Humanities IV - Bojana's response to 'All Quiet on the Western Front'

Assignment: How do the experiences of protagonist Paul Baumer and his comrades during the Great War, as expressed in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, relate to who you are, to your past or future, to your fears, hopes, or experiences?

All Quiet on the Western Front was written by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of the war.

I still remember playing imaginary war games with my brothers and the kids in the neighborhood, with our little wooden swords. I can still hear the sound of the warning horn while we are outside and see us wildly running home in excitement. I remember fear for my dad and morning news about where it was bombed the night before. I remember us sitting in the smelly basement and waiting for the warning horn to shush, while playing card games and reading books. I remember my birthday when dad came home for a day. He brought happiness and strawberry-shaped candies, then again a lot of crying when he left.  A drawing that I sent him was in his pocket, always, he said.

We kids almost took it as an imaginary game. It was almost fun. We were brave little warriors with our fathers on the front. Until we knew. That night we were in our usual place, sitting on the logs, looking at the fireflies, listening to the sounds of crickets. We were all quiet, and we knew why. Nevena’s dad was dead, and we did not know why or how, or that that could really happen. It wasn’t just an imaginary game for our fathers, we realized. The air was full of anger and fear.

Then, what happens once it is all done? What happens when warriors return, or they don’t? The streets are quiet. On the faces of the people that are passing by you can often see that they suffered a loss of someone. The only thing you can hear is silence or the words full of anger and sadness. I don’t know which one is worse. Even kids knew that there is only hatred for Albanians and Americans. I know I did, but I most certainly did not understand what that meant. I probably thought that it was some horrible witch, who dared to kill Nevena’s dad, who spilled the bombs from the sky instead of candies, who made our games different. However, what made me remember this time was my dad. He did come back and my happiness was endless. But what distressed me was that he was not the same. No, he was not the same at all. My dad was one of the most cheerful persons I’ve ever seen, but once he returned it was all gone. I did not understand at the time.

Reading All Quiet on the Western Front made my father’s experience at that time of his life clearer in my mind. Paul says, “They talk too much for me. They have worries, aims and desires that I cannot comprehend” (Remarque 168). Similarly my dad became very absent. He didn’t laugh much; he didn’t tell us stories.  It seemed as if the only thing that he wanted to do was “to sit quietly somewhere, in the bear garden, for example, under an old chestnut (Remarque 164), or with my grandma on the balcony. They didn’t talk much, especially when I was there. Mother told us that we have to love Daddy more than ever and be patient with him. I didn’t want much from him. I just wanted him to read again, to play with my brothers, to teach me poems. It made me sad that all these things that we did together with laughter and joy seemed to make him sad now. He didn’t like them. My brothers at that age were eager to know everything about the war. They asked him questions all the time. He loved them and wanted to make them happy, but it was too dangerous for him to put those things into words (Remarque 165).

All of a sudden I found that my beloved father was now almost as a stranger to me. It hurt both me and my brothers, but I don’t think we ever talked about that. Just as my mom told us, he really needed time to adjust to everything again. Soft hearted and emotional as he is, being in the war damaged him a great deal. In All Quiet, Paul says, “Once we return we would be weary, broken, rootless, and without hope” (Remarque 294). I believe that humans are as strong as a rock. This life will hit us hard in the face, but there is nothing that we cannot recover from. The only thing we children could do was to love our dad and help him find his way back to us. His melancholy and hopelessness soon dissipated in the hard work in the fields with our grandpa, in listening me reading fairytales, in watching my brothers playing soccer, and of course in love for my mom.