From beginning to end, friendship plays an essential role in the book All Quiet on the Western Front, by Enrich Remarque. It is the single driving force for the soldiers who know nothing but of death and demolition. The soldiers" friendships give them a will to fight, and a shred of hope in a surely desperate situation. Throughout the novel, you see a unique, incomparable bond between Katczinsky, a forty-year-old veteran and Paul, the narrator of this story. .
As the novel progresses, the author, Enrich Remarque, brings out various aspects that are extremely important to the reader: theme, enemies, fear, and weapons. Erich Remarque opens the book; "This book is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all a small adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war." (epigraph) Remarque tried to show us the "hidden costs of war," by showing us that war did not only destroy the body but it demolished the emotional and physiological aspects of the soldiers. Remarque effectively dramatizes the weapons used in the war. He shows us how sometimes the technology of the weapons overrides the medical technology. For instance, Kemmerich dies from a relatively light wound. Towards the end of the story, Paul and his comrades" emotions diminish, as they are forced to face the realities of the war. Remarque also showed us that the enemies were not the soldiers they were fighting against, but in essence the hostility of their authority figures. Paul kills a printer name Duval and responds with, "Comrade, I did not want to kill you." This shows not only the confusion of who their enemies were, but also the reality of war at its threshold. When Paul meets the Russian prisoners, he begins to realize just who his enemies were. He realizes that that their enemies were not the people they were fighting against, but in reality the people who started the war in the first place.
