The book All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is a World War I novel. It is narrated by a German soldier named Paul Baumer. The text expresses the experiences a soldier in WWl endured. In this Personal Response, I am going to reflect on the change of tone in Paul’s narration in the beginning compared to the end. I have noticed that the book starts in a playful and amateur manner, and by the end it displays a defeated, solemn and poetic one. These choices by the author allow the reader to at most fathom, the traumatizing exposures that the soldiers were thrusted into. During Paul’s training his experiences are recorded as blissful. Each day they get up, eat breakfast, shoot some bullets, exercise, smoke, then go to bed. Him and his comrades even play pranks on their non-commissioners. Paul has some idea of what the actual war will be like but not entirely. This is evident on page 26, when Paul says “We became hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough – and that was good; for these attributes were just what we lacked. Had we gone into the trenches without this period of training most of us would have gone mad. Only thus were we prepared for what awaited us”. He recognizes that the extensive training was not for nothing and had shaped them into strong men. Even so, Paul was not able to read forward in the book like we as readers have, and see that no amount of training could have prepared them for the war. This, is why Paul’s tone was amateurly blissful in the beginning of the book. Towards the end, Paul’s tone seems to sadden. The narration sounds more mature and confident. After weeks in the trenches he knows there is no positive outcome in his situation. The author has made clear of this. In the last paragraph of the book, Paul writes, “Let the months and years come, they can take nothing more from me, they can take nothing more” (pg. 295). This tone of emptiness and isolation brings the reader to at the minimum understand the perspective of how war has made these soldiers feel. It intrigues me how Paul says he “has nothing”. It is not true. He has clothes and food and his sister. He has people and things that could fulfil him superficially. But what the author means, is that the trauma this war has insidiously gifted to him, overcomes any tangible belongings. In the end, Paul’s soul and personality makes him who he is, and that was taken from him. Leaving him, and all the other fallen soldiers, with nothing.