SparkNotes - All Quiet on the Western Front: SparkNotes Literature Guide

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E rich Maria Remarque was born in Osnabrck, Germany, in 1898 into a lower-middle-class family. In 1916 , he was drafted into the German army to fight in World War I, in which he was badly wounded. Ten years after the war ended, he published Im Westen Nichts Neues, translated into English a year later as All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel about the experiences of ordinary German soldiers during the war.

Though other books, most notably Stephen Cranes The Red Badge of Courage ( 1895 ), had explored the violence and brutality of war in a realistic light, the literary tradition of war stories still tended overwhelmingly toward romanticized ideals of glory, adventure, and honor. In presenting his grimly realistic version of a soldiers experience, Remarque stripped the typical romanticism from the war narrative in the staunchly antiwar All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel instantly became an international, critically acclaimed success. An American movie based on the book was released in 1930 .

After Adolf Hitlers rise to power in Germany in the early 1930 s, the fiercely nationalistic Nazi regime attacked All Quiet on the Western Front and Remarque as unpatriotic. Remarque made no attempt to resist the Nazis attacks on his reputation because he feared retaliation. Despite Nazi hostilities toward him, in 1931 Remarque published a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front, entitled The Road Back, which details the postwar experience of German citizens. This work provoked further Nazi opposition, and Remarque fled to Switzerland with his wife, Jutta Zambona, in 1932 . In 1933 , the Nazis banned Remarques two novels and held a bonfire to burn copies of the books.

Remarque and his wife divorced in Switzerland but eventually remarried so that she could retain her Swiss residency. In 1939 , he followed the path of many persecuted German intellectuals and immigrated to the United States, where he obtained citizenship in 1947 . His family was not so lucky: the Nazis killed his sister during World War II, in part because of her relationship to him. Remarque and his wife had separated; in 1951 , they finally ended their estranged marriage.

In the Unites States, Remarque had a tempestuous affair with the actress Marlene Dietrich, which inspired his novel Arch of Triumph. In 1958 , he married another film star, Paulette Goddard. They eventually left the United States and moved to Porto Ranco, Switzerland, where Remarque died on September , 1970 .

Most of Remarques novels deal with political and social upheaval in Europe during the First and Second World Wars. Several of his novels were adapted to film. However, All Quiet on the Western Front remains his masterpiece; none of his other works approaches its critical acclaim and popularity. The novel and its first film adaptation are still influential as antiwar works and important chronicles of World War I. One of the remarkable aspects of the books success in England and America is that, unlike most other works dealing with World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front deals with the experiences of German soldiersdetested enemies of the English and Americans during World War I and World War II. That American and English reception of the book was so positive from the outset testifies to its ability to speak for all soldiers who suffered through the horrors of World War I.

A ll Quiet on the Western Front is narrated by Paul Bumer, a young man of nineteen who fights in the German army on the French front in World War I. Paul and several of his friends from school joined the army voluntarily after listening to the stirring patriotic speeches of their teacher, Kantorek. But after experiencing ten weeks of brutal training at the hands of the petty, cruel Corporal Himmelstoss and the unimaginable brutality of life on the front, Paul and his friends have realized that the ideals of nationalism and patriotism for which they enlisted are simply empty clichs. They no longer believe that war is glorious or honorable, and they live in constant physical terror.

When Pauls company receives a short reprieve after two weeks of fighting, only eighty men of the original -man company return from the front. The cook doesnt want to give the survivors the rations that were meant for the dead men but eventually agrees to do so; the men thus enjoy a large meal. Paul and his friends visit Kemmerich, a former classmate who has recently had a leg amputated after contracting gangrene. Kemmerich is slowly dying, and Mller, another former classmate, wants Kemmerichs boots for himself. Paul doesnt consider Mller insensitive; like the other soldiers, Mller simply realizes pragmatically that Kemmerich no longer needs his boots. Surviving the agony of war, Paul observes, forces one to learn to disconnect oneself from emotions like grief, sympathy, and fear. Not long after this encounter, Paul returns to Kemmerichs bedside just as the young man dies. At Kemmerichs request, Paul takes his boots to Mller.

A group of new recruits comes to reinforce the company, and Pauls friend Kat produces a beef and bean stew that impresses them. Kat says that if all the men in an army, including the officers, were paid the same wage and given the same food, wars would be over immediately. Kropp, another of Pauls former classmates, says that there should be no armies; he argues that a nations leaders should instead fight out their disagreements with clubs. They discuss the fact that petty, insignificant people become powerful and arrogant during war, and Tjaden, a member of Pauls company, announces that the cruel Corporal Himmelstoss has come to fight at the front.

At night, the men go on a harrowing mission to lay barbed wire at the front. Pounded by artillery, they hide in a graveyard, where the force of the shelling causes the buried corpses to emerge from their graves, as groups of living men fall dead around them. After this gruesome event, the surviving soldiers return to their camp, where they kill lice and think about what they will do at the end of the war. Some of the men have tentative plans, but all of them seem to feel that the war will never end. Paul fears that if the war did end, he wouldnt know what to do with himself. Himmelstoss arrives at the front; when the men see him, Tjaden insults him. The mens lieutenant gives them light punishment but also lectures Himmelstoss about the futility of saluting at the front. Paul and Kat find a house with a goose and roast the goose for supper, enjoying a rare good meal.

The company is caught in a bloody battle with a charging group of Allied infantrymen. Men are blown apart, limbs are severed from torsos, and giant rats pick at the dead and the wounded. Paul feels that he must become an animal in battle, trusting only his instincts to keep him alive. After the battle, only thirty-two of eighty men are still alive. The men are given a short reprieve at a field depot. Paul and some of his friends go for a swim, which ends in a rendezvous with a group of French girls. Paul desperately wishes to recapture his innocence with a girl, but he feels that it is impossible to do so.