In the 1929 historical novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque describes the physical and mental trauma German soldiers faced during the First World War and how soldiers develop a detachment from civilian life once engaged at the front. The novel is told through the eyes of a young Paul Bäumer, who describes how war turns soldiers into animals and illustrates the idea of ​​the "lost generation", soldiers who have neither wives nor jobs to return to after war. forehead. Throughout the novel, the young soldiers face betrayal from the older generation and gain a sense of disillusionment with that generation's values ​​and traditions. Note demonstrates this through his actions of pressuring the younger generation to enlist in the war, thereby allowing young men to fight in a brutal war, as well as through the generational differences between the old and young people who are radically changing life after the war. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get the original essay Before actively serving at the front, Paul and his friends Albert Kropp, Leer and Joseph Behm went to school together under the The authority of Kantorek, their school teacher, and Kantorek would press patriotism into the minds of his students in order to enlist in the war. Throughout the novel, the older generation used their words and seniority to influence the minds of the younger generation, and Paul realizes that the older generation "surpassed us only in phrases and intelligence" (Note 11). Not only that, but Kantorek took drastic measures to have young men participate in modern warfare, meaning he would take his students to enlist in the army using his nationalist rhetoric. The boys had a high level of trust in Kantorek, but this changed in response to him, "the idea of ​​authority which they represented was associated in our minds with greater insight and more human wisdom". In the novel, Paul describes that it was members of the educated upper classes, similar to Kantorek, who were most in favor of the war, while the poor were simply the most opposed to it, as they made up the majority of the combatants. At training camp, Corporal Himmelstoss mistreats young recruits in his wartime role. Specifically, Himmelstoss was cruel to Tjaden, who was a bedwetter, and he forced Tjaden to share a bed with another bedwetter, Kindervater. As Himmelstoss leads Paul Bäumer's regiment during training, he forces the soldiers to endure long hours of training while imposing strict and senseless punishments on the men that Paul attributes to making the soldiers "suspicious, ruthless, vicious, harsh.” Himmelstoss represents how the older generation manipulates the youth by pushing them across borders, but without participating in the war. During a particularly bloody battle, Himmelstoss cowers in a trench, pretending to be wounded, and Paul says, "It drives me crazy that the young recruits are over there and he is here." This shows how the older generation tricks the young into fighting in the war when they are too afraid to fight alone, leaving them helpless and afraid when placed in the situation that the young soldiers are placed in. significant generational differences that view young soldiers as the “lost generation.” Throughout the novel, Paul often remembers his life before the.