Revised Literary Essay

Katie Hines

9/25/2012

Block 4

Essay Test All Quiet on the Western Front

Question: How have the soldiers lost their civilization and become animals?

            Throughout the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul and the other soldiers are losing touch with civilization and their ethics, becoming barbaric hunters, sometimes being the kill. The pain and struggle of war begins to tear down the fragile grip on humanity the soldiers once had, leaving them stripped of all emotion. Compassion and sympathy must not exist in the men’s heart; they cannot afford to think of such things. Many soldiers are able to cut off their heart all too easily, but for others, it is a constant battle harder than any war.

            It is easy to see how quickly the emotions and humanity begin to deteriorate through the book, and the soldiers begin to be seen as animals, things-not human beings with feelings. They “…have become wild beasts…it is not men that we fling our bombs.” (113) Paul cannot allow himself to consider the fact that the enemy may not be his enemy. “The figure opposite me moves. I shrink together and involuntarily look at it.” (218) The dying human is dehumanized and has become nothing more than an it. Rather than people, individuals, the enemy is a whole, a thing. The soldiers do not see people, they see their prey-and it is time for the hunt.

             Civilization begins to become as foreign to Paul and his comrades as a palace would be to a civilian. When Paul receives a clean bed at the hospital because he is wounded, he feels “…like a pig. Must I get in there?” (246) He feels as though he is nothing more than filth, like he is unworthy. He has become an animal, his actions of those who are a predator.  Although Paul claims that “in many ways we are treated quite like men” (91), the soldiers are man no longer. They are beasts. They are used to killing on the gruesome front, sleeping outside, and eating sawdust like livestock, however they are no longer able to function in society and sleep in a clean bed.

             Through this entire struggle, the one soldier who does not completely transform into a monster is Paul. He desperately attempts to see killing as the others do, as if it means nothing. He struggles internally to try and treat the Russian prisoners as things, but Paul is unable. He seems to switch back and forth, trying his hardest to be a hunter but realizing he is truly a vegetarian. “I go give them out to the Russians,” (198); Paul gives the cakes his own mother made him to the prisoners. It is a small act of kindness, a small difference, but it is the difference that makes the difference. He pities them and compares them to “sick storks” (192), innocent creatures, dead before they die. After Paul kills the French man, however, he claims “…war is war.” (229) He suddenly changes drastically to the robotic man he desires to become, rather than the passionate, sympathetic boy Paul truly is. Paul is a man, with feelings, with a heart-and he knows that simply because men are branded as an enemy and on the other side does not mean they do not feel the same and hurt the same.

             Human nature and civilization are discouraged as the book progresses, and the compassion the soldiers previously possessed is forgotten. If they make it out alive, there is hardly a chance they will truly live. The soldiers are already dead; their hearts are gone. All that is left is a deep hatred for enemies who they have never even met. They will be unable to function in a normal society, or even in a normal home. They have forgotten how to feel, how to love, how to be sympathetic-all emotions a human should have. Paul has all of these traits, although he desperately tries to rid himself of them in combat. The soldiers, including Paul, are left with a gaping hole in their hearts that cannot be filled. They must go through the remainder of their lives putting up a façade, pretending that everything is just fine-but it is not, and never will be. These animalistic traits and horrors will haunt these beasts, once boys, eternally.