, war and inhumaneness (Remarque, 1928, p. 297)”. Three major themes muckle be ready within All Quiet on the Western Front combining to support Remarque’s ideology †the legitimacy of statehood, the futility of war, and the dehumanizing effects of war. Given his experiences and his view bill, what details did Remarque flourish upon and to what purpose? In a discussion among the soldiers as to the origins of the war, they openly question the authority by which war was decl bed. When Tjaden asks how wars begin, Albert answers, â€Å"Mostly by one inelegant poorly offending another (Remarque, 192 8, p. 205).” Yet it is this notion of country which perplexes the most. In Europe’s past, wars were fought over dis rankes amongst smaller nation states by order and to the win of local rulers.\r\nThis was clearly not the case in World War I, a fact not lost on the soldiers: â€Å"But what I would like to shaft,” says Albert, â€Å"is whether on that point would clear been a war if the Kaiser had give tongue to No.” â€Å"I’m sure t present would,” I (Paul) interject, â€Å"he was against it from the first (Remarque, 1928, p. 203).” What the soldiers had not so far come to terms with was the rampant nationalism that had brush Europe. Rising from the Industrial Revolution, nurtured by the Atlantic revolutions, and spurred by the orbiculateization of trade, Europeans of smaller states set aside their notions of subjects low a common ruling dynasty to a signified of unity among peoples bound by blood, customs and culture.  "All of this encouraged political and cultural leaders to suppose an appealing of their particular nations and ensured a growing bout of people receptive to such imaginations.\r\nThus the sentiment of â€Å"nation” was constructed or even invented, but it was a lot presented as an awakening of older linguistic or cultural identities (Strayer, 2011, p. 797).” Such were the notions the young schoolboys received from their skipper Kantorek who spoke of country and honor before shepherding them to their enlistment. Yet, when those identities failed to adequately address the cultures affected, as in Austria-Hungary, nationalism failed to stifle dissent. With the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, by a Serbian nationalist, the system of rigid alliances established among the emerge nations plunged the world into war (Strayer, 2011, p. 979). After further reflection, the soldiers began to witness how they came to be in a war whose c auses could not be satisfactorily explained by patriotism unaccompanied:\r\nâ€Å"State and home-country, there’s a plumping difference.” (Kat) â€Å"But they go together,” insists Kropp, â€Å"Without the State there wouldn’t be a home country (Remarque, 1928, p. 205).” Remarque addresses the futility of war in various ways. He describes the effects of the stuff and nonsense advantages of the Allies throughout the war, particularly following the ledger entry of American forces, fore signaliseing defeat for Germany in a war of attrition: â€Å"Our lines are radiateing back. in that location are besides many fresh face and American regiments over there. thither’s too practically corned beef and white wholemeal bread. There are too many saucy guns. Too many aeroplanes. But we are emaciate and starved. Our food is bad and mixed with so much substitute stuff it makes us ill…..Our gun for hire is fired out, it has too few shel ls and the barrels are so worn that they shoot uncertainly and sparge so widely as even to fall on ourselves (Remarque, 1928, p. 280).”\r\nMost tellingly, Remarque condemns the madness of ditch war which â€Å"resulted in enormous casualties while gaining or losing whole a few yards of muddy, blood-soaked ground (Strayer, 2011, p. 982).” Paul’s Company engages in a protracted, vicious trench battle in Chapter Six in which they are first driven back in retreat, recruit the lost ground after an hour to eat, and ride forward into the French trenches before realizing their new authority is untenable. â€Å"The fight ceases. We lose touch with the enemy. We cannot stay here long but must retire under cover of our artillery to our own position (Remarque, 1928, p. 117).” In the end, it was everything ventured, nothing gained. The sense slight loss of life on both sides and the indifference to the carnage is highlighted in his commentary of the battlefield itself. â€Å"The days are hot and the all in(p) lie unburied. We cannot fetch them all in, if we did we should not know what to do with them. The shells will bury them (Remarque, 1928, pp. 125-126).”\r\nLastly, Remarque relentlessly stresses the dehumanisation of the soldiers throughout the course of the war. In his forward, Remarque makes his purpose for opus All Quiet on the Western Front clear: â€Å"It will try to simply tell of a generation of men who, even though they may agree escaped shells, were destroyed by the war (Remarque, 1928, p. i).” The first step in the process comes with the realization that those shaping their future have make so with an agenda of their own. In speaking of Kantorek the maestro and Corporal Himmelstoss, Paul reflects, â€Å"For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress †to the future…the idea of authority, which th ey represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first finale we saw shattered this belief (Remarque, 1928, p. 12).”\r\nThe second physique in the downward spiral is presented as the desensitization of the individual. Remarque portrays this through the soldier’s continued acceptance of the squalor of their condition. Through poor rations, living in mud filled trenches, and being in constant quantity fear for their lives from regular shelling associated with trench warfare and from the use of a deadly new weapon, leaf mustard gas, Paul and his comrades develop a detached role which shields them from their hideous reality: â€Å"Just as we turn into animals when we go up to the line, because it is the only thing which brings us through safely, so we turn into wags and loafer when we are resting…We want to live at any equipment misadventure so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peacetime, would be out of place here (Remarque, 1928, pp. 138-139).” A third frame lies in the objectification of the soldier by others.\r\nRemarque best accomplishes this in his portrayal of medical treatment for the wounded. Early on, he establishes this premise through the death of Franz Kemmerich. A overleap of supplies has denied him morphine to reduce his suffering. The higher than expected casualty count has begun to turn doctors into processors of human flesh: â€Å" star operation after another since five-o’clock this morning. You know, today alone there have been sixteen deaths †yours is the seventeenth. There will probably be twenty entirely †(Remarque, 1928, p. 32).” Kemmerich’s body is quickly processed: â€Å"We must take him away at once, we want the bed. out-of-door they are lying on the floor (Remarque, 1928, p. 32).” As the war drags on and casualties mount, the individual casualty becomes l ess a patient and more a number. hobbyhorse an injury, Paul enters the hospital to learn of the latest submit in wartime triage: â€Å"A little room at the corner of the building. Whoever is about to kick the bucket is put in there.\r\nThere are two beds in it. It is generally called the Dying Room. They don’t have much work to do afterwards. It is more convenient, too, because it lies reform beside the lift to the mortuary (Remarque, 1928, p. 257).” Through his experience in the hospital, Paul comes to a stark realization, and Remarque drives home his point: â€Å"A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is anything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. 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 (Remarque, 1928, p. 263).”\r\nThe eventual(prenominal) phase is the transition of the soldier from object to invisibility. Paul’s death, and the â€Å"matter if fact” manner in which Remarque presents it, stands in stark contrast to the official subject area of the day †â€Å"All quiet on the Western front. (Remarque, 1928, p. 296).” The fate of a man has been subordinated to the fate of a nation without the nation realizing his sacrifice.\r\nThroughout All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque selects his details of World War I to support his themes decrying nationalism, the meaningless state of war, and the disintegration of the human spirit through the pursuit of warfare. No mention is made of specific battles or individual acts of heroism. Th e lack of specificity adds to the tone of the general, unyielding nature of war. Heroism, writ with a capital â€Å"H”, is a concept not to be found in Remarque’s world of war. In presenting his details of World War I, Remarque remains unyielding in his portraying of the destruction of the human condition on the altar of national pride.\r\nREFERENCES\r\nRemarque, E. M. (1928). All quiet on the western front. Ballantine Books. Strayer, R. W. (2011). Ways of the world; a brief global history with sources, volume 2: Since 1500. 7th mutant: Bedford/St. Martins.\r\n'