There are many different themes found in Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. A theme is a fundamental and often universal idea explored in a literary work. One very important theme expressed in the novel is that the innocent suffer during the war. Three prime examples of this are the killing of the horses, the French girls doing all they can to receive food, and the hardships the soldiers face while in the war.

Near the beginning of the novel, the men are under attack, and after the attack is over, horrific cries can be heard. "It's unendurable. It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning" (62). The moaning and cries that the men speak of is not of men, but of horses. Remarque uses various descriptive words to express the severity of the...