Book Review: All Quiet on the Western Front

Continuing my unofficial tour of all the books you read in high school and never entertained a thought about again, I come to All Quiet on the Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque’s archaic, turn-of-the-century German prose, weirded out teenage reading levels America-wide and was rivaled only by Hemingway’s casual, complacent-shrug narration about life-changing events. All this, this talk of mess-tins and pining away for beans cooked in fat and French girls across the river. Remarque, himself a vertaran has brought the dirt and danger of an entirely-removed world — the panorama of the World War I battlefield — to affluent, cloistered populations since 1929.

Inside, the pulled quotes of reviews of the book proclaim it as the greatest war novel of all time. After reading Starship Troopers, an acclaimed war novel in its own right, and a slew of books from the Halo series, coming back to an “ordinary” novel about war, set in the past, seemed anti-climactic: a very siloed narrative in the first person offering starkly-worded battlefield violence.

For a book about war there’s scant fighting being fought, at least by Bäumer’s side. The bulk of the text has him playing connect-the-dots from hole to hole while on the receiving end of bombing raids, foraging for food, enduring periodic stays at hospitals, and launching into fraternal back-and-forths with company buddies (which include antagonizing the blowhardish Corporal Himmelstoss). When Bäumer actually does manage to kill someone it’s framed as a inglorious accident that left Bäumer swaddled in remorse.

The best parts of Western Front are seen in Bäumer’s descriptions during battle and musing during his downtime. There’s not much exploration of politics or macro-military strategy; time is wasted away as Bäumer and co. make agonized marches into battlefields and dodge death to get to the next meal (the two events are humorously fused when Bäumer and troops refuse to abandon a house meal and piano music while being shot at and bombed).

After one particular bombing, Bäumer reminisces and we see the great meat of Remarque’s prose on display.

We could never regain the old intimacy with those scenes. It was not any recognition of their beauty and their significance that attracted us, but the communion, the feeling of a comradeship with the things and events of our existence, which cut us off and made the world of our parents a thing incomprehensible to us–for then we surrendered ourselves to events and were lost in them, and the least little thing was enough to carry us down the stream of eternity. Perhaps it was only the privilege of our youth, but as yet we recognised no limits and saw nowhere an end. We had that thrill of expectation in the blood which united us with the course of our days.

To-day we would pass through the scenes of our youth like travellers. We are burnt up by hard facts; like tradesmen we understand distinctions, and like butchers, necessities. We are no longer untroubled–we are indifferent. We might exist there; but should we really live there?

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial–I believe we are lost.

You can read All Quiet on the Western Front for free here.