All Quiet on the Western Front (Reading Guide Edition) [Special Edition] (Paperback)

Told through the eyes of 19-year-old soldier Paul Baumer, it details his experiences fighting in the Flanders' trenches.

Over time Baumer undergoes a complete transformation from naive young schoolboy to hard-bitten soldier. He survives the harsh reality of frontline combat, sees many of his friends get mortally wounded or killed, and suffers serious injuries of his own. Eventually he begins to wonder what he will do when the war is over, because it feels like war is all he has ever known.

The beauty of this book is that this is essentially a first person account of life on the frontline based on Remarque's own wartime experiences. There are no heroics. No homage to the glories of war. Instead we read about the soldiers' all abiding desire to avoid death, to cling on to life for however long it is possible to do so, amid the muddy, bloody, corpse-strewn battlefields of the Western Front.

Similarly, the story has little historical detail and no political insight. If you did not know that Baumer was German, you could easily mistake the soldiers as being British or French or Australian. This subtle message is perhaps Remarque's greatest gift: All Quiet on the Western Front shows that all men are equal when it comes to war.

Despite being written in 1929, its message still resonates today.

I found this book to be an incredibly sad, lump-in-the-throat read but one that is powerful and life-changing. If you haven't read it, then you must.

Not being in the Great War, I can only imagine the technology of the time and trust in old war movies. Also this is a foreign culture in a foreign time. People there had a tendency to trust and respect their elders unquestionably.

Being of the Vietnam era I could however relate to the parts about the different personalities and some of the war situations and attitudes. I could appreciate the river crossing at night and the defending of the deserted town. I even liked the cat that they befriended in the story. We had a dog that was named Followme, which was one of the few that did not end up in a pot. I even could feel the anxiety of not fighting and just waiting for action. The only major difference is the question of do you want the people to be behind you to push you on or cheer you on, or doing the same job with people that are indifferent or not supportive?

Anyway even with the graphic description of the actual battle is more of a description of war, not a reason to sue for peace at any cost. The story is more of a, "don't let someone pull the wool over your eyes," with the talk of the glory of war. A movie with that theme is "The Americanization of Emily" (1964)". Also don't let Authority blindly lead you into the army with the condos as in, "Private Benjamin" (1980).

This is not the end but the key statement that pretty much sums it up, "He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the western Front."