Holding Back Grief

Author's Note: The goal of this piece is to reflect on an important theme in All Quiet on the Western Front. I was extremely affected by the end of chapter two and there were several quotes in that part that I loved, so I decided to go with grief and its effects. I also tried using alliteration at the end, something I don't usually do and am a bit hesitant about.

When a strong emotion strikes, be it grief, anger, love, it can be frightening and overwhelming. Oftentimes the natural instinct is to shove them aside, push them out of sight and out of mind and forget they ever appeared. However, when one suppresses his strongest emotions they simmer inside, gaining strength and urgency through the boil. It is exceedingly difficult to do this for long, and the more one does so the more attention must be focused on it. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque shows the difficulty of suppressing one’s emotions and desires as well as the discomfort doing so can create both through her characters and through her syntax.

As Paul Bäumer, a soldier on the western front, grieves, his internal struggle is depicted through the stilted phrasing Remarque uses as well as through Bäumer's physical responses to his grief. Bäumer sits with his friend Kemmerich as he dies, watching the other boy's pain and grief and sorrow. When Kemmerich is finally gone, Bäumer tries not to think about it, hoping that if he forgets his grief it will simply go away. He finds this difficult to do, however, and his thoughts and words become more choppy and short as his sadness wears him down. He takes his friend's things and goes back to the barracks to see that another friend "stands in front of the hut waiting for me. I give him the boots. We go in and he tries them on. They fit well" (33). They both cover their grief with their actions but the choppiness of their statements betray their inner strife. If they would only show their pain, let their sorrow run its course, they would be able to move on. Yet they do not and condemn themselves to endless despair. Paul's body itself shows its affliction = he begins to "feel a hunger, greater than comes from the belly alone" (33) His body hungers to let his passions out. The emotion eats at him from the inside out, making him hunger for happiness, however hopeless it may be.