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Stabbing an abstraction.

I’ve read a decent amount of war books, both fiction and non-fiction an All Quiet has always been up there for me along with Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse My reread of All Quiet reminded me of what an exceptional book this is and what a landmark impact it had when it was written as well as today. I would like to remind you that this book was banned by the Nazi party when it came into power. Why? Because this book thoroughly describes the dehumanizing and de-identifying impact that war has on a young soldier.

I am young, I am twenty years old yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how people are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.

This book is the story of how life was robbed from the young men in these pages, both on the German side and all other sides. This book crumbles borders and rationalizations and simply portrays the utter absurdity of young people having their youth and lives robbed from them to fight utterly stupid wars on behalf of utterly stupid people. Given that WWI was mostly a war between imperial rivals, it was a very stupid war.

Nonsense stands stark and immediate beside horror.

The author shows the mundane life told alongside the horrors and gore of war. The tedium and violence live not just side by side, but together. The life of the main character is both boring and deadly. The beautiful comradery built between the young men is the crown jewel of the book and shows that really the only motivation for the main character is his love for his friends. That’s really the only thing keeping his sanity together.

One of the most poignant parts of the book, and likely why it was banned by the Nazis, is the conversation the main character has with a French soldier who is dying in front of him:

Comrade I did not want to kill you., If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth appropriate responses. It was the abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and your fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late.