Questions for "All Quiet On The Western Front

Now that you have finished reading All Quiet on the Western Front, please discuss these three questions with your critical friends. Post a response to one of these questions on your blog. Be sure to integrate the responses of your critical friends in your answer...

1. What is ironic, or dramatically unexpected about the novel's ending?
What I found ironic and strange about the ending of the novel is that Paul dies and also HOW he dies. It is strange to see a main character in a book to die, people always want a continuation and a "happy" ending. However, this is not always the case. Books and movies can't always end happy, as life. The author proved this with Paul dying. Paul died, as some people would say, not honorable. He didn't even die in battle. Instead all of his fellow comrades died before. Paul inhaled a poisonous gas and was left to die in a hospital. He didn't die trying to save anyone, didn't die in the middle of battle, instead he didn't in a hospital, by "accidental" inhalation. In the hospital, Paul doesn't have the urge to go back home, to see his family. He wants to die, for all of his suffering to finally end. He has lost the will to live already and to me that's really sad. The war affected him so badly that he is already against human nature, against living.

2. What images of the novel are lingering in your mind? Explain why these images made a lasting impression on you.
The image that made a lasting impression on me was when Paul was in the hospital and how he just wanted to die. It was very sad that this person has come down to this type of level, which is probably the worst. At this point, he doesn't care about anything, even of his own life. Everything he's done, everything he achieved, came all down to this. It takes something powerful to break this human nature, the will to live. A person can be stranded on an island with nothing and all but he still holds onto his life, the only thing he has left. The war has left Paul with nothing, no friends, no life.

3. Do you think Paul can claim to speak for an entire "lost generation" when he speaks of the effects of war? In Paul's opinion war ruins those who survive as must as those who die. Do you think his fellow soldiers felt the same way about war?
I think that the fellow soldiers probably felt the same way as Paul did. War is so terrible that people feel that everything has been drained from them, every inch of them. Before a soldier dies, the war has already affected him. No body can be exposed to all the horrors in war and not be affected by it. When I hear from holocaust survivors, or anybody who has been in a war, it is so hard to believe what they are saying. They describe what they've seen and it sounds like a movie, not in real life. All those horrors...we can't even imagine. One day a holocaust survivor came to speak at my old school, she had lost all her family and has been to several concentration camps. Someone asked her "Is it easy for you to speak about it, after all those years?" and she said "No, I still cry." Some people can not even speak about the war at all. All these people change so much after a war. They become less open, less alive.