All Quiet on the Western Front

This illuminated text takes you through the emotions and thoughts that Paul Baumer experiences during WWI. While the text tells Paul's story the changes of scenes along with their complex backgrounds and music help us picture and feel what the text is describing. [If Illuminated Texts could be given a collective standing ovation, this one would certainly deserve it. In fact, after it was shown, some of my students told me we should stop doing them as nothing could ever compare. 

When Jeanie Tsui and Imani Muhammad set out to create this presentation - they started from an ironic framework: who are the savages?  From there they go on to try and overturn our expectations.  They use Remarque's words but also bring in a bevy of pictures of young children as they relate to war - these images of innocence and the theme that is present throughout their Illuminated Text are also found in All Quiet in the Western Front.  It seems that the innocent are the ones doing the killing while the others are back at home getting rich and drowning more and more in their guilt.

In this presentation I've taken the excerpt where Paul describes the beautiful scenery around the front. I went from there to juxtapose the butterflies in the novel with him. My goal was to portray Paul as the butterfly, and show that he too was "trapped inside the glass" like the butterflies he had once collected. [I am not embarassed to admit that this Illuminated Text moved me to tears by the end of it - and it wasn't for overwraught sentiment, but rather a deep understanding and empathy for Paul Baumer that this presentation does such a wonderful job of bringing out.  The butterfly on the mirror - that goes behind glass - that becomes the reflection of Paul.  The ideas, and the expression of those ideas are profound and masterful.  JRS]

What I wrote is a series of about 10 poems going from the beginning of the book, All Quiet on the Western Front, to the end of it. They are selected moments that I felt were important to the book put into creative form. [There is so much that is wonderful and good here - the student is a very talented poet - and even for those who have not read All Quiet, the words are moving and powerful.  An excerpt from a poem about the new recruits - first Paul and his comrades - then the younger troops that are sent to the front: Iron youth because we are iron; /  We do not feel the pain of a lost comrade, / Or the joy of peace time. / We are metal; cold and unfeeling. These poems are extremely well done. JRS]

An essay prompt that asks students to explain and document Paul Baumer's journey between the worlds of home and the front.

This illuminated text uses pictures and music, as well as the words from the song and All Quiet on the Western Front, to masterfully reiterate Remarque's indictment of whom is to blame for the war and the soldiers' deaths.  I still remember seeing this in class for the first time - at first the loud - destructive music, followed by the moving images in words - there were students crying out loud by its finish.

This work has students look at the text to see how Paul Baumer ends up in a trench, kills a Frenchman, and comes to question everything that he is doing. Coming so soon after his leave back home and his stay at the Russian Prisoner Camp, it also further develops the idea of just where Paul's true home is -- back in his hometown, or the front. [Please note there is a new revised (2010) version - that does not mention The House on Mango Street, but does mention A Long, Long Time Ago]