Savji
Nazir Savji
Mrs. McLean
ENG 4U
28 July 2003
All Tumultuous on the Beast Ridden Front
The faces of soldiers reveal the horror of war more readily than the words of their commanders. In the creases and furrows of a battle weary man, lie the harsh truths of the front: death, destruction, and disease. Their hollow eyes are trained to find cover from bullets, their ears are tuned to the screams of shellfire, and their minds are bent on evading death. In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, the beast runs rampant throughout the novel flaunting various characteristics. Firstly, all characters in the novel exemplify nefarious characteristics concordant with the beast. Furthermore, Remarque delineates the psychological impact of war on soldiers as a crippling overload of panic and despair. Lastly, the emotional disconnection that soldiers are obliged to make during the war from their feelings leaves a detrimental and baleful imprint on them. Thus, the beast and its traits are ubiquitous all through the novel.
First off, the characters are one of the chief sources of the beast in the novel. Their execrable behaviour epitomizes the characteristics of iniquitousness. For example, the obtuse sergeant-cook, Ginger, prepares enough rations for 150 men, because that is the number of men in the Second Company. Unfortunately for the servicemen, after 70 soldiers are killed, Ginger adamantly refuses to give the division more than their single ration and hastily decides that “Eighty men can’t have what is meant for a hundred and fifty” (Remarque 5). Later, when an indignant lieutenant enjoins the sergeant-cook to distribute all the food, Ginger spits out “You be hanged!” (Remarque 6). From this assertion, one can discern Ginger’s malcontent and that he does not want to distribute supplementary food. This illustrates his wickedness by trying to withhold this toothsome nourishment from enervated mercenaries. Moreover, Kantorek, a pompous, ignorant, authoritarian schoolmaster in Paul's high school during the years before the war, depicts his malevolence throughout the novel. Kantorek's physical description groups him with pre-modern evil characters. The fierce and bombast Kantorek is a small man described as "energetic and uncompromising" (Remarque 10), characteristics that recall the worried Caesar's remarks about Cassius in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. / He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous" (I.ii.194–195). In fact, Kantorek’s evil is portrayed when he places intense pressure on Paul and his classmates to fulfill their "patriotic duty" by enlisting in the army. “During drill-time Kantorek gave us long lectures until the whole of our class went, under his shepherding, to the District Commandant and volunteered. I can see him now, as he used to glare though his spectacles and say in a moving voice: ‘Won’t you join up, Comrades?’” (Remarque 11). Kantorek knowingly persuades high school students of age eighteen, which is barely legal age, into a plight where they will most likely be slain. He fills their heads with passionate rhetoric about duty and glory that they will most likely never experience. Only a fiendish character could accomplish something so diabolical. Last of all, Corporal Himmelstoss, a non-commissioned training officer known as the “Terror of Klosterberg” (Remarque 10), is extremely brutal and cruel in his treatment of the soldiers. This petty, power-hungry little man torments Paul and his friends during their training. He coerces them to do numerous perilous and ridiculous chores repeatedly simply because he enjoys bullying them.
