Synopsis 10-Historical Novel

All Quiet on the Western Front is narrated by Paul Bäumer, a young man of nineteen who fights in the German army on the French front in World War I. Paul and several of his friends from school joined the army voluntarily after listening to the stirring patriotic speeches of their teacher, Kantorek. But after experiencing ten weeks of brutal training at the hands of the petty, cruel Corporal Himmelstoss and the unimaginable brutality of life on the front, Paul and his friends have realized that the ideals of nationalism and patriotism for which they enlisted are simply empty clichés. When Paul’s company receives a short reprieve after two weeks of fighting, only eighty men of the original 150-man company return from the front. The cook doesn’t want to give the survivors the rations that were meant for the dead men but eventually agrees to do so; the men thus enjoy a large meal They no longer believe that war is glorious or honorable, and they live in constant physical terror.