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 of war; the effect of war on
the soldier; nationalism and political power
Motifs
The pressure of patriotic idealism; carnage and gore; animal instinct
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.
