All Quiet on the Western Front Comparison Essay

The movie All Quiet on the Western Front is quite similar to the original novel, in terms of the theme. However, the audience captures the theme differently than readers, due to the different perspective that readers and audience were put in to acknowledge the plot. Also, the changes added onto the movie made it, in many ways, more impactful than the novel itself.
The movie allowed the audience to witness Paul’s change from a schoolboy to a soldier. Paul was introduced before he was enlisted and the audience was able to see the shift from innocence to harsh reality, making the movie more emotional than the novel. Perspective and insights that readers read from Paul’s thoughts are observed by the audience through visual events. Flashbacks that the narrator mentions in the book were made more significant and emotional in the movie.
The movie differs from the novel by creating a connection between the ending and the beginning of the movie, using Paul’s death. Paul is first introduced sketching a bird in the classroom, and also dies on the battlefield drawing a bird. Instead of reading Paul’s insights, the audience acknowledges his pensive side through his love of sketching and poetry. The audience observes that innocence would not survive on the battlefield; a symbolic meaning the novel does not have. The novel created an impact on readers using a third person’s view to describe his death, a change from the usual narrating Paul. When he died doing something that his innocent self had done, the movie successfully created a different impact on the audience.
The deaths of the soldiers were also made more significant in the movie than in the novel. Paul writes a letter to his comrade, Albert Kropp, in the end of the movie. The loss of friends becomes more shocking and heavy in the heart when Paul lists each classmate’s death. Furthermore, Paul tells Kropp in the letter that they are the only ones left from the class that was enlisted to go serve in war. This adds on to the irony of Paul’s death, because he dies after writing the letter.
Alterations were made to the plot so that the movie would be possible and interesting to view on screen. The movie succeeded in capturing the hearts of the audience. However, many symbolic meanings extracted from the novel, making the movie not as thought provoking. The novel and movie are both great productions used to describe a soldier’s life.