Study Questions & Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. What are the main themes of All Quiet
on the Western Front?
Remarque’s novel is a profound statement
against war, focusing especially on the ravaging effects of war
on the humanity of soldiers. Throughout Paul’s narrative there are
attacks on the romantic ideals of warfare. The novel dramatizes
the disjunction between high-minded rhetoric about patriotism and
honor and the actual horror of trench warfare. Remarque continually
stresses that the soldiers are not fighting with the abstract ideals
of patriotic spirit in mind; they are fighting for their survival.
The matters of acquiring food, shelter, and clothing, in addition
to avoiding gunfire and bombs, constitute their foremost concerns.
Nothing in this novel makes the actual experience of war look attractive.
Even the intense friendships between Paul and his fellow soldiers
are tempered with the sobering reality that their bonds come at
the high price of relentless suffering and terror.
Remarque also explores the gulfs in age and power
that are widened by war; he portrays the war as the older generation’s
profound betrayal of the younger. Men of Paul’s age entered the
war under the heavy pressure of people they regarded as trusted
authority figures. The very people who are supposed to guide them
to their adulthood instead send them to their deaths with empty
slogans of patriotic duty.
2. How does Remarque portray the technological
and military innovations of the war? How do those innovations affect
the lives of the soldiers?
Technological and military innovations such
as poison gas, the machine gun, and trench warfare revolutionized
combat during World War I, and Remarque effectively dramatizes how
these innovations made the war bloodier, longer, and more costly.
In almost every case, military innovations make the soldiers’ lives
more dangerous, while medical innovations lag increasingly far behind. Kemmerich,
for instance, dies from complications from a relatively light wound.
Glory and patriotism cease to be rational ideals in the conflict
because advanced technology limits the effect that an individual
soldier can have on the conflict and alienates him from the consequences
of his actions. Life and death thus become meaningless. Whether
or not a soldier dies in a bombardment is determined by chance or
animal instinct and has nothing to do with the soldier’s attitude
toward the conflict.
3. Think about the concept of enemies
in war. Whom do Paul and his friends regard as their enemies?
When Paul and his friends talk about enemies,
they do not speak of the soldiers on the other side. Instead, they
concentrate their hostility on Kantorek and Himmelstoss, their superiors
and fellow countrymen. Paul and his classmates view Kantorek and
other formerly trusted authority figures like him as the origin
of their pointless suffering. These authority figures have sent
them to war with the tragically false illusion that they were embarking
on an exciting journey to fight for honor and glory. They view all
common soldiers who are forced to fight in the trenches, regardless
of their national origin, as victims. When Paul meets the Russian
prisoners, he can hardly believe that they are his enemies—it is
only the word of their respective leaders that has made them enemies.
Because of the conflicts between more powerful men, Paul and the
Russians are forced to kill and maim one another, even though they
have more in common with one another than they do with their respective
leaders.
4. Why do Paul and men of his age
group fear the end of the war as much as they fear the war itself?
When Müller persistently questions his friends
about their postwar plans, the younger men can give only vague answers.
Older men mention their jobs and their families; they had concrete
identities and social functions before the war. Younger men like
Paul and his classmates had no such concrete identities. They entered
the war when they were on the threshold of their adult lives and
thus gained their identities as soldiers. Paul cannot even imagine
any definite postwar goals. Many young men like him cannot view
the war as a temporary interruption in their lives. Their experiences
of the war are so shattering that they regard the prospect of functioning
in a peacetime environment with a vague anxiety. For them, peace
represents the unknown; the war, on the other hand, as terrible
as it is, offers them some minimal comfort by virtue of their intimate
familiarity with it. Whereas they know how to function as soldiers,
Paul and the other young comrades cannot imagine functioning in
civilian jobs. They have no experiences as adults that do not involve
a day-to-day fight for survival and sanity.
Suggested Essay Topics
1. According to the text, how
does war empower petty, power-hungry men? Think especially about
Himmelstoss. How do the other characters cope with their forced
subordination?
2. In what ways does the novel
critique the romantic rhetoric of war, honor, and patriotism? How
might this critique extend to nineteenth-century ideas of nationalism?
Think especially about the soldiers’ reaction to Kantorek’s letter.
3. What is Paul like as a character?
Has the brutality of war completely stripped away his humanity,
or does he retain vestiges of his old self?
4. Discuss how the goals of the
novel, as stated by the epigraph or suggested by the text, affect the work’s form and style.
Does Remarque compromise his realistic style in order to deliver
a message? Is Kantorek too one-dimensional a character?
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