Title: A Universal Loss of Innocence: “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Remarque Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Author: Katherine Perry Words: 1,139 Written: January 23, 2009 Paul Bäumer lives in a world where killing is the only way to live, memories are as foreign as the enemy himself, and a single bombing raid can age a fifty year old man. He lives in a world of relentless violence and tragedy and yet he is numb: too estranged from his past to seek comfort in the memories of his youth and too desperate to understand the possibility of escaping the hellish reality of his present. Paul Bäumer is lost, but he is not alone. Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front is a harrowing account of the human face of war and the poignant psychological wounds it inflicts on an entire generation. Remarque's novel tells of a universal loss of innocence that has left an entire demographic estranged, dehumanized, and disillusioned. In the novel, Remarque describes a core of men who know how to play cards, swear and fight - something he says "is not much for twenty years – and yet too much for twenty years" (89). When Paul and his companions enlisted in the The army were mere teenagers, unaware that the war would completely strip them of their youth. “None of us are older than twenty,” he says. “But young? This was a long time ago.” ) The “harmful business” of war, as Paul says, has completely estranged him from his past. Memories function only as “silent apparitions” that cannot be relived or fully understood it has driven us away,” he explains (121). This feeling comes to the fore when Paul is given a two-week leave of absence from the battlefield. At home among all that is native to him, he feels alienated and alone. Remarque writes: "We [soldiers] could never again regain the former intimacy with these scenes. It was not the recognition of their beauty and their meaning that attracted us, but the communion, the feeling of camaraderie with the things and events of our existence. , which cuts us off and makes the world of our parents something incomprehensible to us..." (122). When Paolo wears civilian clothes, he feels "uncomfortable". When he looks into his mother's eyes or leafs through the volumes of books on the shelf in his bedroom, a "sense of strangeness" and a "terrible feeling of strangeness" comes over him. "I can't feel at home among these things," he says. "There is a distance, a veil between us" (160). The distance that Paul speaks of also describes the generational gap between the soldiers of his age and those who have already carved out adult existences before the war is "so strong that the war cannot erase it” (20). Paul and his former classmates differ in that they have no adult life to which they can return, no wives, no foundations on which to rebuild their lives. he explains. “The war overwhelmed us” (20). For the thousands of men who went from school to the battlefield, the post-war era represented an insurmountable identity crisis. Estranged from the past and the future, Paul clings desperately to the present: “I'm a soldier, I have to cling to that.” (173). But being a soldier does not provide a true identity. Instead, the subsequent dehumanization only further erodes his generation's sense of self. "The column advances, straight, the figures form a block, the individuals are no longer.