A Deconstruction of Erich Maria Remarques All Quiet on the Western Fro

A Deconstruction of Erich Maria Remarques in all Quiet on the Western FrontThe young soldiers depicted in Erich Maria Remarques school text editionual matter All Quiet on the Western Front re donation a generation without precedent, constancy, or forethought. The men, serve welling their elders calls to become national heroes, have deep in thought(p) their innocence on the encounterfield and remain forever altered in belief and spirit. Remarque contrasts the cold realities of war in the endow to the tranquility of the byg unrivaled in order to illustrate the psychological transformation of the men stationed on the frontlines. The soldiers appear trapped in the present and alienated from their pasts however, deconstruction of the text rejects the present and past as opposing states of time and identity, and reveals them as cogitate conditions that are intimately and per pieceently intertwined.Much of the critical literature regarding All Quiet on the Western Front concerns t he binary relationship amongst the symbols of present and past. For example, critics Barker and Last assert This rupture with the past is one of the most dominant themes of Remarques work, the discontinuity of life, this jolting from one place of existence to another, for which man is completely unprepared (54). This opposition is represented in Remarques descriptions of the contrasting environments of present and past.? The present is depicted as a state of unpredictability, uncertainty, and impermanence in which the soldiers merely exist on the edge of life. The narrator, Paul Baumer, imparts the dismal hopelessness of the front Shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks--shattering, corroding, death. Dysentery, influenza, typhus&8209scalding, choking, death (Remarque 283). In contrast, the past is... ...between the present and the past. Defining symbols, customs, and allegations of the past, both real and perceived, provoke a human battle between rival notions of an ideal pres ent. Literary deconstruction approaches a text in much the same manner, confronting and dismantling fixed signs, traditions, and assertions. Yet manage war, a deconstructive reading does not provide a final answer or the ultimate truth.Works CitedBarker, Christine, and R.W. Last. Erich Maria Remarque. London Oswald, 1979.Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction. naked as a jaybird York Cornell University Press, 1982.Leitch, Vincent. Deconstructive Criticism. crude York Columbia University Press, 1983.Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. New York Ballantine, (1928)1958.Wagener, Hans. Understanding Erich Maria Remarque. Columbia University of South Carolina Press, 1991.