All Quiet on the Western Front

By: Erich Maria Remarque

Narrated by: Frank Muller

Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

Paul Bäumer is just 19 years old when he and his classmates enlist. They are Germany’s Iron Youth who enter the war with high ideals and leave it disillusioned or dead. As Paul struggles with the realities of the man he has become, and the inscrutable world to which he must return, he is led like a ghost of his former self into the war’s final hours. All Quiet is one of the greatest war novels of all time, an eloquent expression of the futility, hopelessness and irreparable losses of war.

©1958 Erich Maria Remarque (P)1994 Recorded Books, LLC

Still powerful

Though not a long book, All Quiet on the Western Front is the prototype for nearly every modern novel about going to war. Young men with their heads crammed full of patriotism and dreams of glory volunteer for the army. There is a strenuous boot camp with a martinet drill instructor. Then the horror and carnage of battle, which often amounts to hunkering down and hoping not to be hit by shells fired by a far-off enemy, while nearby comrades are randomly cut down by shrapnel, explosive, bullets, and poison gas, sometimes to die hideous, lingering deaths.

The story is told through the eyes of Paul Bäumer, an everyman character whom Remarque never defines in much depth -- though part of this is the conceit that Paul, at 19, sees himself as a person who was unformed before war claimed him. The novel, written in the immediate tense, reads more as a series of fragmentary scenes and impressions than an ordered narrative, which might put off some readers, but I think this adds to its effectiveness. Over the course of the novel, Paul and his companions experience all the usual responses to modern war. There's horror, disillusionment, shell shock, and alienation from the civilian world, with its self-satisfied values and artificial lives. To Paul, the ability to care about the things that his student self once cared about is lost, the only meaning now in small, primal acts of life and in his comrades-in-arms.

The prose is haunted by bleakness and despair, though there are some scenes that are quite beautiful in their melancholy humanity, such as Paul's visit to a camp of Russian POWs, or of his regrets after being trapped in a shell hole for a few hours with a dying enemy soldier, who, now disarmed, is little different from himself. There are a few moments of levity, such a scene where a pompous teacher gets his just desserts, but they're few. For their part, the sequences set in the trenches are rich in images of dull, hellish squalor, such as passing time by killing ever-present corpse-fed rats, or the cries of a wounded man slowly dying somewhere out in No Man's Land. Yes, no surprise that the Nazis banned this one for "defeatism" (and got to relive it all at Stalingrad).

Though the specific causes of World War One are now buried in the dustbin of history, the reader doesn't need to be familiar with them to grasp the essential themes. All Quiet on the Western Front still maintains its timeless message of youth pointlessly squandered by the impenetrable stupidity of politics. When Paul's companions discuss the reasons they've been sent to fight and die, they can only observe that they never had anything against the French, nor the average French soldier against Germany, but, as always, the few people who make and benefit from policy aren't the ones deemed young and physically fit enough to die for it. While no 21st century generation is likely to experience the kind of wholesale meat-grinder warfare that could wipe out thirty thousand lives in one battle, we shouldn't forget the naivete that led to it, or the callousness it inflicted. These are aspects of modernity that have hardly left the world, even a century later.

Audiobook narrator Frank Muller gives a restrained but haunted reading that fits the spirit of the text well.

Greatest war novel ever written

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

yes, telling the friend that this tells what war is really like on our young men and women and previews the lives of soldiers who come home.

Who was your favorite character and why?

the schoolteacher who goads the young men to enlist. It reminds me of chickenhawks that pound thier chest with other peoples lives (i.e. Dick Cheney)

Which scene was your favorite?

The scene where Paul goes home on leave and has a respite from the war.

Who was the most memorable character of All Quiet on the Western Front and why?

The main character Paul because of his ability to communicate the reality of war yet portray it as really a battle of leaders, fought by ordinary men who's lives are likely the same on both sides.

The Futility and Horror of War

"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war." --E.M. Remarque, epigraph to All Quiet on the Western Front

This epigraph sets the tone for the next seven hours of listening, and narrator Frank Muller stays superbly true to Remarque's intention. Set in World War I behind the lines of inadequate German forces, All Quiet takes the reader into the first-person perspective of teenage footman Paul Bäumer on the front line, and the physical and psychological nightmares experienced.

The paradoxes faced by the protagonist are of high interest: Paul becomes unbothered by the dead in the field, but a sergeant he sees while on leave who instantly demands he be at attention ruins Paul's evening. The murdering that occurs day in and out via gunfire Paul cannot do when presented with the opportunity hand-to-hand. Katz's reaction to the sound of dying horses. The freedom that comes with the latrine. The relationship that comrades share, being "closer than lovers." The inability to take leave.

Moving quotes throughout:
- "Sleep soft under shell fire."
- "What would become of us, if everything out there was quite clear to us."
- "It is when one is alone that one begins to observe nature and to love her."
- "What great misery can be in two such small spots--no bigger than a man's thumb--in their eyes."

This title humbled me greatly, and is well worth your credit.

Gripping

If you could sum up All Quiet on the Western Front in three words, what would they be?

Heart-rending, passionate, gritty

Who was your favorite character and why?

Paul, through whose eyes the whole story unfolds

Have you listened to any of Frank Muller’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Muller brings character and depth to this work. He makes it as believable as if he were there

It happens

If you could sum up All Quiet on the Western Front in three words, what would they be?

Depressing. powerful. personal.

What was one of the most memorable moments of All Quiet on the Western Front?

I don't want to spoil it but the moments with his comrades specifically the depressing loss over time. I think you can predict that some one is going to die.

Which scene was your favorite?

The first bombardment in the story. it was not his first but the detail made the scene more terrifying.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

All is quiet on the western front of course.

Literature at its Finest

Many books have been written about war, but none so eloquently. This is a must read for everyone.

great performance of a classic story

All Quiet on the Western Front is a classic tale made even better by Frank Muller's performance. The pain, the joy, and the misery I felt when reading the book were all brought back by this listen. Time and a credit well spent.

THE anti-war story

Dreary, but well paced with beautiful scenes and food, comradeship.

Muller has a knack for nailing down the tone and rhythms.

I would highly recommend his others: Darkness at Noon and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Shame he is gone from this world. Voice lives on.

Heart Wrenching Honest Picture of War

This is not an adventure story. There is no great deed done nor evil overcome. A picture of futility and the waste of a generation of young men. This is heart breaking to listen to and yet you keep listening because it is both well written and well read. Pass this on to your teenagers and have them hear a classic that has obtained that title by the enduring quality of prose, engaging story, and importance of its critical view of war.

wow

I don't know how I missed this book. This is the first time that I heard this story and it was much better than I expected. Just something that makes you sit back and ponder.