furies's review
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
furies's review
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
furies's review
rating:
bookshelves:
classics,
good-more-than-once,
historical-fiction,
modern-euro-history,
war-literature,
would-rec
possibly one of my favorite books to come out of WWI.
i read it once, on my own, when i was in high school. later, i read it in one of my courses, women in modern europe, to examine how the crisis of masculinity was revealed in the literature of the time.
this book is brimming with it. it's quite possibly one of the best things i have ever read regarding the concept of the crisis of masculinity, and the term had yet to be coined - hell, history wasn't even close to being gendered yet. it's also a searing indictment of the elder generation who lead the boys into war, and the people who create war, versus the people that end up executing war.
but this tells the story of a young boy who goes to war and comes back different, and he's german, so a lot of preconceived notions get tossed, because in the end, you could really be reading about someone in korea, or vietnam, or god, maybe any war but WWII. there is a timelessness to the story, and the characters. the writing is...more
i read it once, on my own, when i was in high school. later, i read it in one of my courses, women in modern europe, to examine how the crisis of masculinity was revealed in the literature of the time.
this book is brimming with it. it's quite possibly one of the best things i have ever read regarding the concept of the crisis of masculinity, and the term had yet to be coined - hell, history wasn't even close to being gendered yet. it's also a searing indictment of the elder generation who lead the boys into war, and the people who create war, versus the people that end up executing war.
but this tells the story of a young boy who goes to war and comes back different, and he's german, so a lot of preconceived notions get tossed, because in the end, you could really be reading about someone in korea, or vietnam, or god, maybe any war but WWII. there is a timelessness to the story, and the characters. the writing is...more
