Note's account of the horrors of the Western Front during World War I, from the perspective of the ordinary German soldier, is a poignant reminder of the horrors of war. . Dehumanization, death and destruction are the key themes relayed through the eyes of Paul Baumer, soldier of the Great War of 1914-1918 and narrator of Everything calms down on the Western Front. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Dehumanization is a key central theme of the novel, as the characters change from young men to old men, from idealistic and patriotic young people to a crude and violent group of state murderers who mercilessly kill others for their own survival and, ultimately, from men with hopes and dreams to men with nothing to hope for. Indeed, the gentle, gentle influences of parents, teachers, and “the entire course of civilization, from Plato to Goethe” (16), are swept away and the hardcore, militaristic values ​​of “salvation, eyes before… the bloody spirit” (16) are inculcated. among young men, who are sent to face the harsh realities of war after their short training. There is therefore a disjunction between the way soldiers perceive the war and the way those who do not participate in it perceive it. Kantorek, the teacher, loudly extols the virtues of patriotism but does not directly see – as his students do – the consequences of this patriotism in times of war. The teacher is cowardly in blithely sending his students to their deaths while extolling empty virtues that are not reflected on the front lines. Civilians on the home front are also unaware of what the front is like, but call on the brave to win the war and bring good news from Paris. They have absolutely no idea what war is. Baumer's response to civilian ignorance is to realize that civilians and soldiers actually live in two separate worlds. “We have become human animals” (40), he declares, suggesting not only that he and his fellow soldiers are no longer fully human, but also that the war transforms all of its participants into beasts. Later, Baumer and his comrade Detering witness horses being seriously injured during an attack. Detering, who has a deep appreciation for horses, comments that "it is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into war" (45) because they are innocent of crimes and must suffer for human causes. If soldiers become like animals, as Baumer declared, it is just as wrong to drag them into war as it is to bring horses into it. Death is omnipresent in the novel and the physical and psychological destruction is massive in all the trenches. Soldiers die every day during prolonged bombardments made particularly deadly by toxic gases. Death permeates every scene in the novel, including that of the hospital, from which the occupants will not emerge alive. The artillery attack on a cemetery, where the soldiers' lives depend on the coffins containing the dead, represents a total destruction of respect and normality. The corpses died there more than once, figuratively speaking. The destruction extends to the individual lives of the characters. Older men had jobs and occupations before the war, but young soldiers then had nothing to attach themselves to. They have nothing to hope for except dreams that are torn and destroyed, with no hope of progress or a future. They no longer have “the desire to conquer the world” and are “refugees… fleeing from ourselves” (63). Many of them,.