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Product Description: Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--if only he can come out of the war alive.
"The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first trank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-06
Should be required reading for our political representatives
I grew up playing war like every other kid and had a somewhat glamorized view of war. When we went to war in Iraq for the first time I thought it was kind of cool. Being a Jewish person who lost a great deal of their family in the Holocaust having any sympathy for any Germans was not an easy thing to believe I could ever feel. This book floored me,the absolute horror of war just rippled through me for the first time in my life. What a callous maniac you have to be to start a war, declaring one is the ultimate sacrifice you can ask of people and should be under extreme circumstances only. This book is a must read, well written and engrossing. Enjoy reading it, if that's the appropriate term. Rating:
Date: 2008-06-30
Life is short, and then you die
This old book of 296 pages, first published in 1928 in German, is often considered the "greatest war novel of all time," and it is almost unbearable to read. Who knows if it is "the best?" That's immaterial and moot. There is no glory here, no swashbuckling heroism, and no adulation of the honor of dying for no discernible reason. It is simply a plain, gorgeous story about the awfulness of war.
A young German, Paul, age 20, serving in the army, is the narrator, his story told in first person. He and his buddies, as the war claims them one by one, endure 3 years of World War I trench warfare on the French-German lines. They knit themselves into a fierce family of unlikely comrades. They love one another desperately and despair that when the war is over, they will not know what to do with themselves. They only know death, killing and horror.
Blood, death, despair, inhuman conditions, and frailty abound. Lice and rancid food characterize their daily life. Fear, grief and compassion fill their hearts. Paul nearly loses his mind when he has to kill a Frenchman, a guy with a wife and child at home, and then has to endure a couple of nights with him in his shell-hole. He apologies to the body and begs it for forgiveness.
Page 115, "The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under the sun's rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy world of automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor - thus we stagger forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers."
Paul's first home leave is beyond painful. It humiliates and degrades. The reader cringes and shies away from the pages of Paul's visit to his home village and family. The psychological toll of war on everyone overwhelms. Paul's hospital stay after being wounded, is a ghastly indictment of all who wage war and even of those who try to help the injured.
While welcome and very funny, the occasional army style bad-boy antics and the ever-present gallows humor are the things that keep the men sane - or does it? They distract themselves to distraction.
The prose is Hemingway-like in its terse, simple-sentence style. Sometimes the translation suffers from its own tell-tale German "accent." In all, the writing is irredeemably blunt and yet does not offend.
Remarque speaks to us through Paul, and he speaks for all of us. Like the movie "Gallipoli," which is the best anti-war movie I've ever seen, this book is the one of the best anti-war statements in print.
"All Quite on the Western Front" is terribly difficult to read. It is grisly and graphic. But read it we must.
Rating:
Date: 2008-06-07
What is it good for?
The first classic I have read in a while. As great as advertised ("The GREATEST WAR NOVEL of ALL TIME") on the cover.
Devastating in its matter-of-fact dealing with the suffering of dog soldiers in the Great War, but perhaps most powerful in its occasional humor. Rating:
Date: 2008-05-24
All is Not Quiet
All Quiet on the Western Front vividly and movingly describes the experiences of the "Lost Generation." Those young men who came of age during the First World War, who fought and died in a conflict which set the standards of horror and destruction in the 20th century. This book should be read by all who seek to understand. Rating:
Date: 2008-05-13
MUST READ
This book gives you an outlook on the lives of soldiers involved in brutal warfare. You will definitely have insight on how difficult it is to be a soldier. You are probably never the same person again. The effects that take place in war are permanent. It is not an easy life and you would have to be resilient in order to survive. Remarque does an excellent job in painting a picture that will not leave your mind for years to come. |
