In
the beginning there was only space, (and man, earth, beasts and
everything else). However, in 1914 the First World War started.
Erich Maria Remarque was born on July 22 1898. Erich was 16 when the
First World War started. Because the war lasted for four years, he
had an excellent opportunity to join the war at the prime of his
life. The great opportunity of going to war also gave him his
background and ideas that would be expressed more than 15 years later
in one of his most famous novels Im
Westen nichts Neues. Now
for those of us who are not fluent in German that roughly means The
Western Front.
However the title in English has been changed to All
Quiet On The Western Front
which is an ironic bending of one of the later lines in the book. His
background and what he had done in his life to the point where he
wrote All
Quiet on the Western Front
very strongly influenced his writings of the book.
Erich
Maria Remarque was a great man. This simple yet profound statement,
leads us to ask ourselves what is true greatness and that is where
the profoundness is spawned from. In the case of Erich, his greatness
springs from the interesting view point of World War One. Rarely is a
war looked at by the eyes of the losers, because well they lost.
However, Erich is not a common person. He grew up moving eleven times
and when he turned sixteen one of the two great wars this world has
ever seen occurred..(Encyclopedia of age and war) World War One was
a trench war. There was always troops in the trenches and the war was
constantly being fought for four years on a ginormous border line.
However Erich never actually saw the war. The most exciting thing he
ever did in the war was drag his dead friend's body back to the
infirmary. He constantly got leave because his mother had cancer.
Finally he was hit with three bits of shrapnel sending him into the
infirmaries for the rest of the war (Authors
And Artists For Young Adults).
The fact that he never really was in the war is very interesting, it
makes one wonder how many people were like this and not actually in
the war. It is not very surprising that a man who grew up essentially
during the war who had interests in art would write a book about all
the fallacies of the war and the way he saw it. In this way there is
an undeniable connection to Erich Maria Remarque's life and his
writings. However it could also be said that there isn’t a
connection because he didn’t actually fight in the war. That is for
every man in his own mind to decide.
As
I mentioned earlier, Erich had to carry the body of one of his
friends out of battle thinking that he was still alive. When he got
there, one of the orderlies told him the man was not still alive.
Throughout the entirety of the book his view point on death and how
terrible it is is expressed continually. At the beginning, it speaks
of how there are only four left of their class of men that came to
the battle front. In the middle of the book the narrator is saying;
“stacked up against its longer side (a school house) is a high
double wall of yellow, unpolished, brand new coffins. . . . 'That's a
good preparation for the offensive'” (Remarque 98). This scene is
as the men are coming back to the front where the head honchos have
devised that the men in the front will go on an offensive against the
other side. If one was to see a wall of coffins prepared for one that
would absolutely scare one, especially if one knew that their side
was about to make a go against the enemy. Erich took the war hard
although he was “Discharged from the army as a private, he
nonetheless took to parading the streets of his hometown in the
uniform of a lieutenant, bedecked with medals” ( Biography in
context). His disillusionment towards the military is very visible in
his novel. He constantly speaks of the horrors of the war and how
terrible boot camp.
In
the end, Erich Maria Remarque was unequivocally against the war and
makes it obvious throughout his books. He constantly makes fun of the
German officials and could care less for the ways of war. He makes
known the horrors of war even though none of them he saw. He was a
great, distraught man.
Works
Cited
"Erich
Maria Remarque." Authors
and Artists for Young Adults.
Vol. 27. Gale, 1999.Gale
Biography In Context.
Web. 30 Nov. 2011.
"Erich
Maria Remarque." Europe
Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction.
Ed. Web.
30 Nov. 2011.
John
Merriman and Jay Winter. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2007. Gale
Biography InContext.
Web. 30 Nov. 2011.
Remarque,
Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. New York:
Ballantine, 1982. Print.
