Dehumanisation in All Quiet on the Western Front Essay

War: Man v. Man, or Animal v. Animal?

Killing another human is a difficult task, but what if it was only the helmet being shot ay not the person wearing it? In the mind, would it be easier to try to kill the helmet than to think about ending another life forever? In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, there are multiple instances where his main character Paul uses animals as a metaphor to dehumanize war. When actually describing soldiers in a human form, it is only to express despair and regret. He ultimately shows that not thinking about the enemy as a person can help keep a soldier sane.

In a Russian prison camp that Paul is helping to guard, he already sees the enemies as animals saying, They seem nervous and fearful, though most of them are big fellows with beards they look like meek, scolded, St. Bernard dogs (189). In this part Remarque uses an anthropomorphism to describe how even prisoners-of-war are considered some form of animal.

A standard firing squad uses 20 riflemen, but only one of the mens rifles has an actual bullet in the chamber so that the person who actually took the life of another does not know it so as not to end up feeling guilty for killing another human being. In the heat of battle the enemy must be killed no matter what: In this passage, Paul has just stabbed a man and is now having to watch him die slowly since he is trapped next to the groaning soldier.

This the first time I have killed with my hands whom I can see close at hand, whose death is my doingevery gasp lays my heart bare. This dying man has time with him, he has an invisible dagger with which he stabs me (221).

After killing an enemy with his own hands, Paul feels remorse for his actions. He sees for the first time a living, breathing person instead of the faceless, evil enemy. As the realization is had, Paul vainly attempts to save the soldier from dying.

While retaliating against the French who have started to retreat after a failed trench raid, Paul has a realization about what war does to men:

We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting is down now, for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger. No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and be avenged. (113)

Paul has the realization that men become animals when kept in the trenches shooting at faceless enemies. When the real battle comes, he feels himself fighting tooth and nail to kill the enemy to preserve his own life. Remorse is not to be felt until after the battle has calmed.

Remarque most accurately describes the dehumanization process while his character Paul is in the shell hole. Back to where Paul is with the now dead French soldier he has his most powerful revelation of what war is and whom it affects:

The silence spreads. I talk and must talk. So I speak to him and say to 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 its appropriate response. It was that 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 our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are just poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony Forgive me, comrade; how could you be the enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother just like Kat and Albert. Take twenty years of my life comrade, and stand up take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now. (223)

With this last soliloquy of Pauls he realizes most strongly how war dehumanizes soldiers. He feels an incredible amount of remorse for taking this soldiers life; Paul realizes that without the war, he could have been a brother with this man instead of his murderer.

As a soldier in World War 1, Remarque chose to use the motif of animal soldiers to express how war affects the men and causes them to act. His main character Paul transformed through the story from a ruthless enemy-killing-machine to a remorseful soldier who wishes he had never enlisted.