The aspect of All Quiet On The Western Front that I have decided to look into is the prevailing anti-war message. Though not expressed as greatly in the film as it is in the book, the message is still clear, you can get it from reading the expressions on the characters faces, what they say, but mainly through the fact that none of the main characters survive all through the film. As noted elsewhere Paul comes close to lasting through it all, but his lonliness spells out his end by driving him to reach for the butterfly. It has been seen time and again that while extremely strong friendships may be forged between you and your comrades during warfare, what happens once one in the friendship dies is disastrous. Others in the friendship may die from depression shortly after. This is shown in the film by Paul's final action of reaching for the butterfly: He felt like there was no-one else in his world. Paul also says regularly that war turns men into animals, with "Only gradually do we turn into something like human beings again (page 85)" being an example of it.
In the final chapter in the novel, Paul speaks of men like himself who went to war straight out of school, and notes that the rest of the world will be unable to understand them. He says that there is a generation of men that went to war and would be able to cope and forget about it because they have lives and families to return to. Paul however has nothing. No job, no home to return to, nothing to help him forget about the war. The part where the message comes through clearest is at pages 206 and 207, where he writes "No one will understand us - because in front of us there is a generation of men who did, it is true, share the years out here with us, but who already had a bed and a job and who are going back to their old positions, where they will forget all about the war - and behind us, a new generation is growing up, one like we used to be, and that generation will be strangers to us and will push us aside. We are superfluous even to ourselves, we shall grow older, a few will adapt, others will make adjustments, and many of us will not know what to do - the years will trickle away, and eventually we shall perish." This passage is where Paul best sums up his (and Remarque's) feelings about war. Though he notes that war turns men into animals in several places throughout the novel, it is these lines where he captures the most emotion from the deaths of his friends.
The main thing about both the film and the novel is that they are in large ways still relevant to today's style of warfare. Young kids in the army still have to live with the horrors posed to them by Afghanistan, and while most of them have families to return to when the Afghan war ends, they still have to cope with the horrors of war that were imposed on them. An article in the newspaper a while ago was written on a young soldier who had returned from Afghanistan and how he suffers from, among other things, PTSD. He said that there wasn't really any effective psychiatric treatment available to them or organised by the military for them. What the outcome of this article was I don't know, but it proves that even in modern warfare, there are still horrors that young men have to face like IED's, car bombs, suicide bombers and ambushes set up by the Taliban. And the worst thing is that these threats could be anywhere.
In the final chapter in the novel, Paul speaks of men like himself who went to war straight out of school, and notes that the rest of the world will be unable to understand them. He says that there is a generation of men that went to war and would be able to cope and forget about it because they have lives and families to return to. Paul however has nothing. No job, no home to return to, nothing to help him forget about the war. The part where the message comes through clearest is at pages 206 and 207, where he writes "No one will understand us - because in front of us there is a generation of men who did, it is true, share the years out here with us, but who already had a bed and a job and who are going back to their old positions, where they will forget all about the war - and behind us, a new generation is growing up, one like we used to be, and that generation will be strangers to us and will push us aside. We are superfluous even to ourselves, we shall grow older, a few will adapt, others will make adjustments, and many of us will not know what to do - the years will trickle away, and eventually we shall perish." This passage is where Paul best sums up his (and Remarque's) feelings about war. Though he notes that war turns men into animals in several places throughout the novel, it is these lines where he captures the most emotion from the deaths of his friends.
The main thing about both the film and the novel is that they are in large ways still relevant to today's style of warfare. Young kids in the army still have to live with the horrors posed to them by Afghanistan, and while most of them have families to return to when the Afghan war ends, they still have to cope with the horrors of war that were imposed on them. An article in the newspaper a while ago was written on a young soldier who had returned from Afghanistan and how he suffers from, among other things, PTSD. He said that there wasn't really any effective psychiatric treatment available to them or organised by the military for them. What the outcome of this article was I don't know, but it proves that even in modern warfare, there are still horrors that young men have to face like IED's, car bombs, suicide bombers and ambushes set up by the Taliban. And the worst thing is that these threats could be anywhere.