Lost Generation

¶ … Quiet on the Western Front All Quiet on the Western Front is a book written by Erich Maria Remarkque that focuses on something other than the direct human consequences of war. It tells a lesser known story of the indirect costs that war can have on an entire generation of individuals. In the novel, the author describes a cohort of young soldiers begin there adventure with concept of war that includes it being glorious, noble, and exciting.

However, as the war progresses, the group begins to see many of the consequences of war that begin to change their paradigm. The group of men experience personal tragedies that include injuries and deaths that occur to close associates. As the story concludes, the group is left with only one member. The book is set in Germany where a group of young men are first marketed to about joining the military. They were made to believe that there service to their country's cause would be some great escaped and adventure.

They bought into the propaganda and had no idea about the fate that they were signing themselves up for. After the group enlists they are sent to military training. The mood at the training facility is rather light and this led the young men to derive misconceptions about the state of war. In fact, it is not until the men are transfer to the actual frontlines before they begin to sense the full gravity of the situation.

There is a scene in the book in which the men are cramped in a series of trenches. Many of the other soldiers were shell-shocked, which is often referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder in today's vocabulary, because of the constant bombardment of enemy fire that the group was receiving. In these trenches, one of the men became wounded and was taken to a hospital where he encountered many other wounded soldiers.

The book describes the scene with many of the other soldiers who have had appendages amputated because they were too mangled to survive the injuries. At this point, when Kemmerich was in the hospital, Muller ask him for his boots. The boots were used as a metaphor to remind the men of the true costs of war. Paul also experiences a traumatic exchange after he kills one of the enemy soldiers.

During this exchange, he isn't able to distinguish the face of the enemy as anything other than just another human being. He tries to mitigate the psychological damage that this has inflicted by telling himself he will do something to help the victims family after the end of the war. After Paul's tour on the frontlines, he tries to explain the conditions on the frontlines. Many of the other men simply laugh at him or think that he is a coward.

This indicates the level of brainwashing that future soldiers had received; they were unable.