Fredrich Müller – Another classmate of Paul and Kropp (and also 19 years of age when he enlisted). He also joins the German army as a volunteer to go to the war.
Carrying his old school books with him to the battlefield, he constantly reminds himself of the importance of learning and education. ‘He even swots up on Physics formulae when there is a barrage going on’.
Kantorek – He was the schoolmaster of Paul and his friends, including Kropp, Leer, Müller, and Behm. Behaving “in a way that cost (him) nothing”, Kantorek is a strong supporter of the war and encourages Paul and other students in his class to join the war effort. Among twenty enlistees was Joseph Behm, the first of the class to die in battle. The tragic irony of this was that Behm was the only one who did not want to enter the war. Kantorek is a hypocrite, urging the young men he teaches to fight in the name of patriotism, while not voluntarily enlisting himself.
There are also many more characters in the book with whom Paul had become friends with.
Themes
-First published in 1928 (only a decade after the war), the book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.
-At the very beginning of the book Erich Maria Remarque (the author of the book) says:
“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”
The book does not focus on heroic stories of bravery, but rather gives a view of the conditions in which the soldiers find themselves.
The monotony between battles, the constant threat of artillery fire and bombardments, the struggle to find food, the lack of training of young recruits (therefore meaning less chances of survival), and the overarching role of random chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers are described in detail. The battles fought here have no names and seem to have little overall significance, except for the impending possibility of injury or death for Paul and his comrades.
-One of the major themes of the novel is the difficulty of soldiers to revert to civilian life after having experienced extreme combat situations. The young soldiers realise that unlike the older soldiers who can go back home to their families, there is nothing for them to go back to – their generation has been ruined by the war. They ask themselves the question: ‘what is the point about going back to school?’, everything they learnt at school wasn’t useful and hadn’t helped them on the front. For example, they didn’t learn how to make a fire with wet wood or light a cigarette in the wind.
Paul's own visit on leave to his home (after spending about 3 years in the army) highlights the cost of the war on a soldier’s psyche. The town has not changed since he went off to war; however, he finds that he does “not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world.” He feels disconnected from most of the townspeople. His father asks him "stupid and distressing" questions about his war experiences, not understanding “that a man cannot talk of such things.”
Paul even confronts his old teacher, Kantorek, and he finds him giving the exact same speech about going off to ‘glorious war’ to another eerily similar, idealistic class of young schoolboys.
When Kantorek asks Paul to give a word to the class about how they should go and fight for the ‘Fatherland’, Paul simply answers that he ‘can’t say anything’.
In the 1930 classic film (a faithful adaptation of the book), the most poignant and upsetting moment is when Paul makes an angry and bitter speech to Kantorek and the students that Kantorek is trying to manipulate into going to war saying:
Paul Baumer: ‘I heard you in here, reciting that same old stuff. Making more iron men, more young heroes. You still think it's beautiful and sweet to die for your country, don't you?’
...
Paul Baumer: ‘We used to think you knew. The first bombardment taught us better. It's dirty and painful to die for your country. When it comes to dying for your country, it's better not to die at all! There are millions out there dying for their countries, and what good is it?’
...
Students:’ Coward! You're a coward! Coward!’
Paul Baumer: ‘You asked me to tell them how much they're needed out there... it's easier to say it, than to watch it happen!’
...
Paul Baumer: ‘We've no use talking like this. You won't know what I mean. Only, it's been a long while since we enlisted out of this classroom. So long, I thought maybe the whole world had learned by this time. Only now they're sending babies, and they won't last a week! I shouldn't have come on leave. Up at the front you're alive or you're dead and that's all. You can't fool anybody about that very long. And up there we know we're lost and done for whether we're dead or alive. Three years we've had of it, four years! And every day a year, and every night a century! And our bodies are earth, and our thoughts are clay, and we sleep and eat with death! And we're done for because you *can't* live that way and keep anything inside you! I shouldn't have come on leave. I'll go back tomorrow. I've got four days more, but I can't stand it here! I'll go back tomorrow! I'm sorry.’
-One of the most famous scenes in the novel is when Paul volunteers to go on a patrol and kills a man for the first time in hand-to-hand combat. He watches the man die, in pain for hours. He feels remorse and asks forgiveness from the man's corpse:
‘Earlier on you were just an idea to me, a concept in my mind that called up an automatic response – it was that concept that I stabbed. It is only now that I can see that you are a human being like me. I just thought about your hand-grenades, your bayonet and your weapons – now I can see your wife, and your face, and what we have in common. Forgive me, camarade! We always realize too late... why don’t they keep on reminding us that you are all miserable wretches just like us, that your mothers worry themselves just as much as ours and that we’re all just as scared to death, and that we die the same way and feel the same pain. Forgive me! If we threw these uniforms away you could be just as much my brother as Kat and Albert. Take twenty years from my life, camarade, and get up again – take more because I don’t know what I’m going to do with the years I’ve got...’
-Remarque comments in the preface that ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war. This internal destruction can be found as early as the first chapter as Paul comments that, although all the boys are young, their youth has left them. When on leave from the front, Paul feels strongly isolated from his family and removed from daily life.
This book is overall a landmark for its vivid description of the Great War’s tragedy from a German soldier’s point of view. Remarque’s evocation of the horrors of modern warfare has lost none of its force. In the 1930 film, the final shot – a close-up of one of the character’s hand reaching out to a butterfly, quivering as a gunshot cracks and falling still in death – is an amazingly poignant image.
