All Quiet On The Western Front :: essays research papers

All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Delbert Mann, is based on the novel written by Erich Maria Remarque. It tells the grade of a German schoolboy, Paul Baumer, and a group of his classmates, who journey from fantasies of undismayed glory to the real horror of actual soldiering. Their journey is a attack of age tale that centers on the consternation of war and emphasizes the moral, spiritual, emotional, and physical declension suffered by the young soldiers.Paul Baumer is a 19-year-old volunteer to the German host during World War I. He and his classmates charge fresh out of mettlesome school into military service, hounded by the nationalist ranting of a febrile schoolmaster, Kantorek. Though not all of them want to enlist, they do so in order to save face. Their first stop is boot camp, where life is steady laughter and games. Where are all the medals? asks one. Just wait a calendar month and Ill have them, comes the boisterous response. This is their last vestige o f boyhood. War behind begins to strip past the ideals these boy-men once cherished. Their respect for authority is torn away by their disillusionment with their schoolteacher, Kantorek who pushed them to join. This is followed by their brief encounter with Corporal Himmelstoss at boot camp. The contemptible tactics that their superior officer Himmelstoss perpetrates in the reboot of discipline finally shatters their respect for authority. As the boys, fresh from boot camp, walk toward the front for the first time, each one looks over his shoulder at the departing transport truck. They realize that they have now cast aside their lives as schoolboys and they feel the numbing reality of their uncertain futures. After their first both days of fighting, they return to their bunker, where they find neither safety nor comfort. A pout veteran, Kat, suggests these fresh-faced boys should return to the classroom. The war steals their spiritual belief in the sanctity of kind life with e very man that they kill. This is best illustrated by Pauls journey from anguish to rationalization of the killing of Gerard Duval the printer turned opposition who leaps into the shell-hole already occupied by Paul. Paul struggles with the concept of killing a brother, not the enemy. He weeps despondently as war destroys his emotional being.War destroys Paul and his friends. Those who physically survive the bombing, the bullets and bayonets are annihilated by physical attacks on their sanity.