The Effect of World War1 on Masculinity in All Quiet on the Western Front - Book Report/Review Example

The Effect of World War1 on Masculinity, as Represented in “All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque.” Name Institution Introduction The book All Quiet on the Western Front, authored by Erich Maria Remarque, unchained a cultural war that monopolized warfare with masculinity. When World War 1 occurrence, there was no articulate description of masculinity nor was there a subsequent description. The ideology of blood and iron had a deep ingrain in masculinity in the German social anima. The analogy of masculinise as propagated at the time was an imagery of male cogency, fearlessness and militarism at the battlefield. A pusillanimous nature was principal to lack of masculinity. During the World War 1 militarism and its corollary of combat represented an interpretation of sanction of war and the confederacy of masculinity as well as the illumination of the strength of a nation. The problematization of manliness. Conventionally manliness means being strong and brave. The book has a clear depiction of the pressures of masculinity. Innocent and inexperienced schoolboys make sacrifices of their future by ring to actualize their gender roles. Unaware to them, the horrors of war are too atrocious that they become “poor brave wretches, who are so terrified that they dare not to cry out loudly… only whimper softly for their mothers and cease as soon as one looks at them”1 They come to the realization that virility and intrepidity would not save them from bullets, explosions, and grenades. Paul and his comrades are inept on the battlefield because they have had minimal military training. Additionally, they do not have survival instincts, which lead to death, and for those who survive they face mental torment as they come to terms with their demons. As a last resort, these soldiers resort to acts of self-destruction as they loosen their grip on rationality and look for a resolve from overwhelming agony and responsibility. The recruits only share their despondency, fatigue, and loneliness with the earth.2 For them, the ground is more of a haven for protection. The earth is symbolic of the motherly love they yearn for and soothes their pain as their connection with the earth foreshadows the forthcoming of their deaths. The role of suffering When soldiers tried to reintegrate back into the society, they faced challenges due to the trauma caused by war. At one point, we see Paul carry his friend to a medical tent but he dies a few moments before their arrival. The book explains an atmosphere of futile death lacking in cause and effect. Theirs is a struggle to exist despite their anguish and not a showcase of heroism. In the trenches of the war, there is loss of personhood as the recruits live through the slaughter of a war.2 Destroyed by the facades of war, Paul’s generation dies and rots in the battlefield. The young men have to suffer through seeing their friends blown to pieces in front of their eyes. "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. Kemmerich is dead, Haie Westhus is dying . . . Martens has no legs anymore, Meyer is dead, Max is dead, Beyer is dead, Hammerling is dead . . . it is a damnable business, but what has it to do with us now—we live."3 Paul previously wrote poems and was very passionate about his family. He finds it a challenge to connect with his family, mourn his dead, or even reintegrate back to civilian life and cannot fathom a future devoid of war. In the battlefield, Paul and his fellow soldiers are inclined to adopt an animalistic instinct to kill and survive in warfare. The soldiers eventually end up in a piteous state where they find solitude in their deaths as expressed in the death of Paul “his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.”4 Integrating back to the society was more traumatizing than dying in battle. Advancement of technology as a factor in the dehumanization of the male body The book All Quiet on the Western Front depicted new technologies such as poison gas, rapid-firing artillery, and the tank during the World War 1. The book also represents the victory of humanity’s artificial world over the natural world. Soldiers encounter constant battle on the war front that dehumanizes them. However, rather shrewdly, dehumanization is inescapable for a soldier’s survival.5 World War 1 saw the largest cohort of soldiers injured and mutilated that the world has ever seen. The outcome led to significant advantages in the mechanics of prosthetic limbs. Machines treat the soldiers only as able bodies that eventually consume them. Their final deaths and dehumanization are tragic and sad.6 In the book, we see Himmelstoss’s “Change at Löhne” drill as an indication of a highly rationalized military that is highly impersonal. Paul brings about a metamorphosis notion of a hero when he introduces who was their assumed leader. Kat, who was older than the entire group, mainly focused on lessening the soldier’s pain and not sacrifice or bravery. To him, modern warfare was the enemy and not the English nor the French. Remarque’s associates Kat with conservatism. At one point, Paul and his fellow soldiers have to sleep in a factory; Kat in his conservatism nature finds a box of straw on which they lay. Kat is the ultimate symbol of resistance a hero who is unaffected by dehumanization as he can act and think for himself.7 To him, modern warfare was the enemy and not the English nor the French. Remarque’s associates Kat with conservatism. At one point, Paul and his fellow soldiers have to sleep in a factory; Kat in his conservatism nature finds a box of straw on which they lay. Kat is the ultimate symbol of resistance a hero who is unaffected by dehumanization as he can act and think for himself. The pressures of masculinity post-World War 1 period Paul realizes that he has lost himself when he leaves for home, and a sense of disconnectedness encompasses his being. Once he is home individual thoughts run through his mind “You are at home, you are at home. However, a sense of strangeness will not leave me; I cannot feel at home amongst these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there my case of butterflies, and there the mahogany piano- but I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil between”.8 Their service in the battlefield leaves them detached from their human nature. 9 They do not get to enjoy their youth. The soldiers have to grow up too fast. The horrors of war have changed them into barbarians whose only instinct is for survival.10 They have become indifferent to their fate and their resort is accepting their fate. They are at battle within themselves. The German society ideals of masculinity were that of service and patriotic duty in pursuit of personal accomplishment or mutual goals. In the epitaph, Remarque comments that his book would try to narrate about a generation of men who, despite escaping shells, war had destroyed them.11 After killing the French soldier, Paul becomes remorseful and distraught and pledges to do something to atone for his sin. However, when he tells the other soldiers of the encounter, they urge him to be a man and forget about the incidence of it was part of the war. Additionally, when Paul goes home he cries for the dying enemy French man but the situation called for him to fight to stay alive. Albert reflects that the war had ruined them for everything. Paul agrees with him and affirms the facts about the effect of the war on their well-being. In a bid to meet the expectations placed upon their masculinity, they have who they are. They lead their lives blindly believing that they serve their country and stay true to the common belief of the roles of a man. 12The nature of masculinity they have to adapt to in the Western Front has detached them from their humanity.13 Their experience in the trenches steals their hopes and dreams, and everything they ever wished to be. Femininity threatened masculinity in the Weimar Republic Back in the trenches of the Western Front, the soldiers built relationships and strengthened them with the horrors of war. The feminine human aspects include sensitivity, non-violence, and compassion. As their teacher persuaded them to join the fight for their country, he called them the Iron youth. At the cradle of their war journey, they discovered that they were not iron. They had feelings and were vulnerable and what they were disappointed to realise that the world was not as shinny as advertised. 14 Theirs was an inner battle to fight their feminine side so that they could triumph over their male adversaries.15Their schoolmaster indoctrinates Paul and his schoolmates about the honor of enlisting in the war. Behm, was the most feminine of the group, enlists with his schoolmates in a bid to avoid shunning by his peers.16 Sadly, he is the first to die in the group. The group expresses their feminine side on Kemmerich’s death. Paul originated from the same village as Kemmerich’s and the words of his mother haunt Paul. A description of Kemmerich’s mother intends to portray a motherly figure into the battlefield. “His mother, a good plump matron, brought him to the station. She wept continually; her face was bloated and swollen…."17 In war, it is every man for himself and despite the imploration of Kemmerich’s mother, the masculine ironness must dominate. He further laments because he can do nothing about the fact that Kemmerich’s had died. He was obligated to bear the sad news to Kemmerich’s mother who by no means was not an easy a task.18 In their turmoil at the front, the soldiers can only experience maternal comfort from the earth; “From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us--mostly from the earth.  To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier... she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him…”19 Paul explains the importance of their training as follows "We became hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough… Had we gone into the trenches without this period of training most of us would certainly have gone mad.20 He repeatedly relents about the new recruits whom they labelled as infants as they are innocent of the horrific realities of war. The sight of the young recruits was pitiful. It reminded them of how the war robbed off their innocence. However, they understood it was just a phase and despite how disconnecting it felt that somehow they had no choice but to manage.21The recruits would weep at, as they were unaware of the reality of shelling. “[One] sobs; twice he has been flung over the parapet by the blast of the explosions without getting any more than shell-shock. The others are eyeing him. We must watch them, these things are catching, and already some lips begin to quiver.”22 They needed to repress their feminine nature to survive in the trenches of the Front. Masculinity has no room for cowardice, but the fear in some of these recruits apparently portrays their feminine nature. The disillusioned dreams could disintegrate the true being of a man. Some of the recruits lost all their courage from the anguishing horrors of the war. “...there was one man who even tried to dig himself into the ground with hands, feet, and teeth”.23 Those soldiers with more experience look down upon the new recruits believing that some of them were faking. Emotion overcame some of the recruits such that wrestling them to the ground was the only option. Paul and his friends detach from the recruits due to the stigma connected to the label. The soldiers with time learned the art of detaching themselves from their feelings. They must adopt a constricted attitude and only they can understand. Remarque gives little to no description of individuals in the book. He gives names and a line with a description of their personality. “Tjaden, a skinny locksmith of our age, the biggest eater of the company.”24They must protect themselves from the emotions that come with losing close friends hence they must build walls. One never knows their fate in battle and the pain of losing a close friend is too much to bear when combined with physical pain.25 However, Paul is fond of Kat, the leader of their group. In battle, Paul despite his injury carries Kat to a medical centre, but unfortunately, he dies along the way.   Paul brings about a metamorphosis notion of a hero when he introduces who was their assumed leader. Kat, who was older than the entire group, mainly focused on lessening the soldier’s pain and not sacrifice or bravery. To him, modern warfare was the enemy and not the English nor the French. Remarque’s associates Kat with conservatism. At one point, Paul and his fellow soldiers have to sleep in a factory; Kat in his conservatism nature finds a box of straw on which they lay. Kat is the ultimate symbol of resistance a hero who is unaffected by dehumanization as he can act and think for himself. 26 His attachment had failed him. During the World War 1, the man’s obligation was to wait for his call to arms. To the German society at the time, a boy transformed to manhood by joining the Army in the Western Front. Masculinity is at a great emphasis in the book because in all their encounters Paul and his friends met individuals who expressed their manhood and patriotism. Extensively, the government played a significant role in creating propaganda out of masculinity so that they could increase the number of enlistments into the war. References 1. Bergen, L. (2009). Before my helpless sight: Suffering, Dying and military medicine on the Western Front, 1914-1918. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ash Gate Pub. 2. Fussell, P., & Winter, J. M. (2013). The Great War and modern memory. 3. Hill, T. H. E. (2008). Voices under Berlin: A Novel of the Berlin spy tunnel. United States: The Author. 4. Hinde, R. (2008). Ending War: A recipe. Nottingham: Spokesman Pr. 5. Krimmer, E. (2010). The Representation of War in German Literature from 1800 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6. Mansfield, H. C. (2007). Manliness. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. 7. Page, J. S. (2008). Peace education: Exploring ethical and philosophical foundations. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub. 8. Pinker, S. (2011). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. London: Penguin Books. 9. Remarque, E. M.(1996). All Quiet on the Western Front. London: Vintage. 10. Spielvogel, J. J. (2011). Western civilization: A brief history. Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. Read More