Questions on “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Honestly to say, this book was one of the easiest book to read, and one of the most powerful book I read.
I had some technical (or grammar) problems reading this book, because this book had a slightly different format on dialogues.
It was a truly heartbreaking story. It formed a exciting, and rather a active mood at the beginning. But as the page number goes higher, it is getting gloomier and sadder.
Paul shares strong bond and friendship with his other comrades, and all of Paul’s comrade die out, and lastly Paul dies.
Basically, chapter 11 was the whole idea of the war. Chapter 11 is the main point that author is trying to deliver to us. The rest of the chapters, 1 through 10 are just merely a supporting details of it. And chapter 12, a nice 3 page conclusion.
This book does a good job letting us know a lot of aspects of the war that we didn’t know so far, and even told us what we had known wrong and what was actually being done.
And despite its greatness, I have some questions to be clarified.
1. Is Paul Baumer a reliable narrator?
He is a individual. Just another individual, one of the 150, or one of a million individuals participating in the war. And he’s young. He’s 20 when the book reaches the end.
Paul only feels despair and resentment throughout the whole war scenes. No happiness.
Germany was losing, that’s a accurate history. But what if, Paul was a soldier of the winning side? Wouldn’t then be Paul be in joy? Actually, Paul and his comrades seem to have win a couple of battles, at least, no one’s happy about winning. This is the question I had throughout the entire book. No victory, no successfulness.
The book only deals with Paul’s and his classmates’ point of view.
2. Does this matter now?
Event described in the book is about 90 years, almost a 100 years ago. We have warfare today in a very different way. First of all, we don’t have experimenting surgeons. We don’t have trenches.
Maybe not even soldiers.
Now, it’s the war of buttons. If you are a military men and if you click a button that says Paris, Paris will be nuked in a moment. Same for all the major cities and countries around the world.
Paul’s warfare is old school.
Lastly, 3, why couldn’t I read this book earlier :]
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Filed under: Anibal's Diary, Literature
