All Quiet on the Western Front: Youth at WarLost: unable to find his way; disappeared, no longer exists; confused; destroyed; lack of morality or spiritual hope; desperate. (Encarta Dictionary) The word lost takes on a whole new, three-dimensional meaning when used to describe a generation of young soldiers in Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front. This fictional account of World War I traces its effects on the protagonist, Paul Baumer, and his German comrades. As the preface writes, the novel is an attempt to "tell the story of a generation of men who, although they escaped the shells, were destroyed by the war." The author of All Quiet on the Western Front uses the brutality of war to demonstrate how young enlistees, as they move further away from their past and future, discover the terrible effects and consequences of war. All Quiet on the Western Front details the time spent by a group of young German soldiers on the front lines of the Great War. The protagonist, Paul Baumer, along with his classmates, Muller Leer and Albert Kropp, enlist in the army at the age of eighteen. Their classmates: Tjaden, Haier Westhus, Detering and Katczinsky (Kat), with whom they quickly establish a bond of camaraderie, experience the same despair as Paul and his classmates. Note presents Paul and the other characters as cynical soldiers unable to reconnect with humanity due to the harshness of the combat. Due to their current emotional state, the young soldiers are distanced from the memories of their past. Upon returning home on leave, Paul discovers that he is not only disconnected from the world he left behind, but also incapable of regenerating the desire to live. As a... middle of paper ......fe.Remarque uses the contrast between older generations of soldiers, schoolteachers, and men with higher military rank to explain how young people in war are affected more negatively. As Barker and Last conclude, "only the older generation, like Kat, will be able to re-enter civilian life more or less unscathed..."(82) Paul argues that the older generation "represented the world of maturity" which was “associated with greater insight and more human wisdom.” » (Note 12-3) However, this ideal in which their elders stood was quickly shattered by the reality of war. Note explains in his book that the older generation suffered less because the war was a mere "interruption," while younger men, on the other hand, "were seized by it and do not know what the consequences might be." END. We only know that in a strange and melancholy way we have become a wasteland..” (20)