War's disillusionment in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front

“All Quiet on Western Front” is a book that narrates war experiences, written by Erich Maria Remarque (Goodreads, n.a.). It cites the story of young German schoolboys who have idealized war as some romanticized adventure but had to face some brutal realities when they practically stepped in. the fire of patriotism changed into the horror and sufferings of the war that they never thought would be its real face and their ultimate fate.

The story starts with Paul Baumer, 20 years traumatized by the encounter of the battlefield experiences as he and other young souls were lured to the fantasies of the war, which they later realized were not the same (Lohnes, 2019). When Kemmerich, one of his fellows, was wounded, he was not properly attended by the hospital staff who were assigned to serving the war soldiers who were hurt. They were only looking forward to emptying the beds for the new ones. Several soldiers died, in the same way, each day. The food was not enough for the soldiers and the nights were equally distressing with the sounds of bombs and shells around them. Attacks on the trench where the group of young soldiers lived have been elucidated with minute details, being gruesome enough to let the readers know how stressful it is on the battlefield after leaving the loved ones behind.