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All Quiet on the Western Front
Group Reads - Classic (Fiction)
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All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (Classics Group Read October/November '14)
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This is a reread for me too. I'll start it tomorrow or friday
Thanks for setting up the thread, Jenny :)I will be starting in a week or so...
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I am two thirds of the way through, this has been a much quicker read than I anticipated, can't put it down!
Evelyn, a couple of years back I was sick to death of reading book after book about WW2. It hit me that I should switch to WW1. So then I went searching and searching and reading and reading both fiction and non-fiction on WW1. STILL, I didn't think of rereading All Quiet until one day a friend read it and said how great it was. I had read it about fifty years ago..... When I reread it I felt it was the best fiction book existing on the war. Of all the fiction books I had read nothing compared as favorably. (There are very good non-fiction books too, of course.) Then I wanted to go back and give less stars to other books..... It got me to reading other books by the author, although none are as good as this.
I've requested this from the library but I think it might be a while in arriving so may be November by the time I get round to it!
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It's a great read Evelyn! I remember feeling that way the last time I read it - looking forward to my re-read!
It is such a good story, but hard to read because it is so sad.
I finished this while I was away this weekend. Wow. What has stayed with me in the few days since I finished reading is the young voice of the narrator. I don't know what I feel the appropriate age is to participate in war (never?), but 19 and 20 is way too young!
Some passages that touched me to my core were:
"The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen." - showing reluctant acceptance of an unbearable situation, the maturity to accept, the innocence lost
"We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial - I believe we are lost." - heartbreaking honesty
"It shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth." - at 20, to feel that youth is history, the past, but still hopeful that one day youth will return
"They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades." - survival
"Through the years our business has been killing; - it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of this?" - good question, are we products of our environment?
And lastly "He fell in October, 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still.......All quiet on the Western Front."
Evelyn, yeah, tremendous writing. Great quotes you've mentioned.
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I forgot to pick this up while visiting my folks this past weekend, so I won't be starting until next week...
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Looking though at what I've noted down I've realized that what impressedme in this book is not the plot or the story, but the consideration of the author about life, war, joung people vs old and things like that ...
A copy has come into the library for me but I'm away until Monday so might have to re-request
I've listened to it while away. It is my fourth time of reading it, and though it doesn't hit me with the same force it did when I read it first, it always moves me. What a youth to have. Whenever I read this I wonder how this generation of men - my grandfather included - who've seen not only the First but soon after that a Second World War, managed to become fathers and grandfathers capable of loving and functioning in a world outside of the wars.
Jenny, what you point out is so very true. It is hard to imagine having lived through TWO wars and then going back and living a normal life...if you think hard about the way they must view life.
I don't think that the experience of being a soldier fighting it out, seeing his / her platoon getting wiped out one by one, longing to go back home and unable to do so, facing ideas of mortality and helplessness, missing out on things happening at home and suffocating loneliness or futility of war are feelings that only WW2 or 1 forces dealt with. All Quiet on the Western Front speaks of every war, in every age - it just happens to have been set in a 'world' war and tells the story of soldiers from the losing side. I've seen the movie, haven't yet read the book but 'Das Boot' was also similar thematically.
Noorilhuda, we are in perfect agreement here, I merely limited my statement to this generation of men because it is their eyes we see through in this particular book.
Come to think of it: the last time I visited my home town, they had a big exhibition on the broad subject of war, how it's 'techniques' developed and what it does to the ones fighting them. In some parts of the world PTSD is now a fairly well researched disorder/side affect of having lived through war and all that it entails. There were several interviews with ex-soldiers about how they felt when coming back home, being unable to shake war yet being expected to go back to functioning in their roles as fathers and sons and employees and everything else that makes a 'normal' civilian life. Those pictures of ex-soldiers now looking so misplaced and fragile in what is meant to be the comfort of their usual lives and homes stuck with me for long time.
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That's exactly what I though rereading it this time: still to have faith in the future after having seen all that ...
Just finished reading this and I think it is the saddest book I have ever read. The feeling is so strong partly because the book is so well written and the voice of the narrator is so clear and direct. Like Jenny, I wondered how anyone who goes through those sorts of experiences can return to a "normal" life. From books such as this one understands the futility of war and yet conflicts continue from WW2 to recent ones in Ukraine and Syria. Why???
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LauraT wrote: "They say History is the greatest teacher; if only we were listening..."Truer words were never spoken
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So true Laura!
I haven't started my re-read of this one yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Last time I found it extremely moving.
Noorilhuda wrote: "I don't think that the experience of being a soldier fighting it out, seeing his / her platoon getting wiped out one by one, longing to go back home and unable to do so, facing ideas of mortality a..."I agree with you, but I do think that WW1 was a particularly horrific war to go through. I loved the bits when the soldiers were trying to figure out who benefited from the war!
I finished this yesterday and found it more poignant than I expected. The sections in which he describes how the way the soldiers get through it is to suppress their own humanity I thought especially moving.
I had seen the film of this (which is also excellent if any of you are interested), but never read it before as I was worried that the descriptions of the front would be too hard for me to take. While I don't think that Remarque skimped on any of that, I was pleasantly surprised to find this not too hard to take after all.
I read my dad's 1930 edition which was translated by A.W. Green. For those of you who read it in English, who did your translation?
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My husband, who loves History, told me once that People, rulers, when entering in WWI thoght that it would have been a war like the others in the past. But it chaged completely: for the first times almost no "great Battles" like Napoleon, months for a couple of square meters. And for the first time civilians so much involved ...
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I plan on re-reading in November - maybe I'll try a different translation if I can find it, but I remember thinking the Wheen one was fantastic.
Greg wrote: "Leslie, the one I read last time was translated by the same guy (I think you meant A W Wheen) :)I plan on re-reading in November - maybe I'll try a different translation if I can find it, but I r..."
My translation really was done by Green not Wheen... at least, that is the name printed on the title page of the book!
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No but seriously, I remember the Wheen translation being very good, but I think this time I'll look for the Green one if I can find it (to try a new one).
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The story is just as crushingly effective as I remembered. I had to brace myself for the part mid chapter 4 (view spoiler)
I'd forgotten some of Remarque's techniques though - for example, I liked the odd (view spoiler)
The narrator is very angry but he has every right to be. The callousness, pettiness, and sheer bureaucracy of the war machine are chilling - (view spoiler)
The narrator's disgust with the many "Kantoreks" exhorting sacrifice while at no danger themselves reminded me of a Wilfred Owen poem, "Parable of the Old Man and the Young", which compares the war's leaders to Abraham and the sacrificed soldiers to Issac: http://emilyspoetryblog.com/2013/03/2...
Greg I've just briefly read over it but will have to come back with more time. I like your association though. Re your first spoiler: this scene and the one with the boots and the dying soldier later on get to me every time.
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Jenny, the boot scene got to me too.
Also the horror of (view spoiler) were particularly gut wrenching & real. I really like how the narrator for long stretches refers to the soldiers in mass as "we" in both of those extended scenes; Remarque manages to create a feeling of immediacy that's incredibly affecting.
One other thing I really loved - those moments where the narrator tries to recapture a lost boyhood tenderness:
(view spoiler)
I think it's these intimate moments that make the horror of war even sharper by contrast - going in the same chapter between this and (view spoiler)
This book is as powerful as I remembered - I'm predicting 5 stars.
re your spoiler, I think that was one of the saddest things in reading for me, the realization that those tender notions might not survive the war.Remarque manages to have something tender and poetic coexist with the brutality of war without the poetry ever feeling stuck on top. Which reminds me: has anyone seen Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line"? It is based on The Thin Red Line by James Jones and it sparked a bit of controversy because it is an incredibly brutal portrait of war but at the same time a celebration of the beauty of nature and life in a strange and very poetic way (some of the inner monologue of the soldiers sounds like poetry).
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And yes, I saw the movie years ago and thought it was excellect, but I haven't read the James Jones book.
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Jenny wrote: "Greg I've just briefly read over it but will have to come back with more time. I like your association though. Re your first spoiler: this scene and the one with the boots and the dying soldier lat..."This scene was tragic! And that is the sort of thing that makes me believe the WW1 was a particularly horrible war...
Greg wrote: "This is going fast - I'm in Chapter 7, page 155/295. ...
One other thing I really loved - those moments where the narrator tries to recapture a lost boyhood tenderness..."
I think those scenes are a big part of why I found this book so poignant.
@Jenny -- I haven't seen that film although it has been recommended to me before. I think I must have mentally confused it with The Thin Blue Line. I find that type of film generally pretty upsetting so tend to avoid them.
@Alannah -- I thought that this was a pretty fast read, despite the subject matter, so if you have a copy you should be able to finish it before Dec. However, we would be happy to hear your thoughts even if they do come in December rather than November!!
I saw the movie and read the book when I was a teenager, before I had any real life experience, before I had been to college, before I had been to Vietnam Nam and before I had married, had children and watched them grow up and start their own families. So I knew going in that this would be a completely different book now from the one I thought I was reading all those years ago. Now it actually means something to me. The way these young soldiers relate to each other, the grim humor, the fatalism, the filth, the noise, the way that your comrades just disappear, are all very familiar.
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The boot scene reminds me of a story I heard out of the Civil War: another war where good boots were hard to come by. Before a battle, one soldier would look at each other and say, "If you don't make it, can I have your boots?" I heard an interview with a guy who was a Marine in Falugia in Iraq. The interviewer asked the veteran how they prepared for the loss of their fellow Marines. "They were dug in, they had IED's that could take out an entire platoon. We were supposed to go house to house. We just figured we were gonna die." He said it was a shock when he got home and realized that he had not died.
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I've just started listening to this on audiobook, only the first 2 chapters so far, but it's very good.
The comments about the importance (and sometimes scarcity) of food are so true. We all complained about C rations until Thanksgiving when we got socked in in the mountains an didn't get anything for over a week. We called the most inedible meal "Beef and Shrapnel." We are when we could but we got weaker.My wife said that the first year I was home I ate everything in sight: putting the food away with appalling speed and precision.
The description of the cooking of the stolen goose was outstanding as was the discussion of the tins of bully beef that they liberated from the enemy trenches.
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I ended up listening to the whole book yesterday, I just couldn't stop, even though it was very uncomfortable and upsetting at times. I don't know who translated my version, but it was narrated by somebody called Tom Lawrence and I thought he done an excellent job. I loved what Remarque done with the book, it's fantastically written and moving, as well as really making you contemplate the pointlessness of war. I agree with Chrissie, in that I've read quite a few WW1 books and this is the best so far. I actually had to double check it was a fictional account half way through, as I thought perhaps I was mistaken about this. It's so, so good.
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Yes I thought it showed that he fought too. I guess he used his own experiences to help write the book, which made it seem all the more real. I think It's the best thing I've read fiction or non-fiction on WW1.
I don't know how he would have written what he wrote if he had not been in the trenches. The description of how he felt when he went home on liberty tells it all.
I don't know how he would have written what he wrote if he had not been in the trenches. The description of how he felt when he went home on liberty tells it all.
All About Books
Books mentioned in this topic
The Thin Red Line (other topics)All Quiet on the Western Front (other topics)
First published in 1929 All Quiet on the Western Front deals with the experiences of a generation of young German soldiers during WWI.
Some background information and notes can be found in Sparknote's Literature Study Guide.