All Quiet on the Western Front - Book Review

If the goal of this book was to show the negative side effects that World War I had on the soldiers, I would say that Remarque has done this very well.  Throughout the book, there are a few situations where the war would seem tolerable, if not somewhat pleasing.  Such as the time where the guys swim across the river to see the girls or when they roast the pig in their bomb shelter.  Both of those situations were painted to seem very pleasing, but following both of these events, the main character Paul shows how he hasn’t enjoyed them as fully as he should have.  They serve as sort of a comic relief as to the years of pain and anguish which were the realities of the war.  The best example of this is when Paul goes on leave and gets to go home and see his family.  Right away, when his sister greets him and he sees her for the first time in months and hears his mother’s voice, he breaks down.  Those are two things he wasn’t sure that he would ever be able to see and hear again.  But yet Paul is very reserved.  When his father takes him to see his father’s friends, it just disgusts Paul, because all they do is try to sell him on other strategies, saying that it is hard for him to see how this would work out because he’s been at the front for too long.  They also say how the food is better on the front than it is at home, “only the best for our troops” one of them says.  The fact of the matter is that even if the food was gourmet, and the best covered with the finest linens in the world, the front line of the war would still be hell on earth for the soldiers.  For a man to try and talk strategy to a soldier on leave the way those men did is very disrespectful, for they have no idea of which they spoke.  It is due to this separation of Paul and his family and friends that he goes back to the war 4 days before his leave was over.  He has changed so much due to the war that he hardly enjoys being home anymore.  He longs to return to his friends in the second company, because he knows that he needs to be there with them to help them escape death.  Even through to the end of the book, the reader thinks that there is a little bit of hope for Paul, that maybe him and Kat can escape the war together and continue their lives, but in the last few pages where Kat is killed while Paul is carrying him, shows that nothing good has come out of this war.  Paul is forever changed, and will never be able to live life the way he wants to, or the way he had before he enlisted.