Essay Database

"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know no thing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow...." said by Paul Baumer during his time at war in All Quiet on the Western Front. This quote represents how the war changed Paul's view and attitude toward life. Paul, a once hopeful, sensitive boy, enlisted into the war right out of school, faced traumatizing experiences that …

…ever will in a lifetime, he dies. He came into the war as a young optimistic boy and went through many experiences, which changed him dramatically into a mature, hardened man. Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front, went on to write of Paul, "Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."