<p>Has anyone read this and not hated it? I am reading it for a class and detest it. I just can't get into it. Can someone give me a new perspective or something so I can finish the book? Thanks</p>
<p>i liked that book. i dont know what perspective i could give you on it, though, except that it's lauded as being an extremely accurate description of the cruelties of war. and this is in a time period when war was considered "noble"; most novels took the romantic approach instead of the realistic one. remarque's novel was quite a shock to the system.</p>
<p>i dunno, try picturing yourself in paul baumer's place. the war snatches you out of adolescence and becomes your life. the men in your regiment (err...i think thats what it was) are your only friends and your only company. they start dying off one by one, meaninglessly, gruesomely, in front of your eyes. i think this is the basic message remarque is trying to convey with this novel. </p>
<p>i read this book a year and a half ago, so sorry if my memory isnt quite accurate...</p>
<p>(err...i hope this is AQotWF...maybe this was Red Badge of Courage, i dont know...its all blending together)</p>
<p>hahaha no JimmyeatWorld, you are definitely talking about the right book, and your description is accurate. </p>
<p>I thoroughly enjoyed the book, especially the realism associated with it. It is quite an easy read too, and wouldn't take you long to complete. In other words, I definitely think you should read it.</p>
<p>This book will make you a pacifist.</p>
<p><em>thumbs up</em></p>
<p>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 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 my 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."</p>
<p>I had to read it when I was in middle school, and I loved it.</p>
<p>The book was good but I thought the ending was a little anti climatic. Nice to see the war from the German Perspective though, seeing them as living, breathing people, rather than crazy nazi psychos.</p>
<p>Another really good WWII book is The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw. Excellent book, I highly recommend it to anyone.</p>
<p>Well, in All Quiet on the Western Front, there are no Nazis. It's WWI ;p</p>
<p>I wonder though, are there any good novels written from a German perspective in WWII?</p>
<p>^... The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw</p>
<p>It actually follows the lives of three soldiers in WWII, that of a american filmmaker turned soldier, a young jewish soldier and a german sergeant.</p>
<p>it's an excellent read.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone, I read some more and now it is better,</p>
<p>Yeah i thought it was pretty boring too. A better war novel, in my opinion, is the far less-well-known "La Debacle" by Emile Zola.</p>
<p>As far as thomaschau's question about novels addressing World War II from a German persective, I know Gunter Grass has written several, including the hugley popular "Tin Drum." However, I havn't read it, so I can't really say much about it. The movies Stalingrad and Das Boot are both German movies about World War II.</p>
<p>i had to read it my freshman year.. or summer before fresh year i cant remember. i liked it even though it depressed me. i remember the passage thomaschu wrote about, when he was in the hole and he killed the man (who was french if i remember correctly?). it was so sad, but well written. just try and picture yourself as the character, learn his emotions etc. you're going to have to read plenty of books like that throughout highschool, so might as well start to enjoy them otherwise it will suck. (or i guess you can always read cliff notes but i find i never remember anything from cliff notes vs actually spending time reading the books)</p>
<p>You should read "Panzer Commander" or something like that by von Bock, a general during WW2. I think Heinz Guderian also published a memoir about blitzkreig tactics, extremely interesting for history buffs like me! :)</p>
<p>oh all quiet. we had to read it in world history. and everyone basically got what the teacher was trying to point out about war being horrid and terrible, but everyone found the book itself pretty boring. and we all failed the reading quizzes.</p>
<p>That Is The Worst Book I Have Ever Read And Reading It Was Like Committing Slow Suicide</p>
<p>All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the best novels I've read in a long time, perhaps even one of my favorite books. </p>
<p>Remarque just has this incredible style. He is a master of juxtaposition. He'll place the most gorgeous images within the most gruesome of circumstances. There's a particularly powerful scene in which Baumer watches from the trenches as a butterfly lands on the teeth of a skull. It's just little things like that, but together they form this really powerful sense that war is the farthest thing we can get from nature and from beauty. It sounds simple and obvious, but the way Remarque presents it is very striking, IMO. </p>
<p>I don't know what to say about you not liking the book, except that I suggest you watch for the little stuff. Even if you can't get into the plot or the characters, the novel is chock full of amazing descriptions/imagery/symbols (kemmerich's boots) that are easy to latch onto.</p>
<p>One of my favorite novels of all time, even if my classmates begged to differ at the time we were reading them. Haha. This book did what Johnny Get Your Get failed to do. Exceptional.</p>
<p>I've yet to read The Road Home, though. I should pick that up sometimes.</p>
<p>I had to read it for a writing class, and I didn't enjoy it. I don't even like war stories.</p>
<p>After reading it, we had a little discussion about the book. I think the best thing about the book was that the book present the irony of the war. This is a fact: On Sunday, which's known as the "Holy day", people from two sides would make a fire. Instead, they would come out, all soldiers mixed and seperated into 2 groups and played soccer, or whatever games they could think of. And after that, on Monday, they started to kill each other again. Ironic: killed or being killed, that's the fact. So on the next Sunday, the men came out to play games again. They would ask "oh where's Peter?" or "Where's John?". The men's comrades would say "ohh he got killed on Wednesday". The men from this side would say "ohh I'm so sorry to hear that...". My teacher read this on a magazine and told us about it. It was crazy. Just know this story, you won't get bored anymore...</p>
<p>I read it a long time ago, so I don't remember it that well. I read it on my own and finished it without a problem, so I assume it must have been reasonably good, but the fact that I don't remember it well means I didn't find the story exceptional. There are better war novels in my opinion.</p>
<p>I kinda liked it, until I watched TWO films on it.</p>
<p>And the film completely, holistically, utterly ruined any love I ever had for the book.</p>
<p>I don't know how that'll help you... but don't watch the movies if you want to "get into it."</p>
<p>The movies were so awful/emo/lame/pitiful.</p>