Summary:
In Erich Remarque's novel of All Quiet on the Western front, so much horrific irony is used. Remarque balances the man made disasters of war with Mother Nature's unstoppable beauty. He incorporates situations of hope with the hopelessness of dying.
All Quiet on the Western Front
In Erich Remarque's novel of All Quiet on the Western front, so much horrific irony is used. Remarque balances the man made disasters of war with Mother Nature's unstoppable beauty. He incorporates situations of hope with the hopelessness of dying. He merges man and beast together contrasting them in situations of despair. But the irony and contrast really begins to come out in the most poetic and dramatic part of the novel, which just so happens to be in the beginning chapters of the book.
In chapter four, when The Second Company is assigned to lay barbed wire at the front, Paul describes themselves marching up as "moody or good-tempered soldiers" and as they "reach the zone where the front begins (they) become on the instant human animals." In which case they cease from being men and instead become beasts. From being in barbaric and savage surroundings it's only natural that they rely on their animal instincts to survive. Remaque shows us plenty of exemplifications of man versus animal. In this chapter, particularly, you see numerous contrasting points of them as human beings and aboriginal animals.
Stanislaus Katczinsky, Paul's best friend in the army, is certain that there will be a bombardment that night, no doubt about it. Then "three guns open fire close beside (them)", "the burst of flame shoots across the fog, the guns roar and boom." During this episode, they shiver and are just glad to think that in the morning they will all be back in their huts. Paul then describes his thoughts of how their faces still look and appear the same "and yet are changed." He says that they "feel (in their) blood a contact has shot home. That is no figure of speech; it is fact." With this single quote you already notice the contrast in it. No longer is the place where he grew up in his home, but instead the front is. The front is the place that is being bombarded and he feels it. "The moment that the first shells whistle over and the air is rent with the explosions there is suddenly in our veins, in our hands, in our eyes a tense waiting, a watching, a heightening alertness, a strange sharpening of the senses. The body with one bound is in full readiness." He feels a sense of protecting it as his home, a sense of loving everyone in it as his family, a sense of belonging to it and it to him. The front becomes his security, love, and comfort. It becomes his home.
Paul ruminates that the front is a baffling "vortex" and is slowly sucking him in. He describes how the earth is his main source of support and how absolutely substantial it is for a soldier. For a soldier, the earth takes on a completely new significance, he buries his body in it for shelter, and it receives him every time he throws himself down in a fold, furrow, or hollow. The earth then becomes "his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever." This exceptionally dramatic and poetic quote has an awful amount of irony. It's about how a soldier at battle doesn't rely on their annihilative bombs or the kinetic energy of their guns, but simply in nature itself, earth. War being destructive, traumatic, and fatal with unnatural origins of metal and flesh, it's quite ironic to include nothing but the unnoticeable, and insignificant earth. Yet it is the very thing that could best describe war as what it is; a brutal fight between two nations with only what is around them as shelter and often it's nothing but the ground we walk on.
Chapter four, the most poetic and traumatic part of the novel, introduces us to so much visual and emotional trauma that one needs to somewhat prepare from the previous chapters. It also happens to be the most contrasting part of the book and one of the most ironic parts, which really shows us the meaning of war. War is destructive, harsh, and brutal; a soldier must imitate it to survive and become a beast, for if they rely on their common sense and human intellect alone they don't even have a chance. The only thing they have got keeping them from being completely and utterly defenseless and hopeless is nature, earth, and the senselessness of an animal.
This is the complete article, containing 765 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
