Criticism on the Western Front remains unchanged. Maria Remarque "All Quiet on the Western Front"

The theme of war and peace in the novel by E.M. Remark "On western front no change"

Introduction

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

First World War became for her contemporaries and for all humanity more than global war. It turned into a huge disaster. Many studies have repeatedly noted that the First World War turned out to be so terrible and catastrophic because it was an unusual war, which was fought according to new, unknown rules.

The novel conveys the realization that war cuts people’s lives into before and after and “washes away” its participants. And, most likely, this feeling appeared during the fighting, around the time when the war became positional.

Of course, any war forces you to change something in your outlook on life. In war, for example, it is not a crime to kill an enemy, and any soldier is ready to die himself if he knows for what he is sacrificing his life. However, when wars end, life, as history shows, does not return to its previous course. Especially after such bloody battles as the First World War. For four years the soldiers fought fighting, not seeing the point in it. Yes, they defended their fatherland, although from whom and from what, it was clear to few. As is known, this war not only brought fundamental changes to world politics, to the distribution of forces and roles between world powers, but also became a catalyst for revolution and the collapse of empires. All these changes could not but affect the life of every person. This is exactly what Erich Maria Remarque wrote about: about suffering, war, pity, love and friendship. The wars that followed World War I were both more brutal and bloodier. But the suffering of people in subsequent wars became more noticeable. The themes raised in the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” will later find their continuation in other novels not only by Erich Maria Remarque, but also by other writers. After World War II, people will turn around and understand that much that was predicted and voiced in the novel was not heard and therefore led to even more dire consequences.

In this regard, the objectives of this work will be:

Analysis storyline, revealing the themes of love and peace in the novel,

Part 1. War and peace in the lives of the novel’s heroes

Known great amount memories of this war. Historians are usually more interested in the memoirs of politicians, scientists, and military personnel. And works of art written by contemporaries and participants of the First World War give the reader the opportunity to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of life of people of that time. Such is the novel by E.M. Remark: “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

Novel German writer E.M. Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” requires, in my opinion, something more philosophical than emotional attitude. Even the style, style, and manner of the author’s narration speak about this: leisurely, abstractly, even seemingly indifferently, as if from the outside, he talks about one of the most terrible trials that can befall a person in life - about war .

And from this point of view, Paul Bäumer, Tjaden, Stanislav Katczynski, Haye Westhus, Albert Kropp, Müller, Leer, Detering - the heroes of the novel - are the most remarkable and happy people who managed early, for very short term, to experience life and understand the main thing in it.

The main character of the novel is Paul, an 18-year-old German drafted to the front. He and his friends, classmates and colleagues are forced to fight not only opponents, but also those inhuman the conditions in which they found themselves. The pages of the novel tell how Paul moves with his squad through positions, goes home on leave, returns to the front, is wounded, ends up in the hospital and ends up at the front again. And it seems that there is no end to war, death, suffering, that there is no way out. Paul is killed in October 1918. And, perhaps, this outcome is natural. Paul and his peers have nothing behind them but war, and that’s why they are lost generation .

Remarque's heroes were unlikely to be copied from real models, and, of course, neither Kemmerich, nor Kat, nor Paul himself existed in life. However, these images make us understand what the heroes of a senseless, terrible war were like - people who wanted peace and defended their fatherland. Heroism in this war was apparently measured not by the number of successful battles and victories won, but by how much the soldier was able to remain human.

Everything, as we know, is known through comparison; You can truly know what heaven is only by being in hell. To Paul Bäumer and his colleagues, their entire pre-army, pre-war life seemed nothing less than paradise, especially since human memory has the ability to store only good things in its archives, extracting this good even from seemingly the most dark moments past life. Missing the lost paradise in the hell of war, the heroes of the novel are only alive with the hope of finding this paradise again by returning home. And here there is a very subtle psychological moment: if in the army, in the war, they were disappointed in nationalist, chauvinistic ideas, in their teachers, politicians, speakers, in the state, finally, then in peaceful life they were faced with an even more bitter disappointment: it turns out there is no heaven!

However, Paul Bäumer comes close to the idea that paradise is lost to him forever. “...We will no longer be able to settle down. Yes, they won’t understand us, because in front of us there is older generation, which, although it spent all these years with us at the front, already had its own family home and profession and will now again take its place in society and forget about the war, and behind us a generation is growing up that reminds us of what we were before; and for it we will be strangers, it will push us astray. We don’t need ourselves, we will live and grow old - some will adapt, others will submit to fate, and many will not find a place for themselves. Years will pass, and we will leave the stage."

But still, Paul still has hope for finding the lost paradise: “It cannot be that this will go away forever - the warm, gentle breath of life that stirred our blood. An unknown, languid, impending, rapturous premonition of getting closer to a woman. It cannot be that all this will disappear under hurricane fire, in the throes of despair and in soldiers’ brothels,” he calls to himself, to his heart, to his soul main character novel.

That is why Remarque felt sorry for his heroes: most of them, including Paul Bäumer, died with the hope of returning to lost heaven.

“...He (Paul Bäumer - my addition) fell face forward and lay in a sleeping position. When they turned him over, it became clear that he must not have suffered for long - there was such a calm expression on his face, as if he was even pleased that everything ended that way.”

We still had the opportunity to observe Paul Bäumer in peaceful life, during his vacation. And what?! He cannot feel like he was before, he cannot imagine himself in the future. He can barely cope with himself in the present, restraining himself when meeting with a rear major - a martinet, with the inhabitants of his hometown, who can, so to speak, think big in terms of strategy and tactics of military operations.

Paul can’t wrap his head around how it’s possible to live a normal, familiar life here, in the rear, when shells are exploding THERE, people are being killed THERE, soldiers are being gassed, and stabbed with bayonets. Everything is indignant and seething inside Paul, but at the same time he has no strength or desire to explain anything to people. For them - on the Western Front - there is still a positional war going on, but it would be necessary, as one of the ordinary people thinks, to go on the offensive; finally, it’s time, they say, to give these Frenchmen the heat. For them, there really is no change on the Western Front, even if thousands of people have died during this time. “I shouldn’t have come on vacation!” – Paul Bäumer concludes...

Thus, the hero concludes that war and peace exist only in war; in peaceful life there is no place for this topic.

Part 2. Reflections on war and peace by the heroes and the second novel

Erich Maria Remarque volunteered for the front in 1916, he himself experienced everything that they experienced him literary heroes. Hence the realism with which the author describes the war and soldier’s life; hence his seemingly tired, unhurried, seemingly indifferent narrative. When the reader of “All Quiet on the Western Front” mentally imagines pictures of the war, hospitals, and simple soldier’s life described in the novel.

In his subsequent novels, such as “The Return”, “Three Comrades”, which can in principle be considered a continuation of the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” discussed here, Remarque tried to tell about the fate of the soldiers who survived the war and returned home. The voice of the author, the voice of the narrator. And the one who tells all this seems to you to be deeply unhappy, physically and mentally wounded, coarsened, but at the same time a kind and surprisingly humane person.

And if he speaks in the same, even, almost indifferent voice about how people without feet, on only their stumps, ran to attack for another ten meters and about how best to deal with soldiers’ linen lice, then this is only because he emotions, his personal grief, personal tragedy reached highest point, invisible to the average person. This is akin to grief without tears - the most severe grief. The author conveys the thoughts of soldiers drafted into the army - peasants, artisans, workers; and they don’t care about geopolitics, they just need to know why they are risking their lives, and they cannot find the answer to this question.

The theme of war and peace in the novel by E.M. Remark "All Quiet on the Western Front"

Introduction

Conclusion

Introduction

The First World War became for its contemporaries and for all humanity more than a global war. It turned into a huge disaster. Many studies have repeatedly noted that the First World War turned out to be so terrible and catastrophic because it was an unusual war, which was fought according to new, unknown rules.

Of course, any war forces you to change something in your outlook on life. In war, for example, it is not a crime to kill an enemy, and any soldier is ready to die himself if he knows for what he is sacrificing his life. However, when wars end, life, as history shows, does not return to its previous course. Especially after such bloody battles as the First World War. For four years the soldiers fought without seeing the point. Yes, they defended their fatherland, although from whom and from what, it was clear to few. As is known, this war not only brought fundamental changes to world politics, to the distribution of forces and roles between world powers, but also became a catalyst for revolution and the collapse of empires. All these changes could not but affect the life of every person. This is exactly what Erich Maria Remarque wrote about: about suffering, war, pity, love and friendship. The wars that followed World War I were both more brutal and bloodier. But the suffering of people in subsequent wars became more noticeable. The themes raised in the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” will later find their continuation in other novels not only by Erich Maria Remarque, but also by other writers. After World War II, people will turn around and understand that much that was predicted and voiced in the novel was not heard and therefore led to even more dire consequences.

In this regard, the objectives of this work will be:

Analysis of the storyline revealing the themes of love and peace in the novel,

Part 1. War and peace in the lives of the novel’s heroes

There are a huge number of memories about this war. Historians are usually more interested in the memoirs of politicians, scientists, and military personnel. And works of art written by contemporaries and participants of the First World War give the reader the opportunity to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of life of people of that time. Such is the novel by E.M. Remark: “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

The novel by the German writer E.M. Remarque “All Quiet on the Western Front” requires, in my opinion, a more philosophical than emotional attitude. Even the style, style, and manner of the author’s narration speak about this: leisurely, abstractly, even seemingly indifferently, as if from the outside, he talks about one of the most terrible trials that can befall a person in life - about war .

And from this point of view, Paul Bäumer, Tjaden, Stanislav Katchinsky, Haye Westhus, Albert Kropp, Müller, Leer, Detering - the heroes of the novel - are the most wonderful and happy people who managed early, in a very short time, to experience life and understand it The main thing.

Everything, as we know, is known through comparison; You can truly know what heaven is only by being in hell. To Paul Bäumer and his colleagues, their entire pre-army, pre-war life seemed nothing less than paradise, especially since human memory has the ability to store only good things in its archives, extracting this good even from seemingly the darkest moments of a past life. Missing the lost paradise in the hell of war, the heroes of the novel are only alive with the hope of finding this paradise again by returning home. And here there is a very subtle psychological point: if in the army, in the war, they were disappointed in nationalist, chauvinistic ideas, in their teachers, politicians, orators, in the state, and finally, then in peaceful life an even more bitter disappointment awaited them: heaven , it turns out, no!

However, Paul Bäumer comes close to the idea that paradise is lost to him forever. “...We will no longer be able to settle down. Yes, they won’t understand us, because before us there is an older generation who, although they spent all these years with us at the front, already had their own family home and profession and will now again take their place in society and forget about the war, and are growing up behind us a generation that resembles us as we used to be; and for it we will be strangers, it will push us astray. We don’t need ourselves, we will live and grow old - some will adapt, others will submit to fate, and many will not find a place for themselves. Years will pass, and we will leave the stage."

But still, Paul still has hope for finding the lost paradise: “It cannot be that this will go away forever - the warm, gentle breath of life that stirred our blood. An unknown, languid, impending, rapturous premonition of getting closer to a woman. It cannot be that all this will disappear under hurricane fire, in the throes of despair and in soldiers’ brothels,” the main character of the novel appeals to himself, to his heart, to his soul.

That is why Remarque felt sorry for his heroes: most of them, including Paul Bäumer, died with the hope of returning to the lost paradise.

Thus, the hero concludes that war and peace exist only in war; in peaceful life there is no place for this topic.

Part 2. Reflections on war and peace by the heroes and the second novel

Erich Maria Remarque volunteered for the front in 1916, and he himself experienced everything that his literary heroes experienced. Hence the realism with which the author describes the war and soldier’s life; hence his seemingly tired, unhurried, seemingly indifferent narrative. When the reader of “All Quiet on the Western Front” mentally imagines pictures of the war, hospitals, and simple soldier’s life described in the novel.

And if he speaks in the same, even, almost indifferent voice about how people without feet, on only their stumps, ran to attack for another ten meters and about how best to deal with soldiers’ linen lice, then this is only because he emotions, his personal grief, personal tragedy reached their highest point, unnoticeable to the average person. This is akin to grief without tears - the most severe grief. The author conveys the thoughts of soldiers drafted into the army - peasants, artisans, workers; and they don’t care about geopolitics, they just need to know why they are risking their lives, and they cannot find the answer to this question.

The war dealt the main blow to young people who did not yet have “roots.” They felt unnecessary even to themselves.

The war seems completely meaningless to these young soldiers, because no one can explain why it is going on, what its reasons are. The heroes of the novel are led to a conversation about the meaning of war by a meeting with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to the regiment to award the soldiers with the “Iron Crosses”. The Kaiser does not seem as majestic as a ruler responsible for starting a world war should be, he seems person, the same as soldiers, only occupying a different social niche. The soldiers do not want to believe that the Kaiser could want this war. Why are soldiers at the front? They defend the fatherland, and their enemies defend the fatherland, but everyone understands that there are no rightists in this war, and there cannot be. So why sit in a dirty trench and put your life in danger? Remarque's heroes are trying with all their might to remain human, but during the battle the soldiers become “automata,” “ wild animals", which allows them to save themselves and their lives.

The First World War claimed a huge number of lives, more than any war before it. Remarque depicts many deaths in his novel. Here we can again trace the pacifist tendencies of this work. Before our eyes, the hero’s childhood friends and recruits are dying, we see death on the battlefield, in the hospital, death from gas... Death in war is taken for granted, and it seems that it is impossible to mourn everyone, and you can go crazy from unbearable grief or fear. Death becomes familiar to the heroes of the novel. And this is one of the most terrible results of the world war. A person who constantly sees mutilated corpses, who sees loved ones die, is unlikely to be able to live in peace after the end of the war. Therefore, for many, the fear of peaceful life turns out to be even stronger than the fear of death. Remarque did not leave any of his heroes alive, perhaps because from the very first pages he declared the generation of war participants lost, and denied them the right to a future as people whose “knowledge of life boils down to death.”

Conclusion

The First World War had no idea to die for. It did not live up to politicians’ hopes for a quick outcome, but became only “the collapse of everything human.” The only good thing the author finds in this war is front-line partnership. The camaraderie of people committed to each other, but at the same time knowing that they could lose each other at any moment, resigned to this thought; people who do not understand what they are fighting for, but who are aware of the high cost of each battle. The last pages of the novel show that nothing held a person back in that war; desertion did not seem a shame - after all, it is much more natural to be homesick than to wait for one’s death. Much more patriotic to cultivate native land than sitting in a trench and following meaningless orders from commanders.

Remarque's novel gives us the opportunity to learn about how people themselves thought of themselves in this war. In literature Soviet period there is often an opinion that the heroes of the novel are marked stamp of passivity, doom, what they are victims and passion-bearers, not fighters. However, perhaps, Remarque’s heroes can still be called fighters, fighters not for some high ideals, but for own life, for returning home as people capable of moving on with their lives. A man in war is not a German, a Frenchman, an Englishman or a Russian, he is not a peasant, an artisan, a teacher or a student, a man here is a friend or a stranger, a commander or a private. Exactly at fiction a concept familiar to us army breaks down into specific people-personalities.

According to Remarque, every person in a war plays his own role, he is necessary in it, despite the fact that the justice of this war and its meaning are in doubt. But at the same time, war depersonalizes, and behind each character depicted by Remarque there are thousands more like him. One person is unlikely to be able to influence the course of military operations. A man fulfills his duty even in war social function, he is obliged to defend his fatherland, and no one doubts this. Although, moving away from generally accepted ideas about the honor of a soldier, Remarque seeks to affirm the right of every person to choose and, as already mentioned, does not condemn desertion.

There have been, are and will be wars. Moreover, it is quite possible that the next world war will wipe out all of humanity from the face of the Earth. Cruel, predatory, with a lot of blood, fear, horror, death. And there is no stronger drug, because it enters not through a vein, lungs or any other organ, but directly, through the soul, powerfully absorbing the person entirely. Forever. This is how people of war are born. This is how entire generations of people are born, for whom the theme of love and death is not abstract.

List of used literature

1. Foreign literature 20th century /Ed. L.G. Andreeva.- M., 2006. – 237 p.

3. History of foreign literature of the late 20th century / Ed. L.G. Andreeva. – M., 2008 – 294 p.

4. History of foreign literature of the 20th century / Ed. V.N. Bogoslovsky Z.T. Civil. - M., 2008 – 284 p.

5. Pavlova N.S. Typology German novel. 1900-1946. M. 1982

History of foreign literature of the late 20th century / Ed. L. G. Andreeva. – M., 2008 – 294 p. - With. 24

Zasursky Y., Mikeladze N., Vannikova N. Foreign literature of the 20th century. 1914-2000. Educational and methodological manual M., 2009 – 483 p.

Zasursky Y., Mikeladze N., Vannikova N. Foreign literature of the 20th century. 1914-2000. Educational and methodological manual M., 2009 – 483 p. - With. 43

History of foreign literature of the 20th century / Ed. V. N. Bogoslovsky, Z. T. Grazhdanskaya. - M., 2008 – 284 p.

Zasursky Y., Mikeladze N., Vannikova N. Foreign literature of the 20th century. 1914-2000. Educational and methodological manual M., 2009 – 483 p.

Quote in Foreign Literature of the 20th Century / Ed. L. G. Andreeva. - M., 2006. – 237 p. - With. 112

History of foreign literature of the late 20th century / Ed. L.G. Andreeva. – M., 2008 – 294 p. - With. 134

Zasursky Y., Mikeladze N., Vannikova N. Foreign literature of the 20th century. 1914-2000. Educational and methodological manual M., 2009 – 483 p. - With. 243

Foreign literature of the 20th century / Ed. L. G. Andreeva. - M., 2006. – 237 p. - With. 154

Review of the work

EM. Remarque

"All Quiet on the Western Front"

Work completed

II year student of International Economic Relations

academic group

Parshakova V.A.

Scientific adviser:

Art. teacher

Novikov D.V.

“This book is neither an accusation nor a confession. This is only an attempt to tell about the generation that was destroyed by the war, about those who became its victims, even if they escaped from the shells.”

(Erich Maria Remarque)

I chose this particular work for review because two years ago it made a huge impression on me. This is my first book by Remarque, the first book about war in general. Later there was “Farewell to Arms!” Ernest Hemingway, Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington. But it was this novel that shook me to the core, chilled me to the bone, caused disgust, pain and compassion. Knowing that war is a nightmare is one thing, but knowing and feeling are completely different things.

The novel tells about what the young soldier Paul Bäumer and his comrades experienced and saw at the front of the First World War. The narration is told from the perspective of a German, which means “Fritz”, “enemy”. But you read and think: what kind of enemy is he? The image of a soldier turns into an ordinary person, just as tortured by the war, the trenches, the fear of death, just like our Russian soldier. Since childhood, this small seed of hatred for everything German was nurtured in us, because we were on opposite sides of the trenches. But Remarque shows reverse side medals. Everyone was brave, everyone was courageous, everyone fought for their Motherland, for their family, for an idea. But just what are these ideas? Why did they, twenty-year-old boys, shed blood for other people's ideas? “I am young - I am twenty years old, but all I have seen in life is despair, death, fear and the interweaving of the most absurd thoughtless vegetation with immeasurable torment. I see that someone is setting one nation against another and people are killing each other, in a mad blindness submitting to someone else’s will, not knowing what they are doing, not knowing their guilt. I see that the best minds humanity invent weapons to prolong this nightmare, and find words to justify it even more subtly. And together with me, all people of my age see this, here and here, all over the world, our entire generation is experiencing this...” There is no patriotism, no high ideas - nothing that would somehow justify this massacre. This is just a meat grinder, where people are no longer people, but mechanical killers, who have dulled all feelings except fear and the instinct of self-preservation. Multi-day offensives, when all around there is only fire and earth, blood and suffering, severed body parts and decaying corpses of those who had just been their friends. Yesterday these guys were still sitting at school desks, and today they are suffocating in the trenches from asphyxiating gas, blown up by mines... It is difficult to survive, difficult not to go crazy, but it is even more difficult to imagine life after the war in which there is no place for you. This is the "lost generation". remark front war soldier

Remarque does not try to justify either the horrors of the war, or its consequences, or even Germany, which unleashed it. He paints a picture of life at war: this is how it was. And wild details, and blood, and dirt, and death, and pain - this is not the author’s imagination and not savoring at the request of the public. This is war. War through the eyes common man, war through the eyes of a soldier who gradually becomes indifferent to what ideals guided those who sent him to certain death.

This is war, war again. Actually, always somewhere there is a war going on. We divide eras into pre-war and post-war times. We say “Never again...”, but everything repeats itself again and again. World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the war in Croatia, Kosovo, Afghan war, Chechnya, the war in Iraq - history, modern history, becomes again a time of war.

Today, when pacifism has again become a popular trend in European socio-philosophical thought, and reality is not particularly encouraging in terms of maintaining peace on the planet, Remarque’s works and his socio-political beliefs are again very popular. The significance of Remarque’s works in this regard cannot be ignored. He was a consistent and militant (by his own admission) pacifist, and this makes him very relevant today. Having chosen a person as a starting point, leading a narrative outside of political and philosophical-political paradigms, Remarque gives impetus to create a general philosophical position, showing what a person does not change: the search for humanity in any situation, the search for love as salvation. Only by preaching humanity and believing in it, processing humanistic experience previous generations, humanity can save itself not only from the loss of socio-philosophical guidelines, but also from direct physical destruction. No matter how absurd the reality is: “People were told: you can’t kill. But they were also told: to hit, you need to aim well; they can only be saved by doing something, trying to consciously find a way out.

Remarque never considered himself a member of any literary and philosophical movement, but the direction of his works is obvious. A person is forced to look for a solution to the problem of being alone, essentially left alone with the whole world, or rather, against the whole world. Somewhere on a subconscious level, at the level of instincts, a person knows that deliverance will come, this nightmare cannot continue forever. And then for the survivors who have lost all sorts of social and philosophical guidelines, the question arises of finding oneself. According to Remarque, only an analysis of one’s past can help this; a person cannot live without history, no matter how gloomy it may be. “If war has become an integral part of humanity and human history, then its evidence, memories, warning signals are needed. First of all - literature... We need something that would give an idea of this multi-faceted monster and what it does to people.”

Remarque was a contemporary of Sartre, Camus, Jaspers, Heidegger and many other existential philosophers, but he never entered into purely philosophical debates, being essentially one of the most widely read literary existentialists in the world. There is a lot of philosophy in Remarque's stories. And philosophy is a timeless concept. The plots may change, but the ideas remain the same. You can like Remarque or not, read or not read, but one cannot deny his influence on the development of humanistic thought in Europe in the twentieth century. His novels are simply universal in terms of a person’s knowledge of himself. Send a request indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of receiving a consultation.

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Review of the work

EM. Remarque

"All Quiet on the Western Front"

Work completed

II year student of International Economic Relations

5 academic group

Parshakova V.A.

Scientific adviser:

Art. teacher

Novikov D.V.

(Erich Maria Remarque)

The novel tells about what the young soldier Paul Bäumer and his comrades experienced and saw at the front of the First World War. The narration is told from the perspective of a German, which means “Fritz”, “enemy”. But you read and think: what kind of enemy is he? The image of a soldier turns into an ordinary person, just as tortured by war, trenches, and fear of death, just like our Russian soldier. Since childhood, this small seed of hatred for everything German was nurtured in us, because we were on opposite sides of the trenches. But Remarque shows the other side of the coin. Everyone was brave, everyone was courageous, everyone fought for their Motherland, for their family, for an idea. But just what are these ideas? Why did they, twenty-year-old boys, shed blood for other people's ideas? “I am young - I am twenty years old, but all I have seen in life is despair, death, fear and the interweaving of the most absurd thoughtless vegetation with immeasurable torment. I see that someone is setting one nation against another and people are killing each other, in a mad blindness submitting to someone else’s will, not knowing what they are doing, not knowing their guilt. I see that the best minds of mankind are inventing weapons to prolong this nightmare, and finding words to justify it even more subtly. And together with me, all people of my age see this, here and here, all over the world, our entire generation is experiencing this...” There is no patriotism, no high ideas - nothing that would somehow justify this massacre. This is just a meat grinder, where people are no longer people, but mechanical killers, who have dulled all feelings except fear and the instinct of self-preservation. Multi-day offensives, when all around there is only fire and earth, blood and suffering, severed body parts and decaying corpses of those who had just been their friends. Yesterday these guys were still sitting at school desks, and today they are suffocating in the trenches from asphyxiating gas, blown up by mines... It is difficult to survive, difficult not to go crazy, but it is even more difficult to imagine life after the war in which there is no place for you. This is the "lost generation". remark front war soldier

Remarque does not try to justify either the horrors of the war, or its consequences, or even Germany, which unleashed it. He paints a picture of life at war: this is how it was. And wild details, and blood, and dirt, and death, and pain - this is not the author’s imagination and not savoring at the request of the public. This is war. War through the eyes of a common man, war through the eyes of a soldier who gradually becomes indifferent to what ideals guided those who sent him to certain death.

This is war, war again. Actually, there is always a war going on somewhere. We divide eras into pre-war and post-war times. We say “Never again...”, but everything repeats itself again and again. World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the war in Croatia, Kosovo, the Afghan War, Chechnya, the Iraq War - history, modern history, is again becoming a time of war.

Today, when pacifism has again become a popular trend in European socio-philosophical thought, and reality is not particularly encouraging in terms of maintaining peace on the planet, Remarque’s works and his socio-political beliefs are again very popular. The significance of Remarque’s works in this regard cannot be ignored. He was a consistent and militant (by his own admission) pacifist, and this makes him very relevant today. Having chosen a person as a starting point, leading a narrative outside of political and philosophical-political paradigms, Remarque gives impetus to create a general philosophical position, showing what a person does not change: the search for humanity in any situation, the search for love as salvation. Only by preaching humanity and believing in it, processing the humanistic experience of previous generations, can humanity save itself not only from the loss of socio-philosophical guidelines, but also from direct physical destruction. No matter how absurd the reality is: “People were told: you can’t kill. But they were also told: to hit, you need to aim well; they can only be saved by doing something, trying to consciously find a way out.

Remarque never considered himself a member of any literary and philosophical movement, but the direction of his works is obvious. A person is forced to look for a solution to the problem of being alone, essentially left alone with the whole world, or rather, against the whole world. Somewhere on a subconscious level, at the level of instincts, a person knows that deliverance will come, this nightmare cannot continue forever. And then for the survivors who have lost all sorts of social and philosophical guidelines, the question arises of finding oneself. According to Remarque, only an analysis of one’s past can help this; a person cannot live without history, no matter how gloomy it may be. “If war has become an integral part of humanity and human history, then its evidence, memories, and warning signals are needed. First of all - literature... We need something that would give an idea of this multi-faceted monster and what it does to people.”

So far this is the most morally difficult book I have ever read. It is necessary that everyone read it - and that there will never be a war again.

Posted on http://www.allbest.ru

Criticism on the Western Front remains unchanged. Maria Remarque "All Quiet on the Western Front"

Part 1. War and peace in the lives of the novel’s heroes

Part 2. Reflections on war and peace by the heroes and the second novel

Part 1. War and peace in the lives of the novel’s heroes

Part 2. Reflections on war and peace by the heroes and the second novel

Conclusion

List of used literature

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