There is a single problem common to Uncle Tom's Cabin and All Quiet on
the Western Front, despite the works' having been created in different
centuries on different continents and nominally about different subjects.
The single, common problem is this: the valuation of one group of human
beings by another, with that valuation coming in lower for the group being
In Uncle Tom's Cabin, the group being valued as less worthy than
others is the population of slaves. In All Quiet on the Western Front, the
group being valued at lessâ€"devaluedâ€"is the group of young men sent to the
trenches in World War I to fight for the old order's continued existence in
Each novel uses different means to achieve its end, but the end is
the same: sacrificing one group of people for the good of anotherâ€"in short,
exploiting themâ€"is reprehensible.
Each novel also uses the language and the metaphors of its time; it
uses, as well, situations calculated to make the reader's blood boil.
In the 1850s, when Uncle Tom's Cabin was written, graphic
representations of gore, of the kind commonplace by the 1920sâ€"and
especially in the vanguard of art, Europeâ€"would have alienated more readers
than they influenced. But the situations Stowe depicts are harrowing
The situations Remarque depicts could hardly get more graphic,
although of course they have gotten bloodier, in modern filmmaking,
There is one major difference between the novels, however: while Stowe
wrote during the atrocities she narrates, Remarque narrates things that
happened during a war that was already over when he wrote. Therefore, it
can easily be said the Stowe meant to change the order of things. But can
it be said of Remarque' Amazingly, yes. There will always be warsâ€"if not
exactly that o...