All Quiet on the Western Front
4.2
336
5
1
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781911238300 |
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| Publisher: | Classics Illustrated Comics |
| Publication date: | 01/02/2018 |
| Series: | Classics Illustrated Series |
| Edition description: | Illustrate |
| Sales rank: | 412,149 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
All Quiet on the Western Front
4.2 out of 5
based on
0 ratings.
336 reviews.
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I first found this book in the library and didn't think much of it: a small, worn thing, bound in battered blue leather. Nothing but the faded gilt words of the title on the front. I vaguely remembered that there was a movie made about it, but I had no idea what the story was about. Little did I know, it turned out to be a deeply moving coming-of-age story, on par with The Catcher in the Rye and The Wars. It's the story of a twenty-year-old soldier, not much more than a boy, who struggles between his duty as a soldier and his own value for life, regardless of which side of the trenches it comes from. The novel is quietly poignant and at times devastating, with moments of beauty and horror that could only have been told by someone as an actual witness of that war. A true classic.
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Very upset. Bought this copy for 2.99 and was excited to pay such a good price until I doscovered it only has the first 135 pages! What a ripoff. Wish I could get a refund...
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I'm a sophomore in high school, and this was one of our required readings, and I just have to say that this book is amazing! It has various types of literary devices flowing through its pages, and the plot keeps you entangled within its words. It brings out every feeling in you and is a very good choice for a required reading, (if you're a teacher). Recommended to all, but more particularly, people that would like to experience the reality of war, the effects of war, and a fight between the myth of war and the real thing as the truth is revealed during your reading. Enjoy! :)
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In my opinion All Quiet on the Western Front is a great book. It is one of the most popular war novels and I agree with people who say it's good. I am not a huge fan of reading unless it is an interesting book, and I can say this definitely is. This book kept me reading and I had a lot of fun with it. However, some people might find this book too violent.
It is hard for me to get into a book unless it starts off interesting. This book did and I loved it from the start. I found myself not able to put it down at times. Erich Maria Remarque does a great job of painting a picture of the action-packed fighting scenes. He also takes us inside the minds of the soldiers and the reader can really understand how the characters feel.
Another good thing about this book is it's realistic. It's not your average war story where one man is the hero and everything is easy. The main characters face many struggles. Seeing how they overcome these struggles makes this book fun to read. There also many themes in this book. The author focuses on the horror of war, and the effects it has on everybody's lives. I think this book is fun and there are important lessons to be learned from it.
Some people might find this book too violent or graphic. In the fighting scenes, the author goes into great detail. He describes everything from the sights and sounds to the blood and gore. Some readers may not be big fans of this. For example, when the soldiers are camped out waiting for an enemy attack, the author describes the horrible conditions and talks about the sound and smell of dying men.
In conclusion, I think this book is great. There are many different aspects that make this book enjoyable for a large audience. Some people may be turned off by the violence but other than that, they may find this book suitable. I definitely recommend it to anybody who wants a quick fun read, with important lessons to learn.
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This book is very powerful. We all know WW I was fought over 100 years ago but the ugliness of war still persist. Adults of loved ones coming home from war need to read this book because a soldier is not going to tell a civilian the true hell that they lived with and will carry with them forever. Maybe parents, brother/sister, boyfriend/girlfriend, fiances/spouse will realize the pre-soldier doesn't exists any more. The newly released soldier has memories, dreams, frights, and horrors that a civilian can not possibly understand. The post-soldier has many questions about himself as he did as a child, as young teen, as an older teen but society won't give him 15 years to figure it out.
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The single best war novel ever written.
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War is idiocy, mostly entered into by those who will never witness it close up, its daily battles struggled through by those who had no say in whether it should have been started nor when and how it will end. I was a soldier who fought and was wounded, nearly killed, in a different war decades later. I was also an officer, but All Quiet tells my story and the story of the men in my platoon as well as it tells the story of the young German, Paul and his friends.
As a soldier, you may begin your fight for your country, but once in combat, you fight for your friends and often find you have more in common with the "enemy" soldier than with the folks back home.
This book should be required reading for every person in a position to forge a decision to go to war. Some circumstances may leave no other option, but reading this book should help make it clearer to those who decide to take a ecountry to war just what burden they are placing on the shoulders, hearts and minds of those who will live the battles, during the hell of the fighting and long after the bombs have stopped falling.
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A teacher of mine recommended me too read this book. At first I wasn't all excited to hear about it because it is a war novel and I'm not into these kind of books. However, after reading just the first chapter I was already hooked. As I began to read more of this book I started to get more interested. This book is very detailed in a lot of parts of the book. What I do love most is how easy it is to follow along and understand what is going on in the book. Even though this is a book about war it is not always based on fighting. Matter of fact you'll even crack a smile every once in a while. This book also got me motivated because how the main character holds him self. The author Erich Maria Remarque has written many good books but, this is by far one of the best. A Great book and would defiantly recommend to others.
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I have been a soldier in the U.S. Army for 11 years now, with multiple deployments under my belt. As a veteran, this book left me with an overwhelming gratefulness for the fact that my wars have been comparatively easy.
Furthermore, it reinforces the fact that soldiers are the same. Different sides, different wars, different times, but there is an undeniable sameness between us. The same lusts and fears, the same profanity and profoundness, the same humor and horror - and the same desperate hopelessness in trying to explain the experience to those that haven't had it for themselves. But most of all, I sympathized with the unavoidable change that military service brings about in a person. I won't go so far as to say that war leaves all soldiers "damaged" (like I said, my wars have been comparatively easy), but the change is inescapable and absolute.
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By telling this story in first person, present tense, Remarque achieves a great sense of intimacy. For me it has always been a "quiet" book. The emotions of Paul in the war (and out) seem true and timeless to me (and much better than Crane's The Red Badge of Courage), and the evocation of comradeship is beautiful. It is short and simple, and is one of my top ten all-time favorite books.
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Overall I feel pretty mixed about the book. I liked it but at the same time I did not. For every chapter there was always a golden nugget of a sentence or two that I had to break out my pen and underline for later pondering on and review.
One of the most distracting things about reading AQOTWF was the inconsistent tone I felt it gave off. It wasn't just chapter to chapter, it was event to event. I understand that each event in the book has it's own particular feel, whether it light-hearted and humorous or down right heart breaking. Even with that said, this was written as an autobiography, from Paul's perspective, and with that, I had assumed consistent personality and tonality. It may be just me, but it was bothersome as it messed with the flow at which I read this book.1 But this tone could have also been done on purpose to show Paul's instability in his life.
I did not feel any deep connection or overall sympathy to AQOTWF like I had felt With The Old Breed.2 I did try to tone down my expectations because of WTOB set the bar fairly high in my mind about what an autobiography on war should include.
Being from a German perspective didn't effect the story any. If AQOTWF had been written from any side at the time, not much would change. War is war. Soldiers of the time are all in a trench -different ones, but equally miserable.
All Quiet on the Western Front was a read I'm glad I read, but I am not blown away by the book that has claimed the title "The Greatest War Novel of All time".
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A recent radio piece mentioned "All Quiet on The Western Front" during a book review for "The Yellow Birds." I'd not yet read AQOTWF and so ordered both titles. AQOTWF proved one of the most powerful books I've read in my six decades, gripping and poignant beyond words. Having completed AQOTWF, I'm now engrossed in "The Yellow Birds."
Both authors are combat veterans from the enlisted ranks. From wars six generations apart, they paint notably parallel portraits through soldiers' eyes, both on and away from the battlefield. One could argue that everyone should read both books, and re-read them at any time a nation considers waging war without having first been attacked.
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An excellent anti-war book. Not the first or last but possibly the best.
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This is a Classic Novel I know, but I just couldn't finish it. Got a third of the way, but found I wasn't wanting to get back to it, and would pick up anything else to read.
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Horrifying. Chapter six was nearly impossible to read. I am not a war book guy, but this novel really hit me. A beautiful telling of how an entire generation of people were completely changed by a type of war no one could have ever imagined.
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One of the most powerful war stories ever written, All Quiet on the Western Front is engrossing from the very beginning. It tells the story of Paul, a German soldier who enlists with his classmates to fight in the trenches during World War I. The book follows Paul and his friends as they are sent again and again to the front lines with only brief respites and small comforts. Convalescent leave after an injury is both a relief and a source of new pain, as the home he once knew now feels alien to him, and a soldier who is fit enough will be sent right back to the trenches. The story of the disillusionment that Paul and his comrades experience in a war that is steadily killing them both physically and emotionally forms a stunningly effective anti-war message. All Quiet on the Western Front is just as effective today as it was when it was first published, partly because the moral it conveys is not specific to a particular war, but can be applied to war in general. This is not Paul¿s war; it is his country¿s war. He has no personal fight with any of the enemy soldiers he might kill or be killed by. In other circumstances, they might have been friends. These are things which Paul must suppress. He cannot think of the men they are fighting against as men. He cannot ponder the meaning of the war, or the lack thereof. He must operate like an animal, instinctively, or the senselessness of the events will destroy him. It is this duality, the oscillation between man and war machine, which leads the novel to its powerful conclusion.
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¿The war has ruined us for everything.¿ (page 87)I am a realist, both in everyday life and (as a former student of political science) in my thinking on international affairs, as well. So I don¿t buy into the whole ¿If only our leaders knew what war was like, there would be no more war¿ argument. There will always be war, plain and simple, like it or not. And some wars are good and useful (yes, I said it). So with all that out in the open, all I can say with regards to All Quiet on the Western Front is ¿Wow.¿I¿ve read other books about war (fiction and non-fiction), seen movies, talked with veterans, etc., etc., etc. But I have never experienced anything like this book. It is real and visceral and haunting and so beautiful. Remarque brings a poetic rhythm to his description of life in the trenches of World War I (the War to End All Wars ¿ HA!). He writes movingly of the sense of loss, of comradeship, of universality amid the everyday horror and terror."At once a new warmth flows through me. These voices, these quiet words, these footsteps in the trench behind me recall me at a bound from the terrible loneliness and fear of death by which I had been almost destroyed. They are more to me than life¿ they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades. I am no longer a shuddering speck of existence, alone in the darkness; I belong to them and they to me; we all share the same fear and same life, we are nearer than lovers, in a simpler, a harder way; I could bury my face in them, in these voices, these words that have saved me and will stand by me.¿ (page 212)The narrator, a 20-year old German soldier, leads us through life at war ¿ the stretches of boredom punctuated by intense fear during an attack, the hunger and deprivation, the pain of bullets and shrapnel and gas, the reality of death and suffering, the discomfort and alienation at going home, the sense after a while, that the only place one will ever belong and feel right is at the front. Remarque is strongest when describing the narrator¿s growing sense of futility and common cause with all the young men of his generation, whether friend or foe. The war connects them in ways no one else could understand though they may stand on opposite sides.The novel is full of dichotomous passages that use beautiful prose to describe unspeakable things:¿No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and to be revenged. We crouch behind every corner, behind every barrier of barbed wire, and hurl heaps of explosives at the feet of the advancing enemy before we run. The blast of the hand-grenades impinges powerfully on our arms and legs; crouching like cats we run on, overwhelmed by this wave that bears us along, that fills us with ferocity, turns us into thugs, into murderers, into God only knows what devils; this wave that multiplies our strength with fear and madness and greed of life, seeking and fighting for nothing but our deliverance.¿ (page 114)An elegiac, haunting testament to the horror of war that deserves to be read, pondered and re-read even if it changes nothing.
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¿All Quiet on the Western Front¿ is a standard in anti-war fiction, describing the horrors and idiocy of war from the perspective of an author who knew what the hell he was talking about. Remarque was a German veteran of World War I who at the age of 19 was wounded severely in combat along the Western Front. What sets this book apart is his insight into the psychological damage done to the young soldiers - the disillusionment, extreme stress, and social detachment, which I like to think of as the war within. This book is emblematic of the ¿lost generation¿, the one that came of age during WWI, and its truth and message was so compelling that the Nazis banned and publicly burned the book as they geared up their war machine for WWII. Perhaps the entire book can be summarized by this quote towards the end, which I love:¿And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me.¿But here are some others as well:On bravery:¿There was, indeed, one of us who hesitated and did not want to fall into line. That was Joseph Behm, a plump, homely fellow. But he did allow himself to be persuaded, otherwise he would have been ostracized. And perhaps more of us thought as he did, but no one could very well stand out, because at that time even one¿s parents were ready with the word `coward¿; no one had the vaguest idea what we were in for. The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.¿On disillusionment:¿And that is why they let us down so badly.For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress ¿ to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs.¿We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.¿On education:¿¿What is meant by Cohesion?¿We remember mighty little of all that rubbish. Anyway, it has never been the slightest use to us. At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood ¿ nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn¿t get jammed, as it does in the ribs.¿On war:¿Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the tw
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Throughout All Quiet on the Western Front there is the theme of a lost innocence. Soldiers as young as 18 or 19 reflect on a childhood lost. The main character of Paul Baumer is constantly thinking about how, if he were to survive the war, he could never relate to the peacetime world around him. He scoffs at the word "peace." I saw All Quiet as a commentary on survival in its purest form. Doing anything and everything you can to live another day. When one soldier is obviously on death's door another wants his boots and starts planning a strategy to get them...even before the dying man has drawn his last breath. This is not callousness personified. This is survival. He knows the boots are of no use to the dying soldier. They would be to him, if only he could get them before someone else does. Ironically, the boots are later passed along to Paul eventually.Another aspect of Remarque's work that bears mentioning is the detail he pays to describing death. While the images are unforgiving, violent and grotesque, it is war in its truest state and at its worst. Some of the images that stuck with me: a butterfly flitting around a field of dead men and finally settling to rest on the teeth of a corpse; a screaming horse that can't be put out of his misery because he will reveal the hiding place of the soldiers.
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I have a very serious love hate relationship with this book. My thoughts and feelings for this book changes by the who I read it as. Reading as a history student I love it because the insight and details are amazing. However, as a typical reader who enjoys the occasional book I absolutely hated this book. The information was pointless and bored me to tears.
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What can I say to do justice to this book? The cover blurb calls this "The Greatest War Novel of All Time." It's certainly the best that I've ever read. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the other war stories I've read haven't used All Quiet as part of their research. It's an account of World War I, as seen through the experiences of Paul Bäumer, a young German man serving in France--the "Western front" to the German army. Through his eyes we see the brutality, absurdity, sorrow and community of war. At times Paul reflects on his experiences, noting how they have essentially shredded his former life as a student and may have killed his future. Other times he holds such reflections at bay and, for the sake of his sanity, focuses on the moment and the ongoing task of staying alive. It's a book full of despair and sorrow, yet it also contains moments of love and humor. It is very much a tale that's real, which, I suppose, also makes it more tragic. If only this was a dark fantasy that exists only in the writer's imagination.--J.
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goes to show that no matter how well the futility of war is articulated there's a numbskull or death skull waiting in the wings. beautiful and tragic.
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This was a required reading in eleventh grade for me. I have to say I wasn't sure about it. But I was pleasantly surprised by it. Paul Baumer and his classmates enlist in this service for WW1 and even though they thought they knew what they were up against and were prepared for it. They break amongst the fighting and vow to fight with their principles against hate. I rated this book at 4 out 5. Defiantly a must read because its an eyeopener.
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This novel is the classic tale of an 18-Year old boy who runs off to join the Army. But this time it's the German Army, and during World War one. The translations from the original German to English were a bit sketchy, and also the book had some old timed words. Also there were lots of references to old things from a 100 years ago. But still, the book had great descriptions of the battles,and vivid descriptions, and I would give it three and a half stars.
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A haunting masterpiece. The movie is great but the novel is incomparable. People who dislike war will simply loath it after reading this.It is about the journey of a young German and his friends (mostly his classmates) through the horrifying days in the Western Front, a "contested armed frontier" between lands controlled by Germany to the East and the Allies to the West during the World War I.The descriptions might be kind of dragging sometimes, because there is so much self-reflection and pondering. However, it still provides a vivid, heart wrenching picture of a soldier's mind during combat or not. The characters are definitely memorable, from their nationalistic school teacher, their super-annoying drill-sergeant, their lovable "front-hog" team leader, and of course, the young men themselves.War leads to the destruction of the youths, even if it is aimed to defend one's fatherland. The leaders (presidents/kings/generals) should fight among themselves, instead of causing so much sorrow, right? Yes, war can be justified sometimes, but is it really worth it? Is there really no other way? War should be left as the least desirable, remotest option in solving a problem.As described in this novel (and many other books), maybe the only good thing that can come out from a war is comradeship, which is the highest form of friendship. I chuckled happily when reading all the acts done by the soldiers for their comrades, no matter how simple or repulsive they are. They're closer than lovers, families, or even brothers. After so long, they come to realize that death is inescapable, their luck so far might be spent, they have no clear picture on their future (or whether the war will be over eventually or not)...so they can only rely on each other. Sweet and sad at the same time.What a true classic, written by someone who also experienced the same gruesome affair in his youth. Everyone should read this, especially those high, exalted decision makers
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