|
Shadows
of War: All Quiet on the Western Front
by
Marilyn Green Faulkner
We
live in the shadow of war. The conflict in the Middle East escalates,
hatred slips across borders of nations, and the nightly newscast
shows us one horrifying scene after another. Though we advance in
every way as a civilization, mankind cannot seem to progress past
war. National interests, greed, religious fanaticism, and ethnic
hatred are some causes of war, but its effect is always personal:
the devastation of the individual, the breaking up of the family,
and the loss of that most precious gift, life.
I have three
books here on my desk about war: All Quiet on the Western Front,
The Longest Day, and We Were Soldiers Once, and Young.
The conflicts they describe were fought by three different generations,
with different technology on different battlegrounds. Yet one feels,
in the end, that it is all one war they describe, one that will
continue to rage on different fronts until the angel's words to
the shepherds finally come to pass, and a new day brings us peace
on earth and good will to men. Until then, we will live in the shadow
of war.
A Lost Generation
Finds a Voice
It is difficult to absorb the statistics of the First World War.
More than sixty-four million men fought, representing nations from
northern Europe to northern Africa, western Asia and the United States.
Over twenty-one million were wounded, and eight million soldiers died,
along with over six million non-combatants. It was the first modern
war, meaning that soldiers faced, for the first time, such threats
as tanks, U-boats, poison gas, and attacks from the air. Yet it was
ultimately a war fought in the trenches, hand-to-hand, by young men
hardly out of their teens. An entire generation was drawn into a conflict
that left its survivors traumatized and alienated.
One young man
who weathered some of the worst fighting of the war attempted to
recreate his experience through fiction. When he was finally mustered
out of the German army in 1918, Erich Maria Remarque returned home
to shattered dreams. His mother had died of cancer and shrapnel
wounds left him unable to pursue his goal of becoming a concert
pianist. Remarque tried several professions over the next decade,
but could not settle to anything. Deprived of innocence, ideals
and traditional beliefs, Erich and his comrades sank into despair,
unable to articulate their feelings to family or friends. In an
interview, Remarque described the process that led him, finally,
to confront his nightmares:
"It was through…deliberate
acts of self-analysis that I found my way back to my war experiences.
I could observe a similar phenomenon in many of my friends and acquaintances.
The shadow of war hung over us, especially when we tried to shut
our minds to it. The very day this thought struck me, I put pen
to paper, without much in the way of prior thought."
All Quiet
on the Western Front is the story of a young man, Paul Baumer,
full of ideals and enthusiasm, who is inspired by his professor
to enlist in the German army, along with his seven classmates. Told
in the first person, the novel draws us gradually through Paul's
eyes into the horrendous world of the front, where with him we experience
every form of death, disease and despair. This is no heroic saga
– John Wayne will not be appearing – but only the tragedy
of boys forced into a world they did not create and cannot comprehend.
Remarque opens his novel with a simple, two sentence declaration,
which sets the quiet tone of the narrative and alerts us that we
are in for a different kind of war novel. "This book is to be neither
an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for
death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it.
It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though
they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."
When it appeared
in 1930 All Quiet on the Western Front touched an immediate
chord, and sold over a million copies. It was eventually banned
and burned by the Hitler's fascist regime, and later, when
the book was turned into a film, Hitler's youth overran theaters,
released mice and tossed stink bombs into the theaters to discourage
audiences. Remarque eventually escaped Germany and the Gestapo and
fled to America, where he was welcomed as a hero. (His beloved sister,
however, was imprisoned and beheaded by the Nazis in revenge for
his pacifist stance.) Remarque spent the remainder of his life writing
fiction that explored the devastation and alienation caused by war.
Several of his novels were made into films. Attracted to the glamour
of Hollywood, he liked to socialize with other famous authors like
Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and eventually married the actress Paulette
Goddard, with whom he spent the last twenty years of his life. He
died in Switzerland in 1970.
This is a gritty,
unsettling, and beautiful book. The horrifying details of death
are interspersed with moments of pure poetry. Take for example,
a typical moment where Paul lies, face down in the mud, in the middle
of an attack, and we are given this beautiful description of the
earth:
"To no man does
the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself
down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his
limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she
is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror
and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him
and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of
life; receives him again and often forever."
When All
Quiet on the Western Front debuted as a film, Variety
magazine commented that the League of Nations should "buy up the
master-print, reproduce it in every language to be shown to every
nation every year until the word war is taken out of the
dictionaries." Unfortunately, no voice, no matter how impassioned,
seems capable of holding back the tide of war. Less than a decade
after the publication of this book, World War II began.
Two Great Battles,
Two Great Books
June 6, 1944, known forever as D-Day, is the subject of Cornelius
Ryan's classic epic, The Longest Day. The format of the
book is deceptively simple: it begins at six in the morning of that
day, and ends at midnight. In the course of those eighteen hours Ryan
pulls together the fascinating stories of paratroopers, infantry,
officers and civilians who met in the invasion of Normandy, the beginning
of the end of the Third Reich. It is a magnificent piece of work,
and sets the style for another fine book that you may find in your
checkout line at the grocery store right now, We Were Soldiers
Once, and Young, by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore.
Like Ryan, Moore
takes a crucial battle (Ia Drang, the first major conflict between
American troops and the Viet Cong) step-by-step, hour-by-hour. Unlike
Ryan, however, Moore offers us the perspective of the man in charge.
Sent to Vietnam with the mandate to wage a new kind of battle on
an unfamiliar front, Moore's resilience, courage and morality
are as inspiring as the stories of individual valor he relates.
He is such a modest man that you must read between the lines to
appreciate his heroism. I was inspired by his commitment to "leave
no man on the field," and the lengths to which he was willing to
go in order to keep that promise. In a war that is a dark memory
for most Americans, the bravery of these soldiers stands as a testament
that the worst of times can bring out some of the best in men. Remarque
and Ryan and Moore remind us that one of the only benefits of war
is the brotherhood it inspires.
All Quiet on
the Western Front is the April selection for the Best Books Club.
Write and share your favorite books about war, both fiction and
non-fiction. Send your comments to me at Meridian, or log on to
our website at www.thebestbooksclub.com.
Readers
Comment on Favorite Selections
O Pioneers!
You are a missionary
for literature, as I am for music! I read "O Pioneers!" and enjoyed
it very much. I think you and I relate to Alexandra because she
is a strong woman and carves out her own paths,
No matter what
others think. Of course that path always comes with some pain, and
she experienced plenty of that. Carl, on the other hand says, "I've
been away engraving other men's pictures, and you've stayed at
Home and made
your own." Commenting on others, Alexandra says, "Frank's not a
bad neighbor, but to get on with him you've got to make a fuss over
him and act as if you thought he was a very important person all
the time..." High maintenance people are wearing, aren't they? Carl
speaks of farm versus city life; no one would notice if he dropped
off the earth in the city. How true! Sue
The House
of Mirth
I do have to
write to say "thank-you, thank-you, thank-you" so much for including
Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth" on your list for Best
Books this Month of March.
I am a part-time
student, in my early 40's who decided to go back to school approximately
3 years ago. I am now in my second semester and I'm taking of all
things, American Literature II. Believe it or not, the book
we are now reading is "The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton.
I find it somewhat
of a coincidence that this recommendation to read Edith Wharton's
book come now as I myself am actually in need of reading it for
a class Im taking in school. But, I guess we can say, that its again
one of those little miracles of life that serves as a reassurance
that once again, we are truly doing the right thing.
So, I wanted
to thank you personally, for suggesting this book. I am enjoying
it, and I didn't think I would. But, I am and I am also seeing the
comparison and where it fits in to the comparison of other women
I have also read about in other famous works of American Literature.
Lynda
The Count
of Monte Cristo
I just finished
reading this book last week and am depressed that it is over and
that I read it so quickly! There are few books in my
life that I would ever consider reading more than once, but I am
certain that I will read this wonderful book again. Rene
Miscellaneous
Two books I
recently read and would like to hear more discussion are The
Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall and The Prize
Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids
on 25 Words or Less by Terry Ryan . I am interested in
discussing Brady Udall's book because he is a Mormon writer who
writes wonderful descriptions and compelling stories and is very
respected in the literary world. However, there are some "gritty"
parts (as he calls them) that would not be G-rated.
The Terry Ryan
book makes me reminisce over the ways I as a mother of six children
found to stay stimulated among the many duties one has with children.
Also, it caused me to reflect on the ways my mother had to be resourceful
to provide for me and deal with a very stingy husband who valued
nothing but his own tools. It isn't a great piece of literature,
but certainly an admirable reflection on motherhood and an entertaining
biography.
I look forward
to your selections. Judy
Click
here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.
© 2002Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
|
