All Quiet On The Western Front

In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front, Remarque does not write the novel in the chronological order. He jumps around in order to show that war is not just one thing over and over again. Certain things stand out to the soldiers and so therefore should stand out to the reader. Each chapter has a different or more complex concept. Throughout the book, the narrator, Paul, works up a bitterness for the fighting of the war. In many chapters the soldiers have discussions on why there is even a war, who started it, and why can't it just end. They can never come up with an answer and therefore drop the subject. During more than one chapter, Paul states that his life and the life of his schoolmates and comrades in the war have just begun, but because they have just begun, all they know is war. They really don't know anything but war. Some of the older soldiers of the generation before them have wives, kids, and occupations to go back to, and the generation after them have no concept of war for they did not live through it. Another concept Remarque shows in his novel is that men become animals when in war. A man is told that certain people are his enemies and he kills without another thought like it is his first instinct and thinks about it very little in the aftermath. Remarque brings up the metaphor that soldiers are like melted down coins all stamped with the same mark and that now any individuality that the men may have had before does not matter in the eyes of their superiors. All they are is men who are willing to fight and die for their country. The very detailed imagery that Remarque writes, makes the novel almost hard to read. It is an eye opener for the people who have imagined war but have never fully experienced the horrors that go on.