Adult's conflicts.Child's play.

Give'em all the same grub and all the same pay
And the war would be over and done in a day.

I decided to start this blog with this quote said by Katczinsky from All Quiet on the Western Front, because I could interpret it in so many different ways. It was also the thing that jumped out at me while I was reading. One of the ways it could be interpreted is: if all the leaders in the countries go through what the soldiers are going through now, they would realize how harsh it is, and perhaps end the war. Also, the protagonist and his friends discuss about how the war could be simplified. Kropp, who was a thinker, suggested that war could just be a festival with tickets being sold. Generals and ministers could just fight it out in an arena, and whoever wins will represent victory of a country. That would've been much simpler than sending all these innocent young men to die. That sarcastic but true statement made me laugh. It also added the generals and ministers to the antagonist category. War and the leaders of countries were sending these men to the grave faster than anything. To be specific, it is the leaders who started the war, therefore they would be the main antagonist.

Through what I have read, I learnt more about Paul's friends. Kropp, was a thinker, who likes to think up ideas and analyze things that surround him, as we could see in the festival proposal he brought up. Tjaden seem the most immature of them all; he likes to eat, and could easily be carried away. We could see that through their revenge on a hated leader of the soldiers, Himmelstoss. The guys play a prank on the strict man, using a bed cover to cover his head, they pulled off his trousers and beat him. They ran away before he could see who they were, all that was left was the bed cover. Tjaden had been strictly educated by this man, so he got a bit carried away in beating the man. Kat(katczinky) was the one with the best survival instincts. If they were stranded in a hole with no food, he would go "explore" and come back with what the soldiers in the war situation call a "feast".

I found that the soldiers were almost a different species of people due to the situations they were stuck in. They called themselves"thick-skinned", because they didn't care of things that would probably get a normal person to shame. All they wanted, was to live. When a person inhales deeply when coming up from a pool, a soldier would jump to their beloved earth when they hear a bomb, or something like it. Paul described it as an instinct, they wouldn't have to think twice. He called themselves human animals.

It was also during times like this, when the human "beast" as they call it reveal themselves with authority. A leader would be praised of being strict while doing unnecessary acts of discipline just because they can.

The reason why this book is banned so far, is because it holds the harsh reality that shouldn't crash a child's imagination. Being alert of dying, bombing, and watching people die as if it was seeing your own backyard isn't the fairytale that parents want their children to know about. However, I think this is a fantastic book for teenagers, because they would learn the harsh conditions during war. They would learn the significance of Remembrance Day, and learn to respect the soldiers who sacrificed themselves for it.