Analysis Of Erich Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

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All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque is an alienating story about a man named Paul and a few of his classmates whose world turned upside down when they get sent off to war. Paul said "There is a distance, a veil between us." (Remarque, 160) Feeling like there is a barrier between them, and life outside the war. Paul and his classmates go through hardships that no one should face, but they face them as teenagers. They do not have time to enjoy life before the destruction of war is placed on their shoulders. German youth is being sent to die in this terrible war. The war itself is as if it was a metaphor for alienation amongst the men. Separating them from other men and women, and putting them in the heat of this war. They go from being kids to soldiers of war, and they know nothing different.
Paul goes from being a classmate to a soldier in what seems to be an overnight transition as well as his friends do. Alongside Paul, he is joined by a few of his fellow classmates. Leer, Müller, Kropp, and he are all only 19 years old. In the beginning of this book, Paul starts to think about his comrades his own age and how they are torn apart from the outside world because they do not know what they are fighting
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He thinks she is the most beautiful thing, and he and Kropp try to compete with the man next to her in realization that they really cannot. He realizes not at this moment, but a moment similar, that he is also cut off from love. He tries to find love, but cannot because he is torn away from it again. “And if I press ever deeper into the arms that embrace me, perhaps a miracle may happen… After a time we find ourselves reassembled again.” (Remarque, 150) This perfectly resembles how difficult it would be to be away at war and not have anyone. Paul was looking around him for that person he could love, and in trying to find that he loses what little hope he had left on finding