This Is Where I Belong

Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is beautiful, moving, and appalling, setting forth so clearly and cogently so many awful truths about war, patriotism, youth, maturity, human nature, love, and life. It is as apt today as it was when it was written, and despite being set in the First World War applies to any war fought before or after.

Remarque's purpose: "To give an account of a generation destroyed by the war." If not directly maiming and killing young soldiers, war--no adventure--severs their psychological connections to life, turning them into kill or be killed animals and abandoned children who are also old men. The real enemy is not the French (or any country) but death and war itself, as well, perhaps, as the "morally bankrupt" authority figures (politicians, teachers, preachers, parents, and newspapers) who should know better but who mismanage everything so as to let war happen and then brainwash or browbeat innocent young men full of life into entering the war. The truth of war, Paul says, is found in military hospitals, in which are found examples of every possible way to harm a human body, and which render pointless all human thoughts, words, and deeds.

The novel begins in medias res with the first person narrator Paul Baumer telling in present tense how he and his young-old veteran friends in Company B are ecstatic because their company of 150 men was just unexpectedly attacked and lost 70 men, so that the food and tobacco that had been ordered for 150 will now go to only 80, so they will finally get enough to eat. "Because of that, everything is new and full of life, the red poppies, the good food, the cigarettes, the summer breeze." They then visit one of their friends who is dying from an infected wound. "It's still him, but it isn't really him anymore. His image has faded, become blurred, like a photographic plate that has had too many copies made from it. Even his voice sounds like ashes." Another friend really wants to get the dying guy's boots, and this is perfectly natural. In the second chapter Paul flashbacks to how the boys were persuaded to volunteer by their schoolmaster (a man they now scorn), and how they were bullied through basic training by a sadistic drill corporal till they'd become hard and suspicious.

Through Paul, Remarque vividly depicts trench warfare: latrines, rations, and cigarettes; hunger and thirst; "corpse rats" and lice; dysentery, influenza, and typhus; barbed wire, trenches, dugouts, and craters; revolvers, rifles, machine guns, tracer bullets, bayonets, trench spades, flame throwers, trench mortars, rockets, shells, daisy cutters, shrapnel, hand grenades, and gas; observation balloons, airplanes, trucks, trains, and tanks; continuous fire, defensive fire, and curtain fire; attacks and counter-attacks back and forth across the lunar no-man's land; shattered bones, fragments of flesh, decapitations, disembowelings, torn off faces, blown off limbs, bodies blown out of uniforms and into trees, blue-faced gas corpses, and hissing and belching corpses. All of that becomes more and more hellish as the war drags on and the German supplies and troops dwindle.

Paul has a poet's mind for metaphor. Sitting in their dugout in the trenches is like "Sitting in our own grave waiting to be buried," or "as if we were sitting inside a massive echoing metal boiler that is being pounded on every side." Paul and his friends watch fountains of mud and iron rising up all around them, and mist rising up from the shell holes "like ghostly secrets." He says, "No man's land is outside us and inside us." And "Our hands are earth, our bodies mud, and our eyes puddles of rain." Paul's memories from before the war are dangerous, because to dwell in their lost quietness would render him unable to deal with the reality of the present moment at the front. "We are dead. Our memories come to haunt us. We have been consumed by the fires of reality." Here and there he utters brief lyrical and poignant descriptions: "The wind plays with our hair, and with our words and our thoughts." And "Days are like angels in blue and gold, untouchable."

The only good thing about the war (and it's a very sad good thing) is the bonding it forges between Paul and his friends, comrades in arms. At one point Paul and his mentor Kat are eating a goose they've organized, and Paul feels that "We are brothers… two tiny sparks of life; outside there is just the night, and all around us, death." When he gets two weeks of leave, he is painfully uncomfortable at home, feeling no point of contact with his pre-war self or with his family members or former teachers, etc., because they have not the remotest conception of the front. When he returns to his friends at the front he thinks a devastating truth: "This is where I belong."

This is Brian Murdoch's 1994 translation, not A. W. Wheen's 1929 one. Here is a brief comparison:

Murdoch: "The front is a cage, and you have to wait nervously in it for whatever will happen to you."

Wheen: "The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen."

Tom Lawrence reads Murdoch's translation so well--his youthful, British voice, perfect clarity and pacing, and sensitive and sad manner all so appealing--that I found it fine.

People who are fascinated by vivid accounts of the horror of war, or who are interested in World War I as seen from the German point of view, or who like well-written, beautiful, awful, and sad books should read All Quiet on the Western Front.

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A classic, and rightfully so.

Having finally read this book while being absolutely immersed in all manner of WWI books and documentaries during the Covid-19 pandemic, I have to say of everything I've read and watched, this stuck with me the most. This felt like being a fly on the walls of the trenches.

1 person found this helpful

“When will they ever learn?”

Every hawk, war-monger, every politician for that matter, every “nationalist”, every “patriot” should listen to this book. Every historian who teaches war history or writes about wars, every fan of war stories should listen to this book. In fact, every human should listen to this book. I must have read it when I was a pre-teen or in my early teens, and I’m sure it made an impression on me then (the early 1960s). The book is so sad, so touching, so forthright, and depicts a reality that few people consider when they talk about “the battle of” wherever. The book is beautifully written, the translation here is far better than the original, standard, translation (I compared some selections, and looked at the German, too), even if sometimes the original might be a more literate translation of the German. But the literate translation often is not as realistic or comprehensible. The reader does the perfect job for this heartbreaking narration.

The horror of war uncensored.

This book moved me immensely. It replaced the arbitrary conceptual soldier I had previously imagined and revealed the human being underneath.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Last week for my sister’s and my middle school studies on WW1, we listened to “All Quiet on the Western Front”. It was very shocking to hear some of the most unimaginable things that happened at the front, and it gave me a horrifying perspective on war. The most amazing part was that this book was about a German soldier, but when you listen to the book the character could be anyone of the allies. They are all just boys doing the governments bidding.
The book was very graphic, almost impossible to comprehend some of the horrors.
Overall it was a very good book and very eye opening. At the end of the book when the narrator says “thank you for listening” you feel very shocked because the narrator was so convincing you think that you are actually listening to the main character “Paul” and you forget that it’s just an actor reading!

The lost generation

This book describes an experience of a young german soldier in WW1, through numerous really vivid and common situations which could belong to any other private soldier at that war.

An amazing roller coaster

This is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read or listened to by far. The story is amazing and heart breaking, while staying funny at times, and overall a very deep read. Would highly recommend this book to ANYONE, no matter your preferences l. This book truly puts war in a new perspective, one that everyone should understand

Listened to this driving from Moab to Colorado Spr

Remarque captures the meaningless of WW1 and the difference between civilian and combatant life expertly.
The narrator is doing a great job and it has been a pleasure to listen to this book.

A must read/listen for everyone

I don't think any positive words would fit this book. The performance is good and it is well written, but the subject matter itself so tears at your soul that it is hard to consider those.

It is important that you complete this. While there are many stories of the first world war, this is one of the best. Consider while you listen that this is not just this story but that the war was full of stories like this, all over the front and on both sides.

Amazing to hear

I really sympathized with the storyteller. His story was touching and really got me into his head and heart. Not a happy book to say the least, but still wonderful