All Quiet on the Western Front: Effective Critique of the War All Quiet on the Western Front was a sad story of Paul Bäumer, a boy just entering adulthood, who fought in a war he didn't even believe in. Erich Maria Remarque wrote this novel to show the war through the eyes of Paul, who saw everything that happened; every death, every horror and all the bloodshed. Remarque denounced war by showing how it destroys human lives and, above all, how it devours the human soul. The First World War was pointless to the young soldiers, who didn't even seem to know why a war was being fought. Paul showed how the war affected an entire generation of people, who he represented through Paul. Overall, All Quiet on the Western Front was a powerful and moving critique of the war. Every character in the novel was a tragic character and a sad loss in the war. This includes Paul, whose eyes Remarque used to show the world the atrocities of war. All the events were represented without heroism, or at least without what the people officially considered heroic. Paul watched people die and killed other people, something that tore him apart emotionally, but for which he would have been considered a hero. "We reach the area where the front begins and in an instant we become human animals" (56). Humanity was taken away from these soldiers, which was horrible and painful and completely unjustified. They were students like Paul, farmers like Detering, and other common men who were conscripted and taken to the front, not really knowing what they were fighting for, stripped even of their humanity. At one point Paul even said, "[in] many ways we are treated like men" (91). However, they were men, even if they were made to feel like animals. They were still men. Remarque effectively used Paul's experiences to illustrate his criticism of World War I, showing the destruction of humanity and human emotions. There was already talk of soldiers becoming animals at the front. He describes it further: "The explosion of the hand grenades hits our arms and legs with force; crouching like cats that we are run over, overwhelmed by this wave that drags us, that fills us with ferocity, transforms us into criminals.,