He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in war.
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
The quote from Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, encapsulates the profound disillusionment and existential crisis experienced by soldiers during World War I.
The novel, published in 1929, is narrated by Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier who, along with his classmates, is encouraged to join the army by their schoolmaster.
[Read more…] about Reading Between the Lines – ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’