Remarque's account of the horrors of the Western Front during World War I, from the perspective of the ordinary German soldier, is a poignant reminder of the horrors of war. Dehumanization, death and destruction are the key themes told through the eyes of Paul Baumer, soldier of the Great War of 1914-1918 and narrator of All Quiet on the Western Front. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Dehumanization is a central theme in the novel, as the characters transform from young to old, from idealistic and patriotic youth to a crude and violent group of state assassins who mercilessly kill others for their own survival and, in definitive, from men with hopes and dreams to men with nothing to expect. Indeed, the mild and gentle influences of parents, teachers and “the whole course of civilization from Plato to Goethe” (16) are swept away and the hardcore, militaristic values ​​of “salute, frontal gaze…cruelty” are instilled (16 ). in the young men, who are sent to face the harsh realities of war after their brief training. There is therefore a disjunction between how soldiers see war and how those who do not participate see it. Kantorek, the teacher, loudly extols the virtue of patriotism but does not see firsthand – as his students do – the consequences of that patriotism in war. The teacher is cowardly in gleefully sending students to their deaths while extolling empty virtues that are not reflected at the forefront. Even civilians on the home front are unaware of what the front is like, but they ask the brave boys to win the war and bring back good news from Paris. They have absolutely no idea what war is. Baumer's response to civilian ignorance is to realize that civilians and soldiers actually live in two separate worlds. “We have turned into human animals,” (40) he states, suggesting not only that he and his fellow soldiers are no longer fully human, but also that war turns all of its participants into beasts. Later, Baumer and his companion Detering witness the horses being seriously injured during an attack. Detering, who has a deep appreciation for horses, comments that “It is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into a war” (45) because they are innocent of crimes and must suffer from human causes. If soldiers become like animals, as Baumer had stated, dragging them into war is just as wrong as bringing horses into it. Death is ever-present in the novel, and there is massive physical and psychological destruction throughout the trenches. Soldiers die every day during prolonged bombings made particularly lethal by poisonous gas. Death permeates all the scenes of the novel, including that of the hospital, whose occupants will not leave alive. The artillery attack on a cemetery, where the lives of the soldiers depend on the coffins containing the dead, represents the total destruction of respect and normality. The corpses figuratively died more than once. The destruction extends to the characters' individual lives. The older men had jobs and occupations before the war, but the younger soldiers had nothing to attach themselves to back then. They have nothing to look forward to except torn and shattered dreams, with no hope of progress or future. They no longer have “the desire to conquer the world” and are “refugees… fleeing from ourselves” (63). Many of them, like the famous war veteran "Kat", who survives everything only to eventually die from an invisible shrapnel wound, don't make it out alive. Death and destruction do not spare.