All Quiet on the Western Front

"I soon found out this much: terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks, but it kills if a man thinks about it."

There's approximately eleventy bajillion other reviews that will probably summarize this book better than I ever could, so I won't bother with a summary.

What I will say is, in a sea of WWI/WWII fiction, this one rightfully stands head and shoulders above the rest. It captures the feeling of boys, fresh out of school, enlisting to do their country proud, being sent to the front lines, and learning what World War I was all about. Reading about their forced transition from boy to man in a very short time was heartbreaking, and there's scene after scene that sticks in my head even after being done with the book.

This book isn't for everyone. It's graphic, pulls no punches, and is heavy on detail. It's also more stream of consciousness and one man's observations than plot-driven, so if that isn't your cup of tea, you might not get a lot out of this book.

It broke my heart and made me cry. That's a hallmark of a good book to me.

‘We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.’

All Quiet on the Western Front is rightly considered a masterpiece, and often assigned reading in schools. I randomly decided to pick this one up, as it had been on my to-read list for a while. But it wasn’t entirely ‘random’ either, considering the fact that Europe is currently facing one of the most severe wars in at least my own lifetime. While reading this book, you become quite familiar with Paul Bäumer and his friends and comrades; but I see little difference between these young men and the ones fighting in Ukraine. As it was a century ago, it is today. It took me several weeks to read this short book, but it is worth consuming slowly and carefully, like handling a piece of sharp glass.The book is buoyed by a light plot; there is a cohesive narrative, but it isn’t the primary focus. It ostensibly follows Paul and co. from the beginning of their enlistment in the army, spurred on by their schoolteacher, to the melancholy-suffused ending. Over the course of a few pages, you see these young men grow increasingly bitter and jaded, alienated from their former lives, and losing hope and belief in the cause. The events at the front are somewhat out of time; they exist in a strange sort of time and place. Ordinary events, such as when Paul briefly visits his family, punctuate the story from time to time, but it largely feels like a fever dream of sights at the war front. Does it take weeks or months? Technically, there are verbal cues to tell you, but it feels like it takes just a few weeks and several years simultaneously. The cast of characters are interesting, each with small traits to make them stand out. Chief of all of them is Paul, our narrator. He narrates the book with a presaged tone, looking back on his youthful self with bitterness and regret and apathy. The secondary characters, such as Katczinsky and Kropp, are well-defined but for me mainly brought Paul’s humanity to the forefront. The book sort of feels like a character study, except in a very concentrated manner—one particular person in a particular time. It is also interesting to read this from a non-German perspective; so often, the German side of WWI is portrayed as ‘the enemy’ and the ‘bad guys’. This book helps to obliterate such silly, one-sided characterizations in favor of nuance—the young people on the front lines may be in service of bad political actors, but they are just as much victims themselves as perpetrators.The themes are as relevant and prudent as ever. Wars are always started and encouraged by those who have the smallest stake in the outcome; the ones actually doing the fighting and dying are the ones who have nothing to gain. I’m not sure how sufficiently the concept of shell shock was at Remarque’s time, but he encapsulates it succinctly on page. It is chilling to remind oneself periodically while reading that all of these things have happened, somewhere or sometime, as witnessed by Remarque. That he is able to recall these things from memory lends not only credence but an immense sense of grief to the writing. Despite the brevity of his words, Remarque’s writing style (as translated into English) is still very eloquent and painfully beautiful at times. I have many highlights of such moments.Yet, as depressing as this book is, it also gives a glimmer of the humanity that is possible. Paul’s interactions with certain enemy combatants and Russian prisoners reveals much about the soldier’s mindset towards the ‘enemy’; much of the hatred is ideological, as expected, but it is a bit surprising to see that connection is not yet out of the question. From each moment, whether mundane or terrifying, the book offers a concise portrait of what it is like to be a young soldier in WWI. There is definitely not much else as good; it is one of my first forays into WWI literature, and perhaps the last (for now)… for nothing else can compare. It is maddening to live in a world that has seen not only the successor to the Great War, but many more wars since; but I refuse to believe that wars must be definitive of humanity. Wars are not some primal drive within us, but merely the machinations of petty men—and this book serves as a great example of that.Quotes:○ ‘I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.’○ ‘Summer of 1918—Never has life in its niggardliness seemed to us so desirable as now;—the red poppies in the meadows round our billets, the smooth beetles on the blades of grass, the warm evenings in the cool, dim rooms, the black mysterious trees of the twilight, the stars and the flowing waters, dreams and long sleep——O Life, life, life!’○ ‘Had we returned home in 1916, out of the suffering and the strength of our experience we might have unleashed a storm. Now if we go back we will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope. We will not be able to find our way any more.’

Somehow I missed reading this in high school; wasn't on the curriculum. But, since I've been reading a lot of WWI and WWII stories in the past year, I picked this up in a sale. It's well worth reading and especially now, a century after the events in the book. Paul Bäumer is a German soldier, barely 18 and sent to war with his classmates. The book is a factual description of life in the trenches, the hardships that most of us cannot even imagine, the friendships, the sacrifices, and the tragedy.

I didn't actually know much about the book other than that it was about WWI and a classic, and I wasn't paying much attention to character and location names at first. As the author's name looks vaguely French, it actually took me quite a few chapters to realize that it was being told from the German perspective rather than the allied forces, which is the perspective of most books I've read so far. And the depressing thing is that it could really have been told by either, and read the same. There was little difference in the experiences of the soldiers on the front lines and the meaninglessness and despair of war was the same on both sides of the lines. These stories need to be remembered, and understood. This book and others like it are important.