Allegory of the Cave by Plato

For it is no easy undertaking, I say, to describe the bottom of the institution; nor is it for tongues that only babble child's play. (The Inferno, XXXII, 7-9.) Erich Maria Remarque's either muffled on the Western Front, a novel set in World War I, centers around the changes wrought by the state of war on one young German soldier. During his time in the war, Remarque's protagonist, Paul Baumer, changes from a rather innocent Romantic to a hardened and somewhat caustic veteran. More importantly, during the course of this metamorphosis, Baumer disaffiliates himself from those social icons--parents, elders, school, religion--that had been the foundation of his pre-enlistment days. This rejection comes about as a result of Baumer's realization that the pre-enlistment society simply does not get a line the reality of the gigantic War. His new society, then, becomes the Company, his fellow trench soldiers, because that is a group which does understand the truth as Baumer has experienced it. Remarque demonstrates Baumer's disaffiliation from the traditional by accenting the language of Baumer's pre- and post-enlistment societies. Baumer either give the bounce not, or chooses not to, pass on truthfully with those representatives of his pre-enlistment and innocent days.



Further, he is repulsed by the banal and unimportant language that is used by members of that society. As he becomes alien from his former, traditional, society, Baumer simultaneously is able to communicate effectively only with his soldiery comrades. Since the novel is told from the first person point of view, the reader can see how the words Baumer speaks are at variance with his avowedly feelings. In his preface to the novel, Remarque maintains that "a generation of men ... were washed-up by the war" (Remarque, All Quiet Preface). Indeed, in All Quiet on the Western Front, the meaning of language itself is, to a great extent, destroyed. Early in the novel, Baumer notes how his elders had...



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