All Quiet on the Western Front: War's Effect on Youth

Introduction: Youth Thrust into War

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is a gloomy yet powerful consideration of World War I, in which absurdly young soldiers were recruited to fight the battles of the powerful. The main characters are all either at the end of their teens or the beginning of their twenties. As the narrator notes in the opening chapters, these young men were just beginning to exchange their childish concerns for more adult ones. It was a time of detachment — they were no longer sufficiently attached to their parents and childhood passions to carry those into the war, nor were they yet sufficiently attached to adult concerns and ambitions to draw strength from those either. In effect, the young characters in the novel come to the war as blank slates, to be filled with all the horrors it holds.

The Psychological Toll of Combat

The effect of the war on these young minds is easily discernible from the beginning of the novel. The physical hardship of daily battle and the lack of sufficient nutrition or hygiene result in an almost excessive preoccupation with the physical. Paul, the main character and narrator, mentions that the soldiers have a far better "relationship with their intestines" than those accustomed to the conveniences of civilian life. Furthermore, the death of comrades is mourned less for its human cost than for the practical fact that food rations can now be almost doubled for those who remain.

What would horrify a normal person is taken in stride by the young men at the battlefront. There is also a clear dichotomy between the old and the young — another effect of the war. Older men are regarded almost as a type of enemy, to be distrusted. In civilian life, by contrast, parents and elders were generally respected by men as young as those sharing this story. All these effects are imposed upon the young minds by the war and form part of the cumulative ruin experienced by every character.

Paul Baumer as Narrator and Caretaker

As the narrator, Paul Baumer is the figure who holds not only the story but also the other characters together. He instills in those around him the sense of comradeship he feels with them — a bond forged and deepened by the tragic circumstances of war. This is his primary function in relation to the other characters. When new recruits arrive, Paul takes on a leadership and almost fatherly role toward them.

From the very beginning of his involvement in the war, Paul has felt an inner dichotomy between the romanticism of war he absorbed from the civilian society that raised him — the same society that hailed him and his friends as "heroes" when they marched away. The novel opens when Paul has already been fighting for two years. The only things that sustain him are his friends and his sense of belonging with them. They have developed their own culture and their own way of living, one that Paul knows would be unacceptable — and largely incomprehensible — to mainstream society, which remains entirely unaware of the horrors soldiers endure.

Having been abandoned by that society, the soldiers must depend on each other for survival. Facing constant death and horror, Paul does not feel like a hero, and neither do his friends. They feel like old men at twenty. This is perhaps the most tragic dimension of the war's devastation. Each character brings with him a story and a camaraderie that help the others — and particularly Paul — to survive. The necessity of each friend is made devastatingly clear by the fact that, once Paul's last companion dies, he too is destined for his own demise. His mental decay is followed, inevitably, by physical death.