All Quiet on the western front :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  All Quiet on the Western Front is narrated by Paul Baumer. He is a young man of nineteen who fights in the German army on the French front in World War I. Unlike most during that time period, Paul and several of his friends and classmates from school joined the army voluntarily. They joined after listening to nationalistic speeches told to them by their schoolmaster, Kantorek   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  But after experiencing ten weeks of atrocious basic training at the hands of the small-minded, vindictive Corporal Himmelstoss and the inconceivable cruelty of life on the front lines. Paul and his comrades realize that the ideals that made them enlist are merely empty clichà ©s. They no longer believe that war is magnificent or respectable, and they live in unceasing physical terror that each day that goes may be their last. When Paul’s company receives a short reprieve after two weeks of fighting at the front lines, only eighty men of the original 150-man company return from the front. The cook , Ginger, doesn’t want to give the survivors the rations that were meant for the dead men He insists that he is only allowed to distribute single rations and that the dead soldiers’ rations will simply have to go to waste but eventually gives in.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Paul and his friends visit Franz Kemmerich, a former classmate who has recently had a leg removed after contracting gangrene. Kemmerich is in the process of dying, and Mà ¼ller, another former classmate, wants Kemmerich’s yellow boots for himself. Paul doesn’t consider Mà ¼ller insensitive because like the other soldiers, Mà ¼ller simply realizes sensibly that Kemmerich is no longer in need of his boots. Not very long after this meeting, Paul returns to Kemmerich’s bedside just as he is about to die. At Kemmerich’s request, Paul takes his boots to Mà ¼ller.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Twenty-five younger men arrive as reinforcements. Paul believes Kat is the most resourceful soldier he knows, always able to scrounge up food. The men learn Himmelstoss is coming up to the front. Tjaden especially hates the Corporal because of his cruel punishment for Tjaden's bed-wetting problem. For vengeance, Paul and his friends ambushed and beat Himmelstoss before they left for the front. The soldiers are sent to put up barbed wire at the front. At night, during an artillery bombardment, the soldier dive for cover. The men set up the wire. Soon the artillery attacks them. Several men are hit, as well as horses.