Reading Outside My Comfort Zone: All Quiet on the Western Front
October 06, 2014
I usually avoid books on war (and other harrowing topics),
but I needed a classic about war to finish my Back to the Classics challenge. I happened to
have All Quiet on the Western Front on my TBR shelf, and since on its
cover there was a banner proclaiming, “The greatest war novel of all time,” I
thought I’d give it a try. And I’m so glad I did. This novel, by Erich Maria
Remarque, was beautifully and sensitively written in a way that helped me
understand the emotional experience of soldiers at war without overwhelming my
emotions. Originally written in German, my copy was translated by A.W. Wheen
and I found the writing simple and easy to read. Some of the most affecting passages for me included the
following:
Describing a dying friend: “Under the skin the life no
longer pulses, it has already pressed out the boundaries of the body. Death is
working from within. It already has command in the eyes. Here lies our comrade.
Kemmerich, who a little while ago was roasting horse flesh with us and
squatting in the shell-holes. He it is still and yet it is not he any longer.
His features have become uncertain and faint, like a photographic plate from
which two pictures have been taken. Even his voice sounds like ashes.”
After guarding Russian prisoners of war: “A word of command
has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform
them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom
none of us knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly
the world’s condemnation and severest penalty fall, becomes our highest aim.
But who can draw such a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their
childlike faces and apostles’ beards. Any non-commissioned officer is more of
an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us. And
yet we would shoot at them again and they at us if they were free.”
Reflecting on the future: “I am young, I am twenty years
old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous
superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against
one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently
slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and
words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and
over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is
experiencing these things with me…. Through the years our business has been
killing;—it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to
death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?”
Remarque, who was born in 1898,
knew whereof he wrote. He was conscripted into the German army at age 18, and
eventually wounded several times. After his discharge, he worked as a teacher,
stonecutter and test car driver for a tire company, among other things. All
Quiet on the Western Front was first published as Im Westen Nichts Neues
in German in 1929, and sold more than a million copies the first year. The
English translation, published the same year, was just as successful. The book
was subsequently translated into 12 languages and made into a movie in 1930.
Unsurprisingly, Remarque’s books were banned in Germany in the 1930s, and
publicly burned in 1933.
Remarque wrote nine more novels, though none was as
successful as All Quiet. He led quite a colorful life, and died in
Switzerland in 1970 from an aneurysm.
All Quiet on the Western Front gives us a peek inside
the minds of those who actually fight. Warfare may have changed a lot since
1918, but I imagine those fighting still go through most of the emotions and
experiences found in this novel. All Quiet was more than worth the read.
I felt sensitized and educated rather than depressed, and would definitely
recommend it.
4 comments
I read this for the first time in 2012. I used your second quote in my review too. It was quite a book. I don't like war books when they're about armies and tactics and battles, but I do like books about how war effects people, whether civilians or soldiers.
ReplyDeleteDear Kathy - I have never read this book but your sensitive review makes me think it would be an excellent one to pick up. War is always so sad but in reality we know that it has gone on forever. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteCheryl--I don't like any book that is too sad or too graphic, so while this one was sad because of the topic, it wasn't too overwhelmingly so. I didn't remember that you used that quote--once again, great minds think alike!
ReplyDeleteDebbie--I think this is a good book to read to remind ourselves of the real cost of all those ongoing wars.
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