Words Of Baumer's Comrades example essay topic

All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel set in World War I, based around the changes formed by the war on one young German soldier. During his time in the war, the main character, Paul Baumer, changes from an innocent boy to a hardened veteran. More importantly, during the course of this change, Baumer outcasts himself from those societal influences that has been the base of his life before the war. This rejection comes as a result of Baumer's realization that the pre-enlistment society does not understand the reality of the Great War. His new society and fellow soldiers then becomes his foundation because that is a group which understands the truth as Baumer has experienced it. Remarque demonstrates Baumer's withdraw from his traditional life by stressing the language of Baumer's past and present societies.

Baumer either can not, or chooses not to, communicate truthfully with those representatives of his innocent and former days. Further, he is shocked by the dull and meaningless language that is used by members of his past society. As he becomes estranged from his former, traditional, society, Baumer is able to communicate effectively only with his military partners. Since the novel is told from the first person point of view, the reader can see how the words Baumer speaks are disagreeing with his true feelings. In his preface to the novel, Remarque maintains that "a generation of men were destroyed by the war", (Remarque, All Quiet Preface). Indeed, in All Quiet on the Western Front, the meaning of language itself is destroyed.

Early in the novel, Baumer notes how his elders had been easy with words prior to his enlistment. Specifically, teachers and parents had used words to persuade him and other young men to enlist in the war effort. After relating the tale of a teacher who exhorted his students to enlist, Baumer states that "teachers always carry their feelings ready in their waistcoat pockets, and trot them out by the hour" (Remarque, All Quiet I. 13). Baumer admits that he, and others, were fooled by this rhetorical deceit. Parents, too, were not reluctant to using words to shame their sons into enlisting.

"At that time even one's parents were ready with the word ' coward' " (Remarque, All Quiet I. 13). Remembering those days, Baumer asserts that, as a result of his war experiences, he has learned how shallow the use of these words was. Indeed, early in his enlistment, Baumer understands that although authority figures, "taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that, we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards-they were very free with these expressions.

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". (Remarque, All Quiet I. 17) What Baumer and his comrades have learned is that the words and expressions used by the society do not reflect the reality of war and of one's participation in it. As the novel progresses, Baumer himself uses words in a similarly false fashion. A number of instances of Baumer's own misuse of language occur during an important episode in the novel-a period of leave when he visits his home town. This leave is unfortunate for Baumer because he realizes that he can not communicate with the people in his home town because of his military experiences and their limited understanding of the war.

When he first enters his house, for example, Baumer is overwhelmed at being home. His joy and relief are such that he cannot speak; he can only weep (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 140). When he and his mother greet each other, he realizes immediately that he has nothing to say to her: "We say very little and I am thankful that she asks nothing" (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 141).

But finally she does speak to him and asks", 'Was it very bad out there, Paul?' " (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 143). Here, when he answers, he lies, apparently to protect her from hearing of the horrible conditions from which he has just returned. He thinks to himself, "Mother, what should I answer to that!

You would not understand, you could never realize it. And you never shall realize it. Was it bad, you ask. -You, Mother, – I shake my head and say: "No, Mother, not so very. There are always a lot of us together so it isn't so bad". (Remarque, All Quiet VII.

143). Even in trying to protect her, by using words that are false, Baumer creates a separation between his mother and himself. Clearly, as Baumer sees it, such knowledge is not for the inexperienced. On another level, however, Baumer cannot respond to his mother's question: he understands that the experiences he has had are so overwhelming that "civilian" language, or any language at all, there would be no use in describing them. Trying to repeat the experience and horrors of the war through words is impossible, Baumer realizes, and so he lies. Any attempt at telling the truth would have no point to it.

During the course of his leave, Baumer also sees his father. The fact that he does not wish to speak with his parent shows Baumer's movement away from the past. Baumer reports that his father "is curious, about the war, in a way that I find stupid and distressing; I no longer have any real contact with him" (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 146). In considering the demands of his father to discuss the war, Baumer, once again, realizes the impossibility, and, in this case, even the danger, of trying to relate the reality of the war through language.

There is nothing he likes more than just hearing about it. I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. 146). Again, Baumer notes the impossibility of making the experience of war meaningful within a verbal context: the war is too big, the words describing it would have to be accordingly enormous and, with their symbolic size, might become uncontrollable and meaningless. While with his father, Baumer meets other men who are certain that they know how to fight and win the war.

Ultimately, Baumer says of his father and of these men that "they talk too much for me They understand of course, they agree, they may even feel it so too, but only with words, only with words" (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 149). Baumer is driven away from the older men because he understands that the words of his father's generation are meaningless in that they do not reflect the realities of the world and of the war as Baumer has come to understand them. Also during his leave, Baumer visits the mother of a fallen comrade, Kemmerich. As he did with his own mother, he lies, this time in an attempt to shield her from the details of her son's death. Moreover, in this conversation, we see Baumer rejecting yet another one of the traditional foundations: religious obedience.

He assures Kemmerich's mother that her son " 'died immediately. He felt absolutely nothing at all. His face was quite calm' " (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 160). Kemmerichs' mother doesn't believe him. She asks him to swear "by everything that is sacred to" him (that is, to God, as far as she is concerned) that what he says is true (Remarque, All Quiet VII.

160). He does so easily because he realizes that nothing is sacred to him. By corrupting this oath, Baumer shows both his unwillingness to communicate honestly with a member of his home town and his rejection of God in his society. Thus, another break with an look of his past life is effected through Baumer's conscious misuse of language.

Contrasted with Baumer's experiences during his visit home are his dealings with his fellow trench soldiers. Unlike Baumer's feelings at home where he chooses not to speak with his father and makes an empty vow to Frau Kemmerich, Baumer is able to effect true communication, of both a verbal and spiritual kind, with his fellow trench soldiers. Indeed, within this group, words can have a meaningful, soothing effect. Not long after his return from leave, Baumer and some of his friends go out on patrol to establish the enemy's strength. During this patrol, Baumer is pinned down in a shell hole, becomes disoriented, and suffers a panic attack.

He states: "Tormented, terrified, in my imagination, I see the grey, implacable muzzle of a rifle which moves noiselessly before me whichever way I try to turn my head" (Remarque, All Quiet IX. 184-85). He is unable to regain his patience until he hears voices behind him. He recognizes the voices and realizes that he is close to his friends in his own trench.

The effect of his fellow soldiers' words on Baumer is contrary to the effect his father's and his father's friends' empty words have on him. At once a new warmth flows through me. These voices, these quiet words behind me recall me at a bound from the terrible loneliness and fear of death? (Remarque, All Quiet IX.

186). Here, Baumer understands the reviving effects of his comrades' words. Strikingly, as opposed to his town's citizens' empty words, the words of Baumer's comrades actually go beyond their literal meanings. That is, since Baumer notices that the words of the traditional world have no meaning, the words of his comrades have more meaning than even they are aware of.

In fact, true communication can exist in the world of the war with few or no words said at all. This circumstance is perhaps best demonstrated in the novel during a scene involving Baumer and his friend, Stanislaus Katczinsky. This scene can be compared to Baumer's meeting with Kemmerich's mother. During that meeting, Kemmerichs' mother insisted on some kind of verbal statement of Baumer's spiritual personality. As noted above, he is quite willing to give her such an assertion because the words he uses in doing so means nothing to him.

With Katczinsky, though, the situation is different because the spirituality of the event is such that words are not necessary. The scene is a simple one. After Baumer and Katczinsky have stolen a goose, in a small deserted lean-to they eat it together. "We sit opposite one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby coats, cooking a goose in the middle of the night.

We don't talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have The grease drips from our hands, in our hearts we are close to one another we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, are so intimate that we do not even speak. (Remarque, All Quiet V. 87). These basic and original activities of getting and then eating food bring about a communion, a feeling "equality", between the two men that clearly cannot be found in the environment of Baumer's home town. Perhaps Remarque wants to make the point that true communication can occur only in action, or in silence, or almost accidentally. At any rate, Baumer demonstrates toward the end of his life that even he is not immune from verbal dishonesty of a kind that was used on him to get him to enlist.

Soon after he hears the comforting words of his comrades, Baumer is caught in another shell hole during the bombardment. Here, he is forced to kill a Frenchman who jumps into it while attacking the German lines. Baumer is horrified at his action. He notes, "This is the first time I have killed with my hands, whom I can see close at hand, whose death is my doing" (Remarque, All Quiet IX.

193). That is, the war, and his part in it, have become much more personalized because now he can actually see the face of his enemy. In his grief, Baumer takes the dead man's pocket-book from him so that he can find out the deceased's name and family situation. Realizing that the man he killed is no monster, that, in fact, he had a family, and is evidently very much like himself, Baumer begins to make promises to the corpse. He indicates that he will write to his family and goes so far as to promise the corpse that he, Baumer, will take his place on earth: " 'I have killed the printer, Gerard Duval. I must be a printer' " (Remarque, All Quiet IX.

197). More importantly, Baumer renounces his status as soldier by apologizing to the corpse for killing him. Ultimately, that is all that Paul Baumer and the reader are left with: war is war. It cannot be defined; it cannot even be discussed with any accuracy.

It has no sense and, in fact, is the idealization of a lack of any kind of meaning. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque shows the disorder created by the war. This disorder affects such elemental societal institutions as the family, the schools, and the church. Moreover, the war is so chaotic that it infects the basic abilities, not the least of which is verbal, of humanity itself. By showing how the First World War harmfully affects the syntax of language, Remarque is able to demonstrate how the war hopelessly changes the order of the world itself..