The Road Back: A Novel (All Quiet on the Western Front)

A day or two after seeing the new German film "All Quiet on the Western Front" (which is outstanding and deserves every award it gets) I got this book and tore through it in one day. It is about some comrades of Paul Bäumer (the main character in AQ on the WF) who survive the war and go home to people and a society that can't possibly understand what they've been through, and are largely indifferent to their suffering.These young guys, some barely out of their teens, still have only each other to lean on and help each other survive, just as they did at the Western Front. But, as happened to Paul and his buddies during the war, life crushes them one-by-one. (Those who miss Paul might be pleased that he comes back to make a brief appearance to his comrade as a ghost, although a tragic one.)The story is heartbreaking but the writing is thoughtful and beautiful, as is the case with Remarque. The main character, Ernst, does a lot of reflecting on his lost boyhood and, as Thomas Woolf wrote, sadly concludes that "You can't go home again" ... especially not if you've spent years in hell, as he and his friends have done.This translation does feel outdated and clunky in places. The conversations make the guys sound like a bunch of English lads. But the read is worth it. One cares about these young men, their fraternal love for each other, and their struggles to fit into post-war Germany, but the plot is really universal, not specific to that time and place. In the right hands, this story would also make a powerful movie. Netflix?If you liked reading "All Quiet" and cared about Paul and the other youngsters there, then you'll like this novel as well.

"The Road Back" by Erich Maria Remarque is dark and foreboding, a grim reminder of the psychological toll that combat takes on foot soldiers. Re-adjustment back home is actually impossible in the black market milieu and the harsh realities of an ignorant and uncaring civilian populace, who can behave only as they did in years past. There really is no "Road Back," just more misery. The soldiers would prefer the trenches than their disillusionment and despair back home. They all felt betrayed and that their sacrifice was for nothing. The story is irredeemably sad, and it is often painful to read. Remarque's remarkable talent to describe the beauty of nature, the skies and the changing seasons do not diminish the overall tone of the book. It is a book that is remembered for the somber, disquieting mood it sets and maintains. The reader is absorbed into this mood.I believe that the book was probably beautifully written in its original German language, but to tell the truth (my view), the translation is inconsistent and very often quite unacceptable. I just did not understand why the translator, A. W. Wheen, chose so many "strange" English language words and phrases. To be blunt, much of the translation read as if it were performed by a German national, who perhaps had a fair-to-middling understanding of English, but a very poor vocabulary, and who, in a panic, resorted to literal, old-fashioned, dictionary-style translations - perhaps a British 19th Century dictionary. Too much of the translation is just "out of left field" for an American reader in 2010. Many times, I wrote the word "huh?" in the margin, puzzled once again by such a poor choice of words by Wheen. The lingo and speaking style of the modestly educated characters in the story would not be lost by an elevated 21st Century re-translation. I doubt that anyone reading this book in the original German would have such a criticism. The translator's style almost ruined the reading of this wonderful book for me.The story's main problem, is that it goes nowhere. Perhaps the structure of the story reflects the psychology described - men adrift back home after a horrible war experience. The book reads a little like a serial publication, one that might have been published weekly over time, with one chapter not necessarily leading to the next, but rather becoming a somewhat disconnected group of episodes in the lives of the returned war soldiers. There are vague thematic threads in the story that continue from beginning to end, however. The book's ending was too sweet and too hopeful, given the bulk of the story line, and the ending (epilogue) was almost unrelated to the main story. I did not like the ending at all. It didn't fit.Life after World War I in pre-Hitler Germany, just before the great depression killed the old Germany for good, was in fact awful. Remarque truly brings that reality to life, as well as the tensions between the Communists and the Old Order. But the full effect of the Treaty of Versailles had not yet taken its economic and psychological toll on the German people. However, one can see the handwriting on the wall: Germany will rise again, and it will not be a pretty sight when it does.Notwithstanding its two great flaws (an awful translation and a story that reads more like a painting than a tale with a beginning, middle and end), the book is still sensational. It may not be Remarque's best work ("Three Comrades" and "All Quiet on the Western Front" are superior), but nonetheless it is excellent and gives a clear and convincing view of war's psychological damage on all people - whether soldiers or not. Remarque is at his best when showing how civilians, who never were near the front lines, have no idea at all who these soldiers really are, could never have any idea of what life was like in the trenches and what the soldiers went through. It's a gruesome reminder of that truism: if you haven't been there, you don't know. It doesn't matter what war is under discussion. The same phenomenon happens again and again. In this way, history does fatally repeat itself, and humankind does not learn.I liked Ernst, the narrator, although he was a bit of a drama queen. His role at the "trial" near the end was almost entirely out of keeping of his personality developed throughout the early part of the book. The trial itself was unrealistic and was the worst part of the book. But the trial provided Remarque with a platform to make his political points, driving them home again and again and again. There's lots of anger in this book. We got it.All in all, a 4 on Amazon's rating scale.

THE ROAD BACK by Erich Maria RemarqueA top-notch sequel to the same author’s “All Quiet On the Western Front;” it’s still considered a sequel, even though the protagonist from the first novel in the series, Paul Bäumer, was killed at the end, as Paul and several other characters (such as Kat) are still referenced here.While this novel is mainly about the transition from WWI to peacetime for these youthful soldiers (led by new protagonist Ernst) of a freshly defeated Germany, there are still plenty of harrowing battle scenes, between the opening chapter, flashback scenes, and hallucinations (PTSD, decades before the acronym was officially coined).And even with the war being over, and not even counting the aforementioned PTSD (or “shell-shock” as they called it back then), the protagonist and his comrades find that peacetime has its own horrors, miseries, and difficulties (especially in a defeated nation).RANDOM STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS (and noteworthy passages):—p. 9: “Till now, the years of war had succeeded each other, year laid upon year, one year of hopelessness treading fast upon another, and when a man reckoned the time, his amazement was almost as great to discover it had been so long, as that it had been only so long.” The cruel paradox.“We have even three old-timers still from ’fourteen—Bethke, Wessling and Kosole, who know everything and often speak of the first months as though that were away back in the olden days of the gods and the heroes.” In four years of war, an eternity indeed for the soldiers who’ve survived it that long.—p. 10: “And suddenly I know what it is that has thrown us all into such a state of alarm. It has merely become still. Absolutely still. Not a machine gun, not a shot, not an explosion; no shriek of shells; nothing, absolutely nothing, no shot, no cry. It is simply still, utterly still. We look at one another; we cannot understand it. This is the first time it has been so quiet since we have been at the Front.” Deafening silence, eh?—p. 11: “All at once—in the whirl of our excitement we had hardly observed it—the silence is at an end; once more, dully menacing, comes the noise of gunfire, and already from afar, like the bill of a woodpecker, sounds the knock-knocking of a machine gun. We grow calm and are almost glad to hear again the familiar, trusty noises of death.” The comfort of familiar misery.—p. 13: Jeez-Louise, the WWI German Army handgun was a Luger semiautomatic pistol, NOT a “revolver!”—p. 17: “Now it is over and will stay behind here; when we set out, it will drop behind us, step by step, and in an hour be gone as if it had never been. —Who can realize it? There we stand and should laugh and shout for joy—and yet we have now a sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs, as one who swallows a throat swab and would vomit.” Kinda like being released from prison after a long sentence?—p. 18: Wow, a reference to Bäumer (protagonist and first-person narrator of “All Quiet On the Western Front”) and Kat (R.I.P.).—pp. 33-34: “Breyer came to our company as a volunteer and was afterwards given a commission. It is not only with Trosske, Homeyer, Bröger and me that he talks familiarly—that goes without saying, of course, we were former schoolfellows—but, when no other officer is about, he is the same with all his old mates in the ranks. And his credit stands high in consequence.” Just like in my own country’s military, the prior-enlisted officers have the best credibility with their troops.—p. 103: “Wolf accompanies me to the house, but he must stay outside—my aunt dislikes dogs of any sort. I ring.” Ugh, what a bitch; maybe she’s an ancestor of Ruth Graham or one of the other Slate.Com scumbags.—p. 134: “tittlebacks,” same species as sticklebacks?—p. 140: “Any soldier knows that a company commander may have the best of intentions, but if his noncoms. are against him he is powerless to effect anything. So, too, even the most progressive minister must shipwreck if he has a block of reactionary bureaucrats against him. And in Germany the bureaucrats all have their jobs still. —These pen-pushing Napoleons are invincible.” Ach, Scheisser, the Deep State, 1918 German style.—p. 181: It’s hard to imagine a military reunion in the U.S. wherein social class distinctions would be so stark as to spoil the camaraderie.

I so loved this book. I've read other books by Erich Maria Remarque and all of them were very good. But this one to me is his greatest. A group of young men return to their town in Germany after World War 1 ends. But for this group the war never ends. Reading this you can also feel the turmoil building up in Germany as it came to terms with its defeat.

For me it is even better than the first novel, it just stuck with me as something even darker, for we see to the full extent that the war killed those boys that exchanged their dreams for the shell holes. Remarque was such a good wordsmith that we can feel and relate deeply with the characters problems, for part of their despair is passed into you... It was, obviously, a really heavy book, and it's not that kind of thing you read fast over a sunny Sunday evening, it's the kind of thing you read in the winter when the snows pilles up and you don't want to do anything then to stay by the fireplace... You really need time do digest what you read, and think more deeply about the situations presented, for, in this way, you'll feel even more connected to the protagonists, for no matter how much though you put on it, it seems impossible to find a way out of their predicament, and when we see what becomes of Ludwig, well, who can blame him? In the back of our minds we all know that if we were on his shoes, the decision might have been the same... This is a must read, especially if the first book stuck with you, trust me that the money will be worth ;)

It will be a sin to judge this book...!

And the effects it had on a soldier for tne rest of his life.And then a few short years later it happened all over again.When will we ever learn to live in harmony and peace

The Road Back is a story told by one individual soldier as WW1 ends and the defeated army return to their homes. To a world where they can't fit in and can hardly understand.The ongoing conflicts between the returning soldiers with their horror of what they have been through and those who have not seen it produces a harrowing book that really ought to be compulsory reading - particularly for Germans!Having recently visited the Somme just after Armistice day, the image stays with me of the biggest German cemetery where the only wreath was from the British Legion.The translation is old and pretty clunky - but you soon don't notice as the intensity of the book eats into you.The collapse of the currency and the re-emergence of German militarism appear toward the end of the book and our knowledge of what happened next makes your blood run cold.Maybe if more Germans had read it they would not be so keen now to put other European Countries to the economic sword in the way they appear to be doing.But if more people had read it then Hitler would never have got where he did!A MUST READ!!!