Aqwf Quote I Want That Quiet Rapture Again

          Erich Maria Remarque'due south All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel  set in World War I, centers around the changes wrought by the war on  one young German soldier. During his time in the war, Remarque'south  protagonist, Paul Baumer, changes from a rather innocent Romantic to a  hardened and somewhat caustic veteran. More importantly, during the  course of this metamorphosis, Baumer disaffiliates himself from those  societal icons-parents, elders, schoolhouse, religion-that had been the  foundation of his pre-enlistment days. This rejection comes about equally a  result of Baumer's realization that the pre-enlistment society simply  does not understand the reality of the Great War. His new gild,  then, becomes the Visitor, his young man trench soldiers, because that is a group which does understand the truth every bit Baumer has experienced it.   Remarque demonstrates Baumer's disaffiliation from the  traditional by emphasizing the language of Baumer'southward pre- and post-enlistment societies. Baumer either can not, or chooses  non to, communicate truthfully with those representatives of his  pre-enlistment and innocent days. Further, he is repulsed by the banal  and meaningless linguistic communication that is used by members of that society. Equally  he becomes alienated from his former, traditional, society, Baumer  simultaneously is able to communicate finer only with his  military machine comrades. Since the novel is told from the showtime person point  of view, the reader can see how the words Baumer speaks are at  variance with his true feelings. In his preface to the novel, Remarque  maintains that "a generation of men ... were destroyed by the state of war" (Remarque, All Quiet Preface). Indeed, in All Quiet on the Western  Front, the meaning of linguistic communication itself is, to a swell extent,  destroyed.   Early on in the novel, Baumer notes how his elders had been facile  with words prior to his enlistment. Specifically, teachers and parents  had used words, passionately at times, to persuade him and other young  men to enlist in the state of war attempt. After relating the tale of a teacher  who exhorted his students to enlist, Baumer states that "teachers  always carry their feelings ready in their waistcoat pockets, and trot  them out by the 60 minutes" (Remarque, All Tranquillity I. 15). Baumer admits that  he, and others, were fooled past this rhetorical trickery. Parents, too, were not balky to using words to shame their sons into  enlisting. "At that time even one's parents were ready with the give-and-take 'coward'" (Remarque, All Quiet I. xv). Remembering those days,  Baumer asserts that, as a result of his war experiences, he has  learned how shallow the employ of these words was.    Indeed, early in his enlistment, Baumer comprehends that although  authorisation figures taught that duty to one's country is the greatest  matter, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all  that, we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards-they were very  free with these expressions. Nosotros loved our country as much equally they; we  went courageously into every action; but as well nosotros distinguished the  simulated from truthful, we had suddenly learned to come across. (Remarque, All Quiet  I. 17)   What Baumer and his comrades have learned is that the words and  expressions used by the pillars of gild do non reflect the reality  of war and of one's participation in it. As the novel progresses,  Baumer himself uses words in a similarly imitation fashion.   A number of instances of Baumer's own misuse of language occur  during an important episode in the novel-a flow of exit when he  visits his dwelling town. This leave is disastrous for Baumer considering he  realizes that he tin can not communicate with the people on the home front  considering of his military experiences and their limited, or nonexistent,  understanding of the war.   When he first enters his firm, for case, Baumer is  overwhelmed at being home. His joy and relief are such that he cannot  speak; he can only weep (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 140). When he and  his mother greet each other, he realizes immediately that he has  nothing to say to her: "We say very little and I am thankful that she asks zippo" (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 141). Only finally she does  speak to him and asks, "'Was it very bad out there, Paul?'" (Remarque,  All Quiet Seven. 143).   Hither, when he answers, he lies, ostensibly to protect her from  hearing of the chaotic conditions from which he has just returned. He  thinks tohimself,   Mother, what should I answer to that! Yous would not   understand, you lot could never realize information technology. And you never shall   realize information technology. Was it bad, you lot ask.-You, Female parent,--I shake my   head and say: "No, Mother, not and then very. There are e'er a   lot of us together and so it isn't so bad."   (Remarque, All Quiet 7. 143)   Even in trying to protect her, by using words that are fake,  Baumer creates a separation between his mother and himself. Clearly, as Baumer sees information technology, such cognition is not for the  uninitiated. On another level, withal, Baumer cannot respond to his  mother's question: he understands that the experiences he has had are  so overwhelming that a "civilian" language, or whatever language at all,  would be ineffective in describing them. Trying to replicate the experience and horrors of the war via words is impossible, Baumer  realizes, and then he lies. Any attempt at telling the truth would, in  fact, trivialize its reality.   During the course of his leave, Baumer also sees his father. The  fact that he does not wish to speak with his parent (i.e., use few or  no words at all) shows Baumer's movement abroad from the traditional  institution of the family. Baumer reports that his male parent "is curious  [about the war] in a way that I find stupid and distressing; I no longer take any real contact with him" (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 146).  In considering the demands of his father to discuss the war, Baumer,  in one case again, realizes the impossibility, and, in this case, even the  danger, of trying to relate the reality of the state of war via language.   In that location is nix he likes more than than just hearing virtually it. I   realize he does not know that a human being cannot talk of such things; I   would practise it willingly, just it is as well dangerous for me to put   these things into words. I am afraid they might and so become   gigantic and I be no longer able to main them.   (Remarque, All Tranquility Seven. 146)   Again, Baumer notes the impossibility of making the experience of  war meaningful within a exact context: the war is too large, the words  describing it would have to be correspondingly immense and, with their  symbolic size, might become uncontrollable and, hence, meaningless.   While with his father, Baumer meets other men who are certain  that they know how to fight and win the war. Ultimately, Baumer says  of his begetter and of these men that "they talk too much for me ...  They understand of course, they hold, they may even feel it and then too,  just only with words, only with words" (Remarque, All Quiet Vii. 149).  Baumer is driven away from the older men because he understands that  the words of his father'due south generation are meaningless in that they do  not reflect the realities of the world and of the state of war as Baumer has  come to empathize them.   Too during his leave, Baumer visits the mother of a fallen  comrade, Kemmerich. Every bit he did with his own mother, he lies, this fourth dimension  in an attempt to shield her from the details of her son'due south lingering  death. Moreover, in this conversation, we run into Baumer rejecting yet  another 1 of the traditional order'southward foundations: religious orthodoxy. He assures Kemmerich'south mother that her son "'died  immediately. He felt absolutely nothing at all. His confront was quite  calm'" (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 160). Frau Kemmerich doesn't believe  him, or, at least, chooses not to. She asks him to swear "past  everything that is sacred to" him (that is, to God, as far as she is concerned) that what he says is truthful (Remarque, All Quiet 7. 160).  He does then easily because he realizes that nada is sacred to him.  By perverting this oath, Baumer shows both his unwillingness to  communicate honestly with a member of the home front and his rejection  of the God of that society. Thus, another break with an attribute of his pre-enlistment order is effected through Baumer'south conscious misuse  of language.   During his get out, perhaps Baumer's about striking realization of  the vacuity of words in his quondam society occurs when he is solitary in  his former room in his parents' house. Subsequently existence unsuccessful in  feeling a part of his former society by speaking with his mother and his  father and his father's friends, Baumer attempts to reaffiliate with  his past past in one case once again becoming a resident of the identify. Here, amidst  his mementos, the pictures and postcards on the wall, the familiar and  comfortable brownish leather sofa, Baumer waits for something that will  let him to feel a function of his pre-enlistment world. It is his old  schoolbooks that symbolize that older, more than contemplative, less armed forces world and which Baumer hopes will bring him back to his  younger innocent means.    I want that quiet rapture again. I want to experience the aforementioned   powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my   books. The jiff of desire that so arose from the colored   backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead   lump of pb that lies somewhere in me and waken again the   impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought,   it shall bring dorsum over again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit down   and wait.   (Remarque, All Tranquility 7. 151)   But Baumer continues to wait and the sign does not come; the  quiet rapture does not occur. The room itself, and the pre-enlistment  earth it represents, become alien to him. "A sudden feeling of  foreignness all of a sudden rises in me. I cannot find my fashion back"  (Remarque, All Quiet Vii. 152). Baumer understands that he is  irredeemably lost to the primitive, military, not-academic earth of  the war. Ultimately, the books are worthless considering the words in them are meaningless. "Words, Words, Words-they do non reach me.  Slowly I identify the books back in the shelves. Nevermore" (Remarque,  All Quiet VII. 153). In his experiences with traditional guild,  Baumer perverts language, that which separates the human from the  fauna, to the point where information technology has no pregnant. Baumer shows his  rejection of that traditional society past refusing to, or existence unable  to, apply the standards of its linguistic communication.   Assorted with Baumer's experiences during his visit home are  his dealings with his swain trench soldiers. Dissimilar Baumer's feelings  at home where he chooses not to speak with his begetter and makes an  empty vow to Frau Kemmerich, Baumer is able to effect true  communication, of both a verbal and spiritual kind, with his young man trench soldiers. Indeed, within this group, words tin have a  meaningful, soothing, even rejuvenating, effect.   Not long after his return from exit, Baumer and some of his  comrades become out on patrol to ascertain the enemy's strength. During  this patrol, Baumer is pinned downward in a beat pigsty, becomes  disoriented, and suffers a panic attack. He states: "Tormented,  terrified, in my imagination, I see the grey, implacable muzzle of a  burglarize which moves noiselessly before me whichever way I endeavour to plough my  caput" (Remarque, All Quiet IX. 184-85). He is unable to regain his  self-possession until he hears voices backside him. He recognizes the voices  and realizes that he is close to his comrades in his own trench. The  effect of his fellow soldiers' words on Baumer is antithetical to the effect his male parent'southward and his male parent'southward friends' empty words have on  him.   At one time a new warmth flows through me. These voices, these quiet   words ... behind me recall me at a bound from the terrible   loneliness and fearfulness of death by which I had been almost   destroyed. They are more to me than life these voices, they are   more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the   strongest, most comforting affair there is anywhere: they are the   voices of my comrades.   I am no longer ... alone in the darkness;--   I belong to them and they to me; we all share the same fear and   the same life, we are nearer than lovers, in a simpler, a harder   fashion; I could coffin my face up in them, in these voices, these words   that take saved me and will stand up by me.   (Remarque, All Quiet IX. 186)   Here, Baumer understands the reviving furnishings of his comrades'  words. Strikingly, as opposed to his town's citizens' empty words, the  words of Baumer's comrades really go across their literal meanings.  That is, whereas Baumer notices that the words of the traditional  world take no meaning, the words of his comrades have more than pregnant  than even they are aware of.   In fact, true communication tin can be in the world of the war  with few or no words said at all. This phenomenon is perhaps best  demonstrated in the novel during a scene involving Baumer and his  2d Company mate, Stanislaus Katczinsky. This scene, with its  Eucharistic overtones, tin exist counterpoised to Baumer's meeting with Kemmerich's mother. During that meeting, Frau Kemmerich insisted  on some kind of verbal attestation of Baumer'due south spiritual disposition.  As noted higher up, he is quite willing to give her such an asseveration because the words he uses in doing so mean nothing to him. With  Katczinsky, though, the state of affairs is unlike because the  spirituality of the event is such that words are non necessary, in  fact, would be hindrances to the communion Baumer and Katczinsky  achieve.  The scene is a simple one. After Baumer and Katczinsky have stolen a  goose, in a minor deserted lean-to they consume it together.   We sit opposite 1 another, Kat and I, 2 soldiers in shabby   coats, cooking a goose in the middle of the night. We don't talk   much, but I believe we have a more than complete communion with one   some other than even lovers take ... The grease drips from our   hands, in our hearts we are close to one another ... nosotros sit down with   a goose between u.s. and feel in unison, are then intimate that nosotros do   not even speak.   (Remarque, All Tranquility V. 87)   These elemental and primitive activities of getting so  eating nutrient bring nearly a communion, a feeling "in unison," betwixt  the two men that conspicuously cannot be establish in the word-heavy environment  of Baumer's dwelling house town. Perhaps Remarque wants to brand the point that  true communication can occur only in action, or in silence, or almost  accidentally. At whatsoever rate, Baumer demonstrates toward the end of his  life that even he is not immune from verbal duplicity of a kind that  was used on him to become him to enlist. Presently after he hears the  comforting words of his comrades (see above), Baumer is caught in  another beat hole during the battery. Here, he is forced to kill  a Frenchman who jumps into information technology while attacking the German lines. Baumer  is horrified at his activeness. He notes, "This is the start fourth dimension I have  killed with my hands, whom I tin run across close at manus, whose decease is my  doing" (Remarque, All Repose Nine. 193). That is, the war, and his part in it, have become much more than personalized considering at present he can really  come across the face of his enemy. In his grief, Baumer takes the dead man'southward  pocket-volume from him so that he tin notice out the deceased's proper noun and  family situation. Realizing that the man he killed is no monster,  that, in fact, he had a family unit, and is plainly very much like himself, Baumer begins to make promises to the corpse. He  indicates that he will write to his family unit and goes so far every bit to  hope the corpse that he, Baumer, will take his place on earth: "'I  take killed the printer, Gerard Duval. I must be a printer'"  (Remarque, All Serenity IX. 197). More than importantly, Baumer renounces his  status as soldier by apologizing to the corpse for killing him.   "Comrade, I did not want to kill you ... You were but an idea to   me earlier, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called along   its advisable response. Information technology was that abstraction I stabbed ...   Forgive me, comrade. We always come across information technology also late. Why do they never   tell us that you lot are poor devils similar us, that your mothers are   simply every bit anxious equally ours, and that we have the same fearfulness of decease,   and the aforementioned dying and the same agony-Forgive me, comrade; how   could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this   compatible you lot could exist my blood brother but like Kat ..."   (Remarque, All Quiet 9. 195)   In addition to the obvious alliance of nations sentiment that  appears in Baumer'south eulogy, it is interesting to note that Baumer sees  that Duval could have been even closer-similar Katczinsky, a member of  Baumer's inner circle of Second Company.   All of the sentiments, all of the words, that Baumer articulates  to Duval are admirable, but they are absolutely false. As time passes,  as he spends more time with the corpse of Duval in the beat-hole,  Baumer realizes that he will not fulfill the various promises he has  made. He cannot write to Duval'due south family; it would be beyond  venial to practice so. Moreover, Baumer renounces his brotherhood  sentiments: "Today you, tomorrow me" (Remarque, All Quiet 9. 197).  Soon, Baumer admits, "I think no more of the dead man, he is of no  consequence to me now" (Remarque, All Quiet IX. 198). And subsequently, to  hedge his bets in case in that location happens to be justice in the universe,  Baumer states, "At present merely to avoid whatsoever ill-luck, I babble  mechanically: 'I will fulfill everything, fulfill everything I take  promised you-' but already I know that I shall non practice so" (Remarque,  All Quiet IX. 198).    Remarque'southward point in this episode is clear: no one is exempt from  the perversion of language vis-a-vis the war. Fifty-fifty Paul Baumer, who  had been disgusted by the meaninglessness of language as demonstrated  in his home town, himself uses words and language that are  meaningless. In one case he is reunited with his comrades later the shell  pigsty episode, Baumer admits "it was mere drivelling nonsense that I  talked out at that place in the shell-hole" (Remarque, All Tranquillity 9. 199). Why  does Baumer do it? Why does he employ the same types of vacuous words  and sentiments that his elders and teachers had used and for which he  has no respect? "Information technology was just because I had to lie [1 assumes that  this double meaning is apparent only in English.] there with him and so  long ... Afterward all, war is war" (Remarque, All Quiet Nine. 200).   Ultimately, that is all that Paul Baumer and the reader are left  with: state of war is war. Information technology cannot exist defined; it cannot even be discussed  with whatsoever accuracy. It has no sense and, in fact, is the apotheosis of  a lack of whatsoever kind of meaning. In All Serenity on the Western Front,  Erich Maria Remarque shows the disorder created by the war. This disorder affects such elemental societal institutions equally the family,  the schools, and the church. Moreover, the war is then chaotic that information technology  infects the bones abilities, not the least of which is verbal, of  humanity itself. By showing how the Kickoff World War deleteriously  affects the syntax of language, Remarque is able to demonstrate how  the war irreparably alters the social club of the globe itself.  --- WORK CITED  Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front.          New                                York                      : Ballantine Books, 1984.        

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