All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is an uncensored depiction of the horrors of World War I, a particularly gruesome and affecting war. It tells the soldier's story through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a youthful German soldier of 19 years, aged lifetimes by blood, gunfire, and shells. What was once an innocent budding generation, full of life and expectation has been maliciously shelled into a lost, faceless beast, dwelling in fetid trenches, fighting to live, fighting to defend against their inevitable disappearance. As Paul Baumer puts it himself, "We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war" (Remarque, 88).

World War I...