Summary Of All Quiet On The Western Front

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WWI, “The Great War” was a war that forever changed Europe and its people. Thousands of young men marched into battle, full of nationalistic pride and willing to prove the strength of their homelands. Though they left their countries proud and brave adolescents, they would return as tired, traumatized, and disillusioned men. One such man was a German veteran named Erich Maria Remarque. After the war, Erich wrote the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front”. The novel focuses on German soldier Paul Bäumer a German soldier who is convinced to enlist in the German army by his teacher. Mentored by a grizzled old soldier and joined by his classmates he head to the western front. Various nondescript battles follow and he gets to head back home only to realize he can never readjust to civilian life. Tossed back into the trenches he continues to fight as he losses more friends and eventually dies himself in the hopeless pursuit of the innocence he once held dear.…show more content…
At the very start of the book the author makes it clear that he is not a strong supporter of war and wishes only to talk about the soldiers who endured it. "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. 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
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