All Quiet on the Western Front – Book Club Questions
Welcome to the Buddy Book Club – we have a light-hearted comedic podcast that covers a variety of books. We just read literary classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, a book the Buddies read in high school. It has regained popularity with the recent release of the movie (which is in German) on Netflix. The book is a bit depressing as it is recounts the awfulness of World War 1 and the life of an average solider in trench warfare, but still a good and important read. We ended up enjoying it and still making some jokes about it, you can check out the podcast we did on it here.
Our book club questions try to be a little more outside the box/comedic than your typical book club questions – hopefully you enjoy them.
Book Club Questions – All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
-> The only real antagonist or villain in this book is Kantorek, where does he rank in terms of book villains for you?
Personally he is one of the worst we’ve read, I just hate hypocritical, influential people that tell young people to do something they’d never willingly do themselves.
-> There wasn’t many positive scenes in this book, but did any stick out to you?
For us it was them cooking food while getting bombed, it brought a little levity and good times to an insane situation, and just showed you how crazy the war made them.
-> Paul and the boys are able to pick up French girls without being able to speak their language, do you think you could ever attract someone without speaking their language?
This one is pretty easier to answer for me, zero chance. I don’t do myself any favors speaking either, but I would never have the confidence, looks, or body language skills to pull this off. Good for Paul and the gang.
-> How did you feel about the bathroom situation during the war? Do you think you could ever have that little shame about sitting on a crate next to a bunch of other people and taking care of business?
We went into great detail about this on the podcast, but I wish I had this type of mindset, but I wouldn’t want to go to war to get it.
-> Based on Paul’s experience of going on leave, would you willingly take leave if you knew you had to serve a certain amount of time on the front?
We came to the agreement that we would, but not sulk like Paul, but get into as many sins/trouble as possible. “Hookers and Blow” as D-man put it.
-> Is there anything better than putting post work clothes on? I think Paul experiences the best post work clothes possible.
Not only taking off the 30 pounds of equipment, but also not having to salute officers, or talk about the horrificness of war with annoying townspeople.
-> Paul gets yelled at by an officer while on leave (that has never seen wartime action), would you punch that officer in the face?
Is it worth getting arrested and being sent to the fortress, in my opinion, yes 100%.
-> What did you think of how the book suddenly ended without much fanfare?
I actually think it was the perfect ending to a book like this, going down in a blaze of glory just wasn’t the message this book was trying to send.
-> As mentioned above, this movie was recently released on Netflix, who would you cast for the characters in an English remake?
We’ll be coming out with a Make it a Movie blog to help inspire your actor choice.
Have some comments/thoughts/criticisms? – Reach out to us or check out the podcast.
