The Innocence of Winging It

Talking points about the movie and the novel "All Quiet on the Western Front".

1. If you're going to include everything from the novel into the movie, why can't it happen in the order it was written? The dynamic of something chagnes everytime that happens even if it still portrays the same emotions as before.

2. Paul still believes in the innocence of youth deep down inside, if he didn't he wouldn't have lasted as long as he did. Even though most of war is luck, it still has a lot to do with mindset. The newbies in the trenches were likely to go crazy faster because they hadn't had time to adapt like the men who had been there longer. All about presence of mind.

3. The movie was banned from many countries (Italy (1956), Australia (1941), France (1963), and Austria (1980)) and almost banned in the U.S.because it was branded as "anti-military propaganda" and because it had a "sympathetic treatment of Germans".* And many versions of the movie were censored or cut to fit specific countries views. **

4. The director of the movie, while he was filming, actually put out a call for German WW1 army veterans to authenticate uniforms and equipment. Many were cast as officers in the movie and had them drill extras in the movie. **

5. A comical end note: Even though it is his death scene there was a large goof in production. Paul reaches for the butterfly with his left hand but in the close up it shows his right. The hand however, is not even Paul's actor to begin with. It is actually the director's. **








http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?isPreview=&id=355269%7C357370&name=All-Quiet-On-the-Western-Front *

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020629/ **

Paul Baumer...My God That's One Letter Away From Bauman...

Paul Baumer is the narrator of the book, All Quiet On The Western Front. The book is narrated in 1st person and set up to be like a diary of Paul’s experiences during war.

When we start the story, he is a 19-year-old boy just graduated from high school with a mother, father, and older sister. Due to intense pressure from society (namely one of his school teachers), Paul enlists in the German army along with 27 of his other classmates. Paul begins the story with several friends, still a little green around the gills and optimistic about life. Most of the book is filled with Paul’s philosophical thinking, reflecting on the war and what it has done to him and the other men in his platoon. He talks about not only the physical limits he is pushed to, but also the psychological limits he experiences. Paul struggles with trying to keep his sanity while battling in a war he is losing, as well as dealing with the brutal situations which come with trench warfare.

"Just as we turn into animals when we go up to the line . . . so we turn into wags and loafers
when we are resting. . . . We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with
feelings which, though they may be ornamental enough in peacetime, would be out of place
here.” (Chapter 7, All Quiet on the Western Front)

Paul speaks of how the war turned him into an animal during battle, because he could only rely
on his most basic instincts, or else he would surely die.

Paul Baumer is a kind and gentle young man, but because of the war and the pain it
induces, Paul learns how to disconnect his mind from his heart. By doing this, Paul becomes
unable to feel the heartache of his comrades’ deaths, as well as the ability to conjure the idea of
a future without war. The most disheartening thing that Paul loses because of the war was his
capacity to feel at home among his family and town that he once loved so much.



Mackenzie Branch
James Kreiman
Amanda Goedeke
Jake Mueller

All Quiet on the Western Front...Last Couple Pages...Does It Really Count As A Chapter?

By Chapter Twelve of All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer is disillusioned with his role in life and the role of his life as it used to be. All his adult life he has been entrenched in a war that has basically consumed everything about the world as he knew it and destroyed his perception of what everyone else would see as a normal and functioning society. As seen in the chapter where he visits home, Paul actually misses the battlefield when he is gone. He can no longer function under the normal pressures of society as his body has gotten used to being in high pressure situations all the time.

“Everyone talks of peace and armistice. All wait. If it again proves an illusion, then they will break up; hope is high, it cannot be taken away again without upheaval. If there is not peace, then there will be revolution.” (Chapter 12, All Quiet on the Western Front)

            And even though he’d miss the battlefield, it has grown old. Watching people die and living in constant fear that he could be the next to go.

“It cannot be that it has gone, the yearning that made our blood unquiet, the unknown, the perplexing, the oncoming things, the thousand faces of the future, the melodies from dreams and from books, the whispers and divinations of women; it cannot be that this has vanished in bombardment, in despair, in brothels.” (Chapter 12, All Quiet on the Western Front)

            It is possible though, that he still believes in the innocence of youth. That even though his classmates and other soldiers his age and younger have had to live and die on the battlefield, they still contain traces of the young men that they were. Hope for the future and hope of a future love still being held close to their hearts.

“There are not many of the old hands left. I am the last of the seven fellows from our class.” (Chapter 12, All Quiet on the Western Front)

            He is the last surviving character that was introduced at the beginning of the novel, which makes sense he being the narrator and all. Of course that all changes on the backside of the last page when we learn he died on the quietest day of the year in what is possibly the least descript death of a main character ever. What killed him? A sniper? Too much gas inhalation? A ninja? Maybe even a bee sting? It is unlikely however, that it was as is shown in the movie. There were no birds or drawings involved.

Amanda Goedeke
Mackenzie Branch
James Kreiman
Jake Mueller