only great quantities of deaths are even noticed. Death in war is impersonal and faceless. This complete loss was foreshadowed in the beginning of the book with Pauls slow loss of connection with the rest of the world. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Remarque portrays how somber and frightful the priorities of young innocent boys are forced to be when they are placed in the path of war. Remarque demonstrates this key theme through his ornate use of tone and irony. A prime example of irony in the novel is when Paul, the young soldier is heading back to the barracks when a surprise attack takes place in the graveyard. Paul surveys his surroundings and describes it as, A mass of wreckage. Coffins and corpses lie strewn around. They have been killed once again; but each of them that was flung up saved one of us.(Remarque, 70-71.) This scenario is extremely ironic due to the fact that even in death a soldier can not completely escape the wrath of war. During this particular battle, the piles of coffins, on the otherwise flat terrain may have saved the lives of many soldiers. For this reason even in death the deceased soldier cannot be left in peace but instead is forced to act as a hero. This ironic situation also portrays the idea that once a man is forced to behave as an inhumane animal during battle he can not be transformed back into the civilized individual that he once was. Because during war the only knowledge a man needs a time of war is how to escape the shells and gas as well as the emotional and psychological torment of war. During battle when a soldier looks in the eyes of an enemy soldier, he does not see a man with a mother, father, sister or brother, but sees death starting him directly in the face. To these brave and selfless individuals the only commodity that strongly hold fast to is their lives even if this means not respecting the holiness that surrounds a cemetery. Toward the end of the novel All Qui...
