All Quiet On The Western Front
(Erich Remarque)
The point to be made about All Quiet on the Western Front first and
foremost is the revolutionary perspective with which we view the events
in the book. Revolutionary because for once we westerners are able to
view the ordeal and horrors of war not through the eyes of Allied
soldiers but rather through the eyes of German soldiers. And we learn
that war is the same for all sides regardless of nationality. They
share the same fears, have the same blind luck in survival or bad luck
in death, they rejoice in the same extra rations and begrudge the
bureacracy that exists in the armies they serve.
Paul is the narrator but we also learn a lot about soldiers from
observations made by the other characters such as Kat (the veteran) and
Tjaden (known for his wisecracks). They make the observation that it is
always the wrong people doing all the fighting in wars and propose an
interesting scenario. A scenario where the two leaders in dispute fight
each other in an arena to the cheers and boos of the crowd. Dubya vs
Osama anyone? We see how the soldiers struggle when their artillery is
so badly damaged that shells begin raining down on their own troops. We
see also how badly the new recruits fare in battle as they have but
basic training and yet Paul notices that they know very little about
actual combat. With much talk today about the War on Terror, this is a
book that everyone should read at least once to better know what
soldiers go through in war. It is a timeless story and though the Nazis
openly burnt it in the 1930s as 'defeatist' from my own studies of the
first World War, I find it to be a very honest and truthful account of
events.
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