THE BOOK FAIR

Erich Maria Remarque

All Quiet

  on the

Western

  Front

Author:      Erich Maria Remarque

Published: 1929

Genre:        Classic

Cover:         Paperback

Pages:         295

Review:

German novelist Erich Remarque was born in Osnabruck, Germany in 1898.  “All Quiet on the Western Front”, is his most famous work.  Remarque was conscripted to the German Army in 1916 at the age of eighteen and was later wounded in the war, from which he draws material for the book.  The author died in Switzerland in 1970.

 

Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, enlisted in the army along with his enthusiastic classmates, to fight for his country, during WW I.  The young soldiers quickly grow older, bearing the realities of war.

The young soldiers’ joys, center on food and mail from home; they find contentment in each other’s company, learn to share, and ignore the loss of privacy.  Stuffed with extra rations of sausage, ham, beans and cigarettes from their comrades, who fell the day before, they play cards and speak of the wounded, and of those left behind to die.  They speak of  their schoolmaster, who encouraged them to enlist.  Replacements fill Paul’s unit.

One night, Paul encounters an enemy soldier and thrusts his bayonet.  In the morning light he sees the soldier alive and suffering.  Paul offers him water and tormented by the gasping man, tries to dress his wounds.  He checks the man’s identity and promises to send his family money.

In an artillery attack, Paul and a fellow soldier are wounded and sent to the hospital.  Weeks later, Paul returns to his unit.  It is winter, cold and gloomy.  They are hungry and under constant fire; they fear the tanks, they lose a commander.  The summer of 1918 arrives.  The Germans are tired.  American and English troops outnumber the Germans.

Paul, is one of seven, left from his class.  In the autumn, he hears talk of an armistice and hopes.  In October, 1918, Paul falls on the battlefield.  The battlefield is so calm on that particular day, that an army report states:  All quiet on the Western Front.

 

Note:  Approximately 17 million people were killed and 20 million wounded, in WW I.