Beautiful, Horrific and Stunning

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	• All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque Ballantine Books, 1987 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 449 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Beautiful, Horrific and Stunning

When I picked up this novel, I was prepared for the violent and realistic portrayal of WWI. What surprised me about the novel were the poetic moments of Paul's perception of war. There are many beautiful and profound passages, which artistically offset the violent descriptions of the war. For years, I considered "The Killer Angels" to be the best war novel that I had read, but I think that "All Quiet..." is a bit better. Highly recommended.

What is it good for?

The first classic I have read in a while. As great as advertised ("The GREATEST WAR NOVEL of ALL TIME") on the cover.

Devastating in its matter-of-fact dealing with the suffering of dog soldiers in the Great War, but perhaps most powerful in its occasional humor.

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MUST READ

This book gives you an outlook on the lives of soldiers involved in brutal warfare. You will definitely have insight on how difficult it is to be a soldier. You are probably never the same person again. The effects that take place in war are permanent. It is not an easy life and you would have to be resilient in order to survive. Remarque does an excellent job in painting a picture that will not leave your mind for years to come.

All is Not Quiet

All Quiet on the Western Front vividly and movingly describes the experiences of the "Lost Generation." Those young men who came of age during the First World War, who fought and died in a conflict which set the standards of horror and destruction in the 20th century. This book should be read by all who seek to understand.

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Like A Kick To The Groin

In my own way, I'm an academic. I don't write "reviews," really -- I write essays. It's my training.

But I don't have much analysis for All Quiet on the Western Front. This novel is a swift kick to the genitalia -- it is hard, brutal and painful, and you'll feel it for a while.

It is about the every-man soldier fighting through the trenches of WWI. It is also about his internal life, and how everything becomes exhausted in the face of such horrors; beauty is bleached out of him like a newspaper in the sun. Actual death, it turns out, is only one of a number of war's atrocities.

I always have, and always will support certain military actions -- I continue to believe that force is justified at times (for instance, WWII). That said, this novel makes me hate war, and tremble for those condemned to fight it. It makes war into the sort of last resort that it should have been all along.

I cannot recommend this novel highly enough. At worst, an all-time classic, and very possibly a life-changer. Five stars.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--if only he can come out of the war alive.
"The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first trank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

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