All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

He looks ghastly, yellow and wan. In his face there are already the strained lines that we know so well, we have seen them now hundreds of times. They are not so much lines as marks. Under the skin the life no longer pulses, it has already pressed out the boundaries of the body. Death is working through from within. It already has command in the eyes. Here lies our comrade, Kemmerich… He it is still and yet it is not he any longer.

Continuing my literary assault on war books, I chose to read the purported greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front. I read it in a couple days and still all the while damning my inability to read faster because I wanted to soak up more and more of its goodness. I wish Remarque had written more. But therein lies the beauty of this story—its compactness. The writing is taut as hell and the short, declarative sentences that are much more matter of fact than ornate is what, to me, makes this book stand alone.

I think, like most people, I read this in high school because as I was reading, most of the scenes seemed familiar. I didn’t realize I had read it before until I was in the meat of it, but no matter—this book can be and should be read again and again. However, doing so may lead you to commit seppuku because it’s pretty grim and depressing stuff. But that would be a forgivable act because this book is worth it. If I (sorry, when I…) commit seppuku I think I will do it with this book in my hand. Wow, what a tangent. Anyway, you can tell that the content matter is of deep, deep concern to the author because he writes in such a sensitive yet sure and confident way. The emotion that he is able to evoke by using raw language, without extra details or flowery words, is amazing. It al seems so real, which I think is kinda the goal of war writing—to put a reader, who may or may not have been a soldier, in the trenches. But this book goes beyond blood and hand grenades. It has lighter moments where the comrades sneak out at night to see some French girls. They arrive at their doorstep wearing nothing but their boots because they had to swim part of the way.

What’s really great about this book is how it doesn’t look to expose how savage we become during war; rather, it looks at how war personally affects us, and leads us to consider some hard situations. For instance, the main character, Paul, has lost one of his good friends and he feels a moral obligation to write to his friend’s mother, whom he does not know, to tell her about her son. What are you supposed to write in that letter? How could you write anything at all? In another instance, Paul is behind enemy lines, inside a small crater filled with water. There is too much gunfire happening around him, so he must lie inside the crater, pretend to be dead, and wait. He decides that if anybody gets in the crater with him, he will not take any chances and go for the throat. When a feeble, though alive, body lands beside him, his first instinct is to shove the man’s mouth with dirt, but he cannot. Common humanity prevails and Paul is led to comfort this ailing man, no matter what side he be on.

The text is alive in this book. If stuff like this doesn’t move you then you should just go ahead and commit seppuku. (If there’s one thing we can conclude from this rambling of a book review it is this: you should commit seppuku whether you read this book or not.) If there’s any book campaigning against the war then I think creating poignant, realistic moments like these is the most effective way. Catch-22’s approach to showing the futility of war was humor, but this approach seemed so much more detached from the subject matter. All Quiet, on the other hand, can really draw you in. Its characters aren’t exactly memorable but there are issues they have to face—issues that are personally affecting that are unique to the war—that are incredibly moving. I don’t know how to fault this book.

I’ll end on one of my favorite passages that has real sweet imagery:

One morning two butterflies play in front of our trench. They are brimstone-butterflies, with red spots on their yellow wings. What can they be looking for here? There is not a plant nor a flower for miles. They settle on the teeth of a skull. The birds too are just as carefree, they have long since accustomed themselves to the war. Every morning larks ascend from No Man’s Land. A year ago we watched them nesting; the young ones grew up too.