Review Of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

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The second book that is evaluated according to the three literary qualities is ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Erich Maria Remarque. The first literary quality is to determine whether this novel has stood the test of time. The book is originally written in German under the title ‘Im Westen nichts neues” in 1929 and it is translated to English. This implies that the book is written 86 years ago. According to Dr. Johnson, a book can be qualified as literature when the book is still read after a hundred years. Currently, the first one hundred years after the publication are not yet reached. However, even after the 86 years of publication the book is still well known and often read, whether the English or the original German translation. Yet,…show more content…
The social and cultural factors refer to the effect of war on a human being. This is also the context in which the book is written. Remarque’s aim of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ is to show the world what war does to a human. He states before he sets out the composition (Remarque, 1996), “This book is intended neither as an acquisition nor as a confession, but simply as an attempt to give an account of a generation that was destroyed by the war - even those of it who survived the shelling.” This can be underpinned by Hunt (2004:489), who explains that literary sources are a significant source to develop and test psychological theories as well as to determine war traumas during other times and in other…show more content…
He has experienced the war at the Front, but he was never the same person again after he went to the Front. Through all the horror that he has experienced and seen, when he went on leave to his home, he is not able to be the same Paul as before. Based on these grounds, the social and cultural factors are part of the book as well as how the reader gains an understanding of the first World War. Therefore, it can be concluded that ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ is a literary work. As Remarque’s work is a literature work, the novel is written in the modern era and, therefore, belongs to the modern literary era. This era is characterised with specific requirements and if ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ is a novel written in the modern era, it will comply to these requirements. Firstly, the modern literary era started around 1870 and ended after the second World War, in 1945 (New World Encyclopedia, 2014). The novel is published in 1929 and is therefore written in the modern literary
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