Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is an anti-war novel from the opening chapters. Many critics of the novel in the early days after the publication of the novel blamed Remarque for writing for shock value. They did not want to believe his novel represented the truth about World War I. In many ways, such people were like Paul's schoolmaster, Kantorek. They wanted to cling to classical, romantic notions of war. However, Remarque wrote his …

…to prosecute it. Moreover, the hospital is filled with men suffering from permanently disfiguring injuries. There are wards for soldiers suffering from poison gas injuries, amputations, blindness, and various other injuries. The hospital in a museum of the vast array of maiming or lethal injuries to which the human body is subject in modern warfare. It is the place where the most succinct and shocking evidence of the human costs of war can be seen