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Title: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque ISBN: 0-449-21394-3 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 March, 1987 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.52 (358 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Graphic and memorable, but also ambivalent
Comment: There is ambivalence in Remarque's 'anti-war' stance. As much as there is condemnation of the incompetence and war mongering of the officer class, there is praise for the comradeship, courage and sacrifice of the common soldier. This ambivalence was reflected in the reaction of later generations of Germans. Some have seen him as unpatriotic, others as being justly critical of a corrupt regime that betrayed and misled the nation's brave youth. It may have done as much to prepare Germany for World War II as it did to deter it. Whatever your view, this work is a fascinating primary historical source. We learn, for example, that the German troops laughed when they first saw tanks, though they soon learned to take them seriously. Also of interest is the reference to trenching tools being more effective than bayonets in hand-to-hand combat. The book is full of insights like that.
The enemy in the narrative is usually the French. For a view from the other side, "Under Fire" by Henri Barbusse is highly recommended. Barbusse is a better writer than Remarque and it is a pity that his great work seems to have become sadly neglected in recent times.
Rating: 5
Summary: A heartbreaking account
Comment: For those of us Generation X-ers who have never felt even a remote threat of going to war, this novel is a must-read. This first-person account of a WWI German combat soldier embedded in my mind images of such horror that I cannot ever think of war in the same way again. The novel is a fast read -- I read through it in a couple of days -- but its impact lasts far longer.
Remarque is the master of show, don't tell. He doesn't have to say "we felt hopeless" or "it was scary" or "it's heartbreaking when a young person dies." Instead, he paints each scene slowly, with precision, and we learn these truths for ourselves. The novel potrays various aspects of a soldier's life: the trench warfare, watching someone you've wounded slowly die, the fear of capture and death, being wounded yourself, suffering hunger, fatigue, and loneliness, the realization of all that's been lost by going home on leave, losing friends to the enemy's bullets, and even death itself.
Perhaps most compelling in this account is the realization of the huge, gaping crevass between what the leader of state decides in his air-conditioned offices far from the front and what the common soldier suffers as a result. The novel did not convince me that war should be avoided at all costs, but I was surely awakened sufficiently to war's horrors to realize that only the greatest of purposes could justify it.
Rating: 3
Summary: Decent
Comment: This book is a decent war book. I got tuned in to the characters and how they were feeling...I felt like I was Baumer experiencing the horrors of war myself. The book did not get my sparks to light up, but it was definitely readable. It makes a good book for grade school, or high school students to read. A lot of people in the army who have at one time faught a war, or those currently fighting -- will relate to this book and how the author views combat. It's a nice and terse World War I story. I enjoyed it and thought that it was well-written in comparison to other war books that I have read, like "Gods and Generals" - which I didn't like much.
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Title: All Quiet on the Western Front (Cliffs Notes) by Susan Van Kirk ISBN: 0764586718 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 20 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Night by Elie Wiesel, Stella Rodway, Francois Mauriac ISBN: 0553272535 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 March, 1982 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Things Fall Apart : A Novel by CHINUA ACHEBE ISBN: 0385474547 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 September, 1994 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Lord of the Flies by William Gerald Golding ISBN: 0399501487 Publisher: Perigee Pub. Date: July, 1959 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Hiroshima by John Hersey ISBN: 0679721037 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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