Beginning of Essay
All Quiet on the Western Front is a graphic depiction of the horrors of war. In the short note before Chapter One, Remarque lets the reader know exactly what themes he intends. War is a savage and gratuitous evil, war is unnatural, and war is responsible for t ....

Middle of Essay
.... should be noted that the nature motif is carried consistently throughout the novel, and that it supports many of the author's lesser themes. For the purpose of portraying war as something terrible, though, the nature motif is expressed most dramatically in the following passages. These passages mark the three distinct stages of nature's condemnation of war: rebellion, perseverance, and erasure. The first passage occurs in Chapter Four when the troops are trucked out to the front to install stakes and wire. However, the narrator's squad is attacked unexpectedly by an English bombardment. With no visible enemy to fight, the soldiers are forced ....