All Quiet on the Western Front

In his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, author Erich Remarque gives each chapter a special focus on a specific aspect of World War 1. For example, chapter 6 focuses on combat and trench warfare, and chapter 10 focuses on life at the hospital, frequent death, and painful injuries. The book is written as a first-person past tense narrative, with frequent flashbacks to events that happened prior. This jumping around enhances the story, as Remarque is able to include relevant pieces of information and back story, while excluding the redundancy of writing about days that are very similar to each other.

Of particular interest to me was Remarque's use of dialogue to explain his beliefs. In chapter 3, he has Stanislaus Katczinsky compare man to beast to explain the army and Himmelstoss's behavior. Since he was a veteran of World War 1 himself, Remarque could speak knowledgeably about the army, and Kat was the best character to relay his opinions through due to his age and experience over Paul and his classmates.

Also striking, to me, was the hypocrisy and nationalistic fervor present in the German populace. Schoolmaster Kantorek embodies both of these traits, as he urged all of his students to enlist in the army, even the unwilling Joseph Behm, but did not volunteer himself. While Paul is on leave in chapter 7, he encounters more of this fervor from a school head-master, who is convinced that he knows more about the war than Paul.