All Quiet on the Western Front Essay: Effective Criticism of War :: All Quiet on the Western Front Essays

All Quiet on the Western Front:   Effective Criticism of War  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     All Quiet on the Western Front was a sad tale of Paul Bà ¤umer, a lad just entering adulthood, who fought in a war that he did not even believe in. Erich Maria Remarque wrote this novel to show the war through the eyes of Paul, who saw everything that happened; every death, every horror, and all the bloodshed. Remarque denounced war by showing how it destroys human lives and, more   importantly, how it devours the human soul. World War I was pointless to the young soldiers who did not even seem to know why a war was being waged. Paul showed how war affected an entire generation, of people, which he represented through Paul. Altogether, All Quiet on   the Western Front was a powerful and moving criticism of the war.    Every character in the novel was a tragic character and a sad loss in the war. This includes Paul, whose eyes Remarque used to show the atrocities of war to the world. All the events were shown without heroism, or at least without what was officially determined to be heroic by the people. Paul watched people die and killed people, something that tore him apart emotionally, but for which he would be considered a hero for. "We reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals" (56). The humanity was taken away from these soldiers, a horrible and mournful thing, and completely unwarranted. These were students like Paul, farmers like Detering, and other ordinary men who were enlisted and taken to the front, not really knowing what they were fighting for, stripped of even their humanity. At one point Paul even said "[i]n many ways we are treated quite like men" (91). However, they were men, even though they were made to feel like animals. They were still men. Remarque effectively used Paul's experiences to illustrate his criticism of World War I, showing the destruction to humanity and human emotion. There was already the mention of the soldiers becoming animals when at the front. He described this further: "The blast of the hand-grenades impinges powerfully on our arms and legs; crouching like cats we run on, overwhelmed by this wave that bears us along, that fills us with ferocity, turns us into thugs,