Finally, Remarque’s style includes irony. We fully appreciate how little value is attached to a single human life by 1918 when we read the army report on the progress of the war on the day Paul dies: “All quiet on the Western Front.”
^^^^^^^^^^ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: POINT OF VIEW
Stories usually are told from the first person or the third person point of view. We get these terms from grammar. “I love” is a first person structure, “you love” is second person, and “he (or she) loves” is third person. A story is told in the first person when the narrator says that I or we are doing thus-and-so: someone actually in the story is telling it. A third person story uses the he or they approach; some unnamed person outside the story is observing others doing something.
Except for the very last two paragraphs of the book, All Quiet on the Western Front is written from the first person point of view. The story is being told by someone who is actually in it–Paul Baumer–not by some invisible outsider. Remarque does switch to third person in the last two paragraphs for an obvious reason: Paul cannot report his own death.
First person narration always has both advantages and disadvantages. A big advantage is that we tend to identify with the main character. In All Quiet we feel as if we are right there with Paul, experiencing what he is seeing and hearing and feeling. We almost think his thoughts, share his ideas. First person narration makes the whole story seem direct and real and honest.
On the other hand, first person narration also limits us to knowing and seeing only what the narrator–in this case, Paul–knows and sees. We get other news and views and opinions only as he filters them and reports them to us.
In the case of All Quiet, Paul is young and immature. Until he enlisted, he had never experienced real pain or tragedy in his life. Older people generally know from experience that human beings can survive incredible pain and still find meaning in life. Paul hasn’t had any time to gain that kind of experience to sustain him. Therefore it’s asking quite a bit to have us accept, from him, whole theories about war and life and the nature of human beings. Still, whatever Paul might lack in age or experience is balanced for us by the honesty and sensitivity we see in him.
Over all, then, in All Quiet on the Western Front, the advantages of first person narration outweigh the disadvantages. There is a perfect fit of first person point of view with what Remarque wanted to say about World War I–that it destroyed a whole generation of the young. How better to show us that than to let us experience the war through the eyes of a young soldier?
^^^^^^^^^^ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: FORM
When critics use the word form to discuss a novel, they sometimes mean its overall style and structure–the elements already presented under that heading in this guidebook. Another meaning of form is the category a novel falls into–how it should be classified, what kind of fiction it is.
You yourself use from in this narrow, second meaning when you say that you like to read mysteries or westerns or romances or some other kind of story. But if someone asked you what kind of book All Quiet is, you would find that it just doesn’t fit standard classifications. You might say it’s a war story–but it’s a lot more than that. It’s also a story about a boy turning into a disillusioned adult, or perhaps a story telling society that it ought to eliminate the great evil of war. The standard categories simply do not express all that.
The best term for a novel in which everything depends on a specific war setting is historical novel. Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, set during the French Revolution, is an example. All Quiet does happen during World War I, but Remarque doesn’t dwell on historical details such as names of battles. Instead he concentrates much more on what any war does to people.
Usually a novel in which a young person matures by passing through some kind of crisis is called a novel of formation or a novel of initiation. This fits Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, in which Henry Fleming starts out as a naive boy, expecting war to be glorious, only to find how terrible it is. It also fits All Quiet to some extent, but not as well–by the time the book begins, Paul has already become disillusioned enough to call 70 deaths a “miscalculation.”
If you see All Quiet as a novel telling society something wrong ought to be changed–in this case, war–you could try sociological novel, but again the label seems somehow off. It fits a book against slavery like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin but seems to express only one element of All Quiet.
All in all, form as classification is simply too narrow and artificial for this book. With All Quiet, you are better off using the word form in its broad senses meaning style and structure. All Quiet can be described as a novel made up of dramatic scenes, vivid language, and a series of contrasting episodes that make us feel how totally destructive war is.
^^^^^^^^^^ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: AUTHOR’S NOTE
Remarque begins his book with a note before the first chapter. In it he says that his book “is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure,” but rather an account of a generation of young men who were destroyed by the war–World War I–”even though they may have escaped its shells.”
What does he mean? Biography and history tell us his situation. By 1929 when his book came out, World War I had been over for ten years, but it was still affecting people like him and his friends, who had gone from the schoolroom right into the trenches. Many of them survived, but they felt as if a shadow still hung over their lives. After all that time, they still hadn’t been able to sort out their feelings about the war.
Remarque says that he doesn’t want to accuse or blame anyone, that he certainly doesn’t have anything new to confess, and that he is definitely not trying to write an adventure story–the kind of war story that’s full of heroes and waving flags.
If all of that is what we should not expect, then what should we expect? Well, if he means what he says, he’s going to let the story itself show us just exactly what was so destructive about World War I. Maybe it’s the deaths of friends; maybe it’s the loss of ideals. We’ll need to read the book to find out. But we can expect every chapter to tell us something to support his theme: that the First World War destroyed even those who came through it alive.
^^^^^^^^^^ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: CHAPTER 1
The very first paragraph takes us within five miles of the front lines. The men are resting on the ground, having just stuffed themselves with beef and beans (the cook is stiff dishing out more). There are double rations of bread and sausage besides, and tobacco is so plentiful that everyone can get his preference–cigarets, cigars, or chews. Whoever is telling the story is right there, in it; this is what is called first person narration. But the narrator (we soon find out that he’s 19 years old and his name is Paul Baumer) makes clear that the whole situation is incredible:–”We have not had such luck as this for a long time.”
Where did the windfall come from? Paul says, “We have only a miscalculation to thank for it.” It turns out that the quartermaster sent, and the cook prepared, food for the full Second Company–150 men. But 70 were killed at the end of a quiet two-week mission when the English suddenly opened up with high-explosive field guns.
Before we can stop to think about Paul’s dismissing all those deaths as a miscalculation, he backs up to tell the whole story of how they nearly had to riot to get all that food and tobacco. The cook, it seems, didn’t care about the count; he just didn’t want to give any man more than a single share. In the course of retelling how their noise brought the company commander, who finally ordered the cook to serve everything, Paul introduces all his friends.
They’re an assorted lot: first, three of his classmates from school–Muller, the bookworm, Albert Kropp, the sharp thinker, and bearded Leer who likes officers’ brothels. Then there are three other 19-year-olds: the skinny locksmith Tjaden, the farmer Detering, and the peat-digger Haie Westhus. Finally he names an older soldier–the group’s shrewd, 40-year-old leader, a man with a remarkable nose for food and soft jobs, Stanislaus Katczinsky.
NOTE: From their names we see that these major characters are German, but it really doesn’t matter. They could just as well be French or English, so far as their experiences are concerned.
At this point we don’t really know if Paul, the narrator, is as cold and unfeeling as he appears. He and his friends seem to care much more about food than about the lives of their companions. Is Remarque indirectly telling us that war reduces people to animals? Or are the men just being realistic? We’ll have to wait and see.
The day continues to be “wonderfully good,” says Paul, because their mail catches up with them. But one letter angers them. It’s from their schoolmaster, Kantorek, who pumped them all so full of the glory of fighting for their country that they marched down to the district commandant together and enlisted. The only one who had to be persuaded was homely Josef Behm, and he’s dead already–the first of their class to fall. Paul doesn’t blame Kantorek personally for Behm’s death, but he does blame the “thousands of Kantoreks” who were so sure their view of the coming war was the right one. We were only 18, he says; we trusted our teachers and our parents to guide us, and “they let us down so badly.” He seems to be saying that the war has cut them adrift from a meaningful life, with no new values to replace the old ones. All the young soldiers know for sure is that it’s good to have a full belly or a good smoke.
The friends go over to visit Franz Kemmerich, a classmate who is dying after a leg amputation. Muller turns out to be totally crude and tactless. Kemmerich is dying, and Muller rattles on about Kemmerich’s stolen watch and just who will get Kemmerich’s fine English leather boots. Paul, on the other hand, recalls Kemmerich’s mother, crying and begging Paul to look after Franz as they left for the front. To Paul, Kemmerich still looks like a child accidentally poured into a military uniform. Perhaps war hasn’t blunted his sensitivity yet, but Muller’s crudeness shocks us.
As they leave the dressing station, it is obvious that Kropp, like Paul, is still brimful of feelings. Erupting into anger, he hurls his cigaret to the ground and mutters, “Damned swine!” He is thinking of th