All Quiet On The Western Front: A Literary Analysis

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War exists across time, across nations, across people. Yet a common piece unites these events, at least two sides, enemies clashing against each other. Some of these fighters were writers and poets. Wilfred Owen fought as a war poet for the English, and Erich Maria Remarque fought as a war novelists for Germany. Each of their works reflect this history. Yearly acknowledges that “All Quiet on the Western Front is not Baumer’s description of war as what occurred in various places at specific times but describes war as a condition.” (HOW DO I CITE THIS!), yet this same analysis occurs in Owen’s works, Though from different sides of the conflict, the writings of Wilfred Owen in “Strange Meeting” and Erich Maria Remarque in All Quiet on the Western…show more content…
Though the book follows and depicts the story of Paul, in his point of view. This occurs throughout the story, only two accounts in the story change the point of view, highlighting the information conveyed in each instance. The story begin with the statement "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war." (Remarque 1). The survivors, the ones who have escaped the shells, are the ones who were destroyed. Survivors somehow change, even so much to consider them destroyed. Paul may not survive the book, yet this book lies beyond that, in the realm of permanent lasting negative damage of the survivors. The book begins with an unknown narrator, and shifts into an unknown narrator at its end. The book closes with the statement “He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.” (Remarque ##). Paul, unlike the survivors, exists in calm. A change in narrator draws attention to this last line, placing it above the tales of Paul's suffering. Paul achieves calm. he transcends the pain and suffering through death. War damages the survivors, yet death proves the…show more content…
The narrator in “Strange Meeting” realizes his current environment, hell, and asks a fellow resident why he would ever mourn. In direct contrast to the joy felt by the narrator, the resident states”I mean the truth untold,/The pity of war, the pity war distilled./Now men will go content with what we spoiled./Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.” (Owen ##). The fighters are changed enough to recognize that an end to fighting is beneficial, yet those who did not fight, men, suffer no change. Wars will continue, not due to fighters who wish for an end, but a world who changed for nothing and will be content with spilling and grow discontent with the lives lost and the spoils won. Contrast again occurs, when the man helpful to the narrator reveals his identity of a previous enemy. He states “I am the enemy you killed, my friend./ I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned/ Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed./I parried; but my hands were loath and cold./Let us sleep now. . . ” (Owen ##). The war that drove them apart, that changed them into enemies capable of killing each other, no longer holds the same power over them. Hatred continues not into death, yet the damaging effects of war vanish upon death. Death proved an access to a world free of the damages in the world. Contrast in dialogue in the “Strange Meeting”
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