Whatever your feelings about current international events, people and acts, I believe it is important to understand and to feel war not from a patriotic or nationalistic perspective, but from its corporeal view. Knowing war not as propaganda or good defeating evil or even self-protection means knowing war as an ugly, vicious, bloody, cruel monster that, unleashed and uncensored, reveals itself to be little more than a series of vengeful acts that inflict pain and suffering on all participants and unwilling or innocent others.

The novel is peculiarly well-suited to exploring war on a personal level. Many have been written including the insanely comical Catch-22 and the brutish The Naked and the Dead. But in my opinion All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, originally published in Germany in 1929, is THE one war book that should, in my opinion, be read by everyone. Its relevance and viewpoint are timeless and its language exquisite. Among its many virtues is the fact that Remarque feels no need to use profanity, and his refusal to succumb to that easy crutch imbues this novel with unusual literary power.

Remarque fought in World War I, and his experiences as a German trench soldier frame the brute ugliness of battle through its effect on individuals with excruciating realism. This triangle of combat, comradeship and dreams is extraordinarily well written, and it leaves the impression that war at the micro level is horrible, not honorable.

Fourteen days before the story opens, a group of soldiers, 150 men strong, went to the front. We see them as they return, now only 80 men. It is good for the returnees. Double rations of food and tobacco, real sleep and letters await. It is, as the narrator, Paul Bäumer a young man of nineteen, relates, “wonderfully carefree.” War is not discussed, but in the first hint of Paul’s conflict between his natural compassion and the necessary actions he must take to ensure his survival, he reflects on their differences from the newest recruits and the reason for them.

But as he relates, aside from this break their lives are no longer boyish, no longer carefree. Bäumer and his friends, former schoolmates and now comrades Kropp, Müller and Leer and their friends Tjaden, Haie, Detering, having been sold the rousing patriotism of war by their schoolteacher, Kantorek, are now experienced soldiers who realize that the ideals espoused by their elders have no validity in their world: For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress—to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on the, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a manlier wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and cleverness . . . While they taught that one’s duty to country was the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger . . . we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

For them, principles have become platitudes, empty and deceitful. Remarque’s feelings about war—and this novel is very much an anti-war statement—and its consequences are framed as experiences and characters even in minor ones such Corporal Himmelstoss, a former postal worker who became their training camp commander, whose vicious tortures of them become his own torture when he is transferred to their unit and later the front. It is an reminder that even those of us who are normally nonviolent have a chance given the ugly freedom of war to turn into monsters.

What is most disturbing is the casualness of the violence—a disturbingly vivid description of stacked coffins awaiting their casualties; a soldier, overcome by claustrophobia, who loses control and must be forcefully subdued. But two experiences stood out for me. When late in the story Paul is issued a pass to return home for a visit, he is  uneasy in being around what now seems an abnormal life. The normal things—cyclists, the subway, shops—tear at him, ripping the emotion he has held inside for so long. But only for a moment. His “soldierly” solidity returns, and he finds himself keeping his emotional distance, lying to his parents to avoid talking about his experiences. The youth that was Paul is gone. He hasn’t been able to mourn his slowly decreasing circle of comrades yet he cannot conceive of a world without war. Simply put, he is losing his humanness in his efforts to survive.

Still, there are times when he feels ripped by emotion. Perhaps the most dramatic is when a body falls upon him in a shell-hole, Paul “make[s] no decision,” but stabs frantically. The man collapses, but does not die. Instead, he gurgles and gasps for breath while Paul, in the farthest corner, listens, waiting for the next shelling attack and for the man to die: These hours. . . . The gurgling starts again—but how slowly a man dies! For this I know—he cannot be saved . . .  This is the first time I have killed with my hands, whom I can see close at hand, whose death is my doing . . . But every gasp lays my heart bare. This dying man has time with him, he has an invisible dagger with which he stabs me: Time and my thoughts.

Paul’s suffering is at least equal to that of the man he killed, and his thoughts go to making him comfortable (even after it is a useless gesture), to the man’s wife and the letters she will still be receiving. He even wishes for the gurgling sound again to just stop the silence: I speak to him and say to him: Comrade, I did not want to kill you . . . Why do they never tell us that you are just poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

All Quiet on the Western Front takes the routines of life in wartime—donning gas masks, dodging shells, killing rats, feasting on stolen geese, bayoneting an enemy, trading food for sex, smoking, exhaustion, filth, boredom—and makes them seem normal, even monotonous, as if this was an ordinary way of living for awhile. But the characters never lose the feeling that the routine senselessness of their existence prevents them from ever returning to their previous lives. It is that sense of futility that drives Tjaden to ask, “Then what exactly is war for?”

“’I think it is more a kind of fever,’” says Albert. ‘No one in particular wants it, and then all at once there it is. We didn’t want the war, the others say the same thing—and yet half the world is in it all the same.’”

I would argue that it is the same now. No one really wanted the war in Iraq, but we are in it just the same. Since we are there, wouldn’t it behoove us rather than to just wave a flag not to forget, as Remarque put it, that war is “shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks—shattering, starvation, death . . . dysentery, influenza, typhus—murder, burning, death . . . trenches, hospitals, the common grave—there are no other possibilities.” Because whether you oppose, support or are neutral about the war is less important than the fact that this book will give you a feel for what the real cost of it is.
 
Note: A check on ABE (http://www.abebooks.com/) shows 1,142 copies for sale,  running from $1 to $2,500. AddALL (http://used.addall.com/) currently has 731 titles ranging from $0.02 to $3500.


Since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to almost anyone who will listen. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats and nearly 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it