Key Facts
full title · All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im
Westen Nichts Neues)
author · Erich Maria Remarque
type of work · Novel
genres · War novel, historical fiction, novel of social protest
language · German
time and place written · Late 1920s, Berlin
date of first publication · 1928
publisher · A. G. Ullstein in Germany; Little, Brown in the United
States
narrator · Paul Bäumer
point of view · Paul, the narrator, speaks primarily in the first person,
often in the plural as he describes the collective experience of
the soldiers immediately around him. He switches to the first person
singular as he ruminates on his own thoughts and feelings about
the war. The novel switches to the third person and an unnamed narrator for
the two paragraphs following Paul's death.
tone · Paul is Remarque's mouthpiece in the novel, and Paul's
views can be considered those of Remarque.
tense · Present; occasionally past during flashbacks. The unnamed narrator
at the end of the novel uses the past tense.
settings (time) · Late in World War I: 1917–1918
settings (place) · The German/French front
protagonist · Paul
major conflict · Paul and his friends have unwittingly entered a hellish
war in which hope for survival is sullied by the knowledge that
they have already been mentally scarred beyond recovery.
rising action · The wiring fatigue and the subsequent shelling in Chapter
Four bring the men and the reader to the front for the first time
in
the story.
climax · Paul's killing of Gérard Duval in Chapter Nine is his
first encounter with hand-to-hand combat and, in a sense, with the reality
of war.
falling action · Paul's remorse at killing Duval solidifies the novel's
total rejection of the war and nationalist politics.
themes · The horror and violence of war; the effect of war on
the soldier; the role of nationalism and patriotic idealism in promoting
war; the betrayal of the younger generation by the older generation; the
effect of war on petty, small-minded men
motifs · Patriotism as an instrument of pressure; carnage and
gore; animal instinct as a tool of survival during the war
symbols · Kemmerich's boots, which symbolize the cheapness of
human life in the war.
foreshadowing · There is little foreshadowing in the novel; the relentless
carnage of the first ten chapters may foreshadow the death of Paul's group
in Chapters 11 and 12.
