All Quiet on the Western Front

Hello readers, and welcome to the fourth installment of Another Year of Fiction (AYOF). After previously suffering through John Grisham’s The Firm, I moved backward in time to what is generally considered the greatest book about war ever put to paper: Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

First, I would absolutely agree with the critical consensus. I’ve finally gotten to a fair amount of phenomenal war novels in the last few years (Catch-22, Slaughterhouse V, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Johnny Got His Gun) and this was the best one I’ve read. I believe I understand the reason as one of the major lessons to draw from this impactful work. And so:

1. Tell it like it is. Instead of using more hyperbolic or sardonic language as Heller does in Catch-22, Remarque simply describes the intense horror and carnage he witnessed on the battlefields of the Great War. Heller’s novel concerning the Second World War involved a lot of aerial bombardments; Remarque shows the devastation of trench warfare and the complete lack of a point to it all in grisly detail. By just telling it like it is, the author makes a statement more powerful than anything else.
2. Finding empathy. The novel takes place from the point of view of a German soldier. This struck me as a bit odd, given the desperate nature to sort out “good” and “bad” guys in the media these days. Paul Baumer is just a young man urged by his society and school teacher to join the ranks of the army with his classmates. It is the training process, and later the destruction of the shells and warfare that turns him into a soul-searching, disturbed soldier. Going home on leave, which should be a wonderful distraction, ends up troubling him more than he can stand. This story is about any soldier on the face of the planet, and helps us view war from an uncomfortable perspective.
3. Making a statement about warfare. This leads back to the first point. While Remarque mentions at the beginning of the novel he has no political agenda, this work struck me as a solidly anti-war book. The stupidity of the commanding officers, the banal brutality of the trenches, the clueless cheerleading at home; all of these things worked against the young men fighting the actual war and caused needless suffering for an entire lost generation. The Nazis made this one of the first targets for book burning. The message is within, but it’s the job of each reader to understand and come to terms with it.

I’ll conclude this with a hearty recommendation for anyone who enjoys great literature to pick this one up. It’s important to recall this war happened only a century ago, and to ponder its lessons for today.

Coming up next in AYOF: I will be taking on (Minnesota author) Tim O’Brien’s landmark 1994 novel In the Lake of the Woods. Thanks for reading!