All Quiet on the Western Front is the best war novel in all of fucking time. And the cover displayed on goodreads agrees with me too..there in the red bubble it reads 'the greatest war novel of all time' which I thought was a pretty egotistical thing to publish right in the middle of your damn book cover. Imagine if i got a tattoo right on my head saying Best Person Of All Time (which i am, by the way). that's stupid as hell. but apparently they weren't lying about their statement because damn was this book good....FUCK!!!!!!!!!!! I HATE IT WHEN THEY'RE RIGHT!!!!!!!!
What you might ask now is how many war novels i've actually read. And it's one. and it's this one. only. I dont read war novels. but my claim still stands even if you know now that it was made on zero basis. ITS just a GOOD BOOK and its somewhere on the top 3 books ive read which i dont actually read many books so,shit, that doesnt work either
Look im just telling you to read it ok? its good. It's a classic which means it was recieved well and aged well. and liked by quite a lot of people. so you will probably like it. and if you hate it i dont think i can see you the same anymore. And Even if its 100 years old (1929 first published in german) the prose is easy to read and understand even if you have barely no knowledge on world war one.
The main character is a 20 y/o german-aligned soldier (why'd i say -aligned??????he's just german) named paul bäumer who enlisted with his classmates under patriotism and the guidance of their schoolmaster. And then we are where the actual story is which is 2 years after he did that and now he is on the front lines fighting for his life. and its fucked. but he has his friends so its ok. but not really ok, like, the most ok you can get when you're under bomb shellings which is not very ok at all. its just better with friends thas all im saying
Now, i dont want to give you a synopsis because i fucking hate doing that but friendship/comradeship takes a pretty big part in the story. something something about how people bond stronger when they are together in Hell Land together. I like how the author wrote wholesome moments and the depressing moments with equal importance . I love paul
SHIIIIIIIT I JUST REMEMBERED. There's a specific scene where paul gets leave to go home and he does so and he finds that he cannot connect to the World Where Intelligence Is The Most Important anymore after being outside and facing death out on service...... FUCK......... THAT BROKE MY HEART OK. I WOULD LOVE TO QUOTE THAT ENTIRE SECTION BUT I CANT OR IT WOULD LOSE ITS PROMINENCE........... EUHGHUGHUHGHU i love this damn book i cant believe beautiful stories can be condensed into some flat cuboid.
I also really like the goose scene. There's a part where paul and his friend kat steal and cook a goose and its really wholesome. LET ME QUOTE THIS SHIT Half asleep, I watch Kat as he lifts and lowers
the basting spoon. I love him; his shoulders, his angular,
slightly stooped frame — and then I see woods and stars
behind him, and a kindly voice says words to me that bring
me peace, me, an ordinary soldier with his big boots
and his webbing, and his pack, who is making his
tiny way under the sky's great vault along the road that lies
before him, who forgets things quickly and who isn't even depressed
much any more, but who just goes onwards under the
great night sky.
A little soldier and a kindly voice, and if anyone were to
caress him, he probably wouldn't understand the
gesture anymore, that soldier with the big boots and
a heart that has been buried alive, a soldier who marches
because he is wearing marching boots and
who has forgotten everything except marching.
Aren't those things flowers, over there on the horizon,
in a landscape that is so calm and quiet that the
soldier could weep? Are those not images that he
has not exactly lost, because he never had them to lose, confusing images, but
nevertheless things that can no longer be his? Are those
not his twenty years of life?
Anyway this book was 28 bucks of my money and it was worth every damn cent. I defaced it front to back but i didnt go ham on it this time i kind of gave up on trying to write commentary halfway through and only stuck to highlighting it cause i got that immersed in the story. i brought the book overseas intending to read it throughout my stay and i finished it on my first day. whatever. It changed my perspective on war, all of them, and if you read it i think it would change you too.
I read it with one of the english translations. i dont know which because i dont pay attention to translators but id imagine it would be different if it were another version i bought.
SPOILER ALERT: HE DIES. HE FUCKING DIES. THEY KILLED HIM IN THE LAST FUCKING PARAGRAPH. IM SO SAD. i love how it was just on some random day though and not on the armistice day because hes just some random guy. Unlike the fuckn movie. i havent watched any of the 3 movies made for it but i know he dies like 45 minutes before it or smth. HES DEAD AHHHHHHHHH they KILLED him THATS FUCKED. on a day that there was nothing new on the western front
I was gonna make this shrine all cool looking. i even had a version of it half coded already. but i cant channel my raw emotions about this when im aiming for a certain aesthetic. It doesnt work like that. anyway. war is bad
Various quotes (i cant quote nearly enough from this book....id paste all of the 200 ish pages if i could):
It is simply a matter of chance whether I am hit or whether I
go on living. I can be squashed flat in a bomb-proof dugout,
and I can survive ten hours in the open under heavy barrage
without a scratch. Every soldier owes to the fact
that he is still alive to a thousand lucky chances and nothing else.
And every soldier believes in and trusts to chance.
We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things anymore; we believe in the war.
We set out as soldiers, and we might be grumbling or we might be cheerful — we reach the zone where the front line begins, and we have turned into human animals.