     War is a struggle that destroys a soldier's mind, thoughts, friends, 
and family.  Young, idealistic men patriotically go off to fight but learn 
quickly about the harsh reality of war.  Paul Baumer, the main character in 
All Quiet on the Western Front has suffered the "struggle".  After ex-
periencing the error of war, Paul view of life changes not only does he 
feels alienated from his family but also alone in a world of death and 
destruction.  It is through this characterization of Paul who demonstrates 
his theme the destructiveness.  The meaningless, useless war does no good 
to everyone who is alive.
     Paul's thoughts change once he joins the military.  "Killing each 
separate louse is a tedious business when a man has hundreds"(75).  When 
Paul is in the camp on the moors with the army, he often images about the 
war and what it does to other people.  Killing innocent people is not too 
difficult to the soldiers.  "The little beasts are hard and the everlasting 
cracking with one's fingernails very soon becomes wearisome"(77).  Paul 
realizes that the "beasts" are the symbolic enemies who stand ready to 
attack at all time.  These enemy soldiers are compared to the everlasting 
cracking fingernails, which represent the crackings in their lives.  Each 
day Paul's feelings are changed as his friends die.  "I am young, yet I 
know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality 
cast over an abyss of sorrow.  I see how peoples are set against are 
another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently 
slay on another.  I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons 
and words to make it yet more refined and enduring"(263). Paul's thoughts 
are getting more understandable than before, because he knows the darkness 
of the war; he totally understands the situation of a role in the miserable 
war.  Once the war ends, all the soldiers will no longer have an occupa-
tion; they can no longer be fit to do anything but a soldier.  Paul's 
thoughts have been destroyed by the war, and he cannot think about anything 
else except despair, death, and fear.
     The brutal war worries Paul whole family only the emptiness of separa-
tion when he is gone.  "It is the kitchen door that was opened, they are 
cooking potato-cakes, the house reeks of it, and to-day of course is 
Saturday; that will be my sister leaning over.  For a moment I am shy and 
lower my head, then I take off my helmet and look up.  Yes, it is my eldest 
sister(157)."  Paul no longer fits into the family unit, his experiences at 
war leave him shy and crazy for the normality of their lives.  "She looks 
at me.  Her hands are white and sickly and frail compared with mine.  We 
say very little and I am thankful that she asks nothing.  What ought I to 
say?  Everything I could have wished for has happened.  I have come out of 
it safely and sit here beside her.  And in the kitchen stands my sister 
preparing supper and signing(159)."  Paul has been waiting for this moment 
since joining the military, now he can finally talk to his dear mother and 
be gathering together harmony of his family.  However, the war has 
separated Paul from his mother.  His pale, sick mother does not want to ask 
anything about the war but watches her son and hoping that he will come 
back alive.  "Before my mother's tremulous anxiety I recover my composure.  
Now I can walk about and talk and answer questions without fear of having 
suddenly to lean against the wall because the world turns soft as rubber 
and my veins become brimstone(161-2)."  Once Paul tells his mother that he 
is well, he does not have to worry about the rest of the conversations, 
because all he wants is make his mother happy and feel safe.  However, his 
attempts to ease his mother worries causes him to feel alienated; he has 
no one to share the horror of the war.  He is left to face it alone.
     Paul will have a difficult time surviving without his comrades.  
"There I drop down on my knees, but have still enough strength to fall on 
to the side where Kat's sound leg is.  After a few minutes I straighten my-
self up again.  My leg and my hands tremble.  I have trouble in finding my 
water bottle, to take a pull.  My lips tremble as I try to think.  But I 
smile-Kat is saved."  Paul is very nervous about Kat's wound, because 
he does not want to lose his last friend in the army.  The only good thing 
to come out of this horror is the friendship.  "On the way without my 
having notices it, Kat has caught a splinter in the head.  There is just 
one little hole, it must have been a ver tiny, stray splinter.  But is has 
sufficed.  Kat is dead(290-1)."  Kat's death makes Paul feel even more iso-
lated.  Now, he is truly alone.  "Do I walk?  Have I feet still?  I raise 
my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one 
circle, and I stand in the midst.  All is as usual.  Only the Militiaman 
Stanislaus Katczinsky has died(291)."  The death of Katczinsky destroys the 
last thing that is important to Paul rather than his family.  The war has 
left him nothing.
     A war determines the fate as if some 3-year-old children are playing 
sandcastles, so innocent, so easily to destroy. War destroys all that men 
hold dear. Paul Baumer learns to distrust all that he believed in; he fells 
alienated from his family; and ultimately he is left without hope.  The 
destructiveness of war strips men of everything leaving them with nothing.
     Four people-the Belgian bus driver, two women from the United States 
and a Canadian man-died at the scene, said a police spokesman in nearby 
Scheifling.  An American man died later in the hospital, he added, speak-
ing on condition of anonymity.