All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im Westen nichts Neues) is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.
The novel was first published in November and December 1928 in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung and in book form in late January 1929.
The book and its sequel, The Road Back, were among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany. It sold 2.5 million copies in twenty-five languages in its first eighteen months in print.
In 1930, the book was adapted as an Oscar-winning film of the same name, directed by Lewis Milestone.
In the spirit of warning me, we now have a tradition:
For Tess of the d'Urbervilles middle warned - it is a tragedy. Just when you think, this time it might work, this time things might be better for poor Tess - remember it is a t-r-a-g-e-d-y.
For Grapes of Wrath oldest said - it is sad. It starts out sad, it stays sad, it is just sad.
As I got ready to start All Quiet on the Western Front my husband said - it is war, war, war.
First of all, I would like to say this is a truly great book.
It is very well written.
Even though it is a translation, it is very easy to understand. The language is NOT stilted or awkward to me (but I will add I am very used to translations now, I have read a lot of them).
This book captures the essence of front line warfare.
There are only slight sections where one realizes the book is about the German side of WWI. The story is sideless, timeless.
It is one of those books that captures an era, but, yes, it is a timeless rendition of war.
Yes, there are gruesome parts. It is front line battle from a very nasty war. Some still say the nastiest war before mustard gas was made internationally illegal.
Like the other books listed above (Tess, Grapes) and Uncle Tom's Cabin which I would put in this same category, I did fine with it. I think because I was forewarned, I was okay all the way through the story.
I read it as a piece of history. I did not picture it happening to anyone I know. It did NOT give me nightmares or cause me to ruminate in any way. I thought about the book in the context of the book only.
On this topic, Sparknotes writes:
The overriding theme of All Quiet on the Western Front is the terrible brutality of war, which informs every scene in the novel. Whereas war novels before All Quiet on the Western Front tended to romanticize what war was like, emphasizing ideas such as glory, honor, patriotic duty, and adventure, All Quiet on the Western Front sets out to portray war as it was actually experienced, replacing the romantic picture of glory and heroism with a decidedly unromantic vision of fear, meaninglessness, and butchery. In many ways, World War I demanded this depiction more than any war before it—it completely altered mankind’s conception of military conflict with its catastrophic levels of carnage and violence, its battles that lasted for months, and its gruesome new technological advancements (e.g., machine guns, poison gas, trenches) that made killing easier and more impersonal than ever before. Remarque’s novel dramatizes these aspects of World War I and portrays the mind-numbing terror and savagery of war with a relentless focus on the physical and psychological damage that it occasions. At the end of the novel, almost every major character is dead, epitomizing the war’s devastating effect on the generation of young men who were forced to fight it.
If one read Catch-22 and took out all the Who's on First? farcical nonsense, it would be very similar to All Quiet. Two different wars, two different sides, but very similar viewpoints.
I also thought about the last episode of the television series Mash as I read. The statement of what war does to participants that was shown in Hawkeye's mental collapse. I was in college when that episode ran. I remember discussing it with an English professor who was shocked the series did not have a humorous, happy ending. I asked if he had been paying attention through all the episodes. Because like China Beach, I thought the writers held on to the futility and horrors of war on a consistent basis. I thought there a profound point to the ending episode of Mash.
As, I said, this was a most excellent book. Another one that I think should be read by all, even though it is not a very pleasant topic.
