In Erich Remarque's novel of All Quiet on the Western front, so much horrific irony is used. Remarque balances the man made disasters of war with Mother Nature's unstoppable beauty. He incorporates situations of hope with the hopelessness of dying. He merges man and beast together contrasting them in situations of despair. But the irony and contrast really begins to come out in the most poetic and dramatic part of the novel, which just so happens to be in the beginning chapters of the book.

In chapter four, when The Second Company is assigned to lay barbed wire at the front, Paul describes themselves marching up as "moody or good-tempered soldiers" and as they "reach the zone where the front begins (they) become on the instant human animals." In which case they cease from being men and instead become beasts. From being...