Reaction to All Quiet on the Western Front
...nd his fellow classmates are coerced into joining the army by their over zealous teacher Kantorek. Kantorek tells the boys that it is an honor to serve for their country and that they should be ready and willing to defend their fatherland when it is in need of their protection. Many of the boys decide to enlist, and soon after begin their training with a power hungry ex-postman named Himmelstoss. Himmelstoss goes out of his way to make life miserable for the new recruits. He torments them again later in the novel when he is reunited with them in battle, but soon realizes how horrifying the front really is and then attempts to make amends. When the boys finally do reach the front lines they realize that nothing could have trained them for what they were going to experience. They are hurled into a situation where nothing but pure animal instinct and faith in mother earth can save them. Before long, Bäumer notes, “By animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected. It is not conscious: it is far quicker, much more sure, less fallible, than consciousness. One cannot explain it… It is this other, this second sight in us, that has thrown us to the ground and saved us, without knowing how… We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers – we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals” (56). As the war continues the boys begin to die, one by one, until nothing of the original class is left, Bäumer is the last to go; he dies shortly before the War’s end. As the novel states, “He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front” (296). The boys in the story fought through starvation, injury, and the deaths of comrades, they spent years in proverbial hell for a cause they were unsure of. In the end, their anguish was all for not, they die before they ever really get to start living, many of them knowing nothing of life but war. This novel struck a nerve in me that I never knew that I had. I have done a lot of research on American military history and what life was like for them on the front lines. Although I tried in my research to be objective and open to both sides, I always managed to see the Americans as essentially good and the “enemy” as evil and barbaric. This book, however, really helped me to see that the adversary experiences the same ...