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 a moving read November 22, 2008
I read this in hight school, and yes it was an assignment,(fortunately my literature always made us think about the books we read instead of gripe about them in ignorance) but I loved it. Basically, it pulls no punches, sugarcoats nothing. The author is telling it like he knows it from being there - war is hell, no matter what it's fought for, no matter whose side you're on. Reading a book from the point of a German fighter and seeing how they were all just lost kids too brings it home. This is not Tolkien (no offense to a great author, of course); when we make war, we're fighting against other humans, not some scary enemy who has no feelings and is pure evil.
Overall the writing was captivating and the story is still relevant. It really opens your mind if you let it. All leaders should read it before considering such a grave undertaking as war.
 "A line, a short line, trudges off into the morning." November 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I first read this book when I was quite young. Too young, I think, to understand it. What I took away with me then was the anti-war message and a lingering sense of the grim awfulness of the Front. Sort of, at least-- I'm pretty sure that I didn't know what a Front was besides some general sense of the Front Line. I certainly wasn't really old enough to feel the poignancy of my own mortality-- death at that age was restricted to grandfathers and other people. I honestly think that I felt more for the dying horses than for the dying men.
Reading it now as I approach middle age, this feels like a good place to appreciate the book more. I say "appreciate", since I am not sure that anyone who hasn't been in a battle situation can claim understanding. The doomed and fatal youth of Paul, Haie and Albert mean something to me now. Boys that age shouldn't die on the battlefield. If you have a decent sense of teenagers and young adults and then try to imagine them in these situations which required such patience and bravery-- it makes the casual reader feel small. And the dying horses still upset me, but I guess that's hard-wired into my personality.
All Quiet on the Western Front is possibly the most influential modern novel of war. Its repeated message of the patterns of boredom and casual violence find its echoes through later books and film. It finds its modern heirs in films like Jarhead. It isn't a terribly complex book; many plot points feel obvious. It tends to be worth celebrating more for the honesty (raw) of its story than for the craft and distance of the writer.
Recommended, particularly to those with an interest in WWI or the military novel.
A Great Work October 11, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am a soldier with the US Army who has been deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom twice and Operation Enduring Freedom once. And yes I have lost some close friends to these wars.
I must say this is one of my favorite books on war that I have read next to the Red Badge of Courage. Yes soldiers are opened minded, I do know that this book focuses on the darker side of War and is considered an Anti-War Novel. I do not want to go into specific details of the book; it is something you should experience for yourself.
I will say that it is interesting how this is the German Army in World War I and yet there are many similarities of things that I have gone through that are almost 100 years later in the American Army. These are the same trials and tribulations that a soldier is put through no matter what time period you are in, the interpersonal relationships where the people around you become your family and the tragedy that you experience.
And the fear of being in combat and how after awhile you become numb from it.
"This does not mean that you are war mongers. On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato that wisest of all philosophers, 'Only the dead have seen the end of war." General Douglas MacArthur
Murder on the Western Front September 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
'All Quiet on the Western Front' is Remarque's timeless tale of war during WWI. It is trite to refer to it as an 'anti-war' story. It is all of that and much more. It's a story of youth, patriotism, naivete and brutal death in the mud of German trenches. It's a tale of bloody assaults, destructive retreats and the story of brave men facing impenetrable walls of bullets and steel. It is told from the German pespective but the story could have been told, with equal impact, from the British, French or Russian perspective. Their experiences, despite differences in nationalities, was almost exactly the same--filth, fear, desperation, wounds and death.
To what end? Remarque's answer is simple--none. It's all for nothing. All the heroism, cowardice, greed and sacrifice are, ultimately, for exactly nothing. Boys don't come home to their parents or women. They are built into the walls of trenches or their bloated corpses float in the watery mud of shell craters. In the end, they all--German and Allies--smell the same and the maggots are the only ones to benefit.
Of all the poignant scenes, the one I like best is when the young German soldier, seeking shelter during an enemy counterattack, dives into an open crypt. A French soldier dives in after him with his bayonet. There is a struggle and the Frenchman is killed. Now the young German must live face to face with his guilt. He goes through his victim's wallet and finds pictures of his wife and children and loving letters from his wife, praying that he will return to her safe. The German grieves over the horror of his act.
There is a day of quiet. The war seems far away. A butterfly lights on a flower growing in the muck. The young soldier's hand reaches out to touch it. The sniper takes careful aim...
Not too remarkably, Hitler on coming to power, exiled Remarque. Hitler gloried in the winnowing process of war, regarding the culling the 'unfit' in favor of the most fit as Darwinian progress.
Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico
 Not in English September 12, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I received All Quiet In The Western Front but found that the
CD was not recorded in English.
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