All Quiet on the Western Front
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All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque
Literature
James Mustich
Jul 31, 2018
Encouraged by their teachers and fueled by optimism, patriotism, and the promise of glory, Paul Bäumer and three friends volunteer for what would come to be known as World War I. But the reality of war in the trenches, as they witness unimagined carnage, leaves them struggling to keep their sanity and to survive. Published in Germany in 1929, All Quiet on the Western Front rapidly became an international bestseller. Remarque’s groundbreaking novel portrays the day-to-day horror and desperate futility of combat with searing and unprecedented force. Eschewing the idealized themes—nobility, nationalism, courage—that had been the conventional emphases of war literature, Remarque writes with relentless focus of the perils and privations of the soldiers’ lot. Most tellingly, by putting the narration in the all-too-human voice of nineteen-year-old Paul, the author gives his antiwar message a poignancy few writers have equaled; his voice provides a breathing presence that makes the constant senseless murder it describes all the more real, and all the more appalling.
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James Biskey
Mar 29, 2019
Everyone needs to read a book of the miseries and delusions of war. This is a great example, not necessarily better than others, but certainly one of the longest-enduring war classics.
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Jane Huttner
Jan 13, 2020
An excellamt book on the waste of human life during war on all sides. I really enjoyed how Remarque used Paul as a narrator to provide an antiwar message and to see through his eyes the horrors of war and the privations that they went through.
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Maree
Feb 19, 2023
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