All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque

An anti-war novel portrays the awful and consequences of war. “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Remarque is a novel set in the First World War that is against war. The story takes place on the French front, as a German. Remarque describes the terrible reality of the war, focusing on the horrors and involved. The author, Erich Maria Remarque in his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front explores the horrors and chaos of battle to prove that war is an unnecessary evil.

In the novel, Remarque presents how brutal war is. In the beginning of the novel, he is describing the sound of the wounded horses and how brutal the war atmosphere is. "There is a whole world of pain in that sound, creation itself under torture, a wild and horrifying agony" (p44). The brutality of war in the novel, however, is mainly shown through human suffering. Baumer talks about brutal things that soldiers are just expected to do. He says, "When you put a bayonet in, it can stick, and you have to give the other man a hefty kick to get it out." (74). The German soldiers attack the enemy with extreme instinctive brutality. "With the butt of his rifle, Kat smashes to pulp one of the machine-gunners.We bayonet the others before they can get their grenades out" (84). The use of poison gas is also a very brutal practice throughout the novel. Baumer describes this while he is in a grassed area, hoping that his gas mask is working properly. He says, "I know the terrible sights from the field hospital, soldiers who have been gassed, choking for days on end as they spew up their burned-out lungs, bit by bit" (48).

Also, as shown in the book, death is inevitable in war. Throughout the book, the main characters die. In the novel,