Imagine you are a soldier running, ducking and dodging bullets. The heat from exploding grenades burning the back of your neck, having to hide in wet, smelly, muddy trenches to survive. The only way to stay in touch with your family and friends is to write a letter, without knowing when they will receive it or if they will reply. Imagine having to carry a large amount of weapons, for example: machine guns, pistols, grenades, flamethrowers or rifles. Now, we're lucky that's just a vision in our minds, because in 1914 that was the reality for soldiers in World War I. Author Eric Maria Remarque used these visions and facts in his novel titled All Quiet on the Western Front. The question to answer is; Do the characters and setting of this novel deeply portray the period of World War I or did Remarque make it all up? When we think of the weapons used by soldiers in World War I, we think of them as defenses. But what's rather ironic is that the same weapons the soldiers used to protect themselves were the same weapons that killed them. “The development of poisonous gases took on new urgency in the period 1914-18.” (http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/index.htm) Poison gas was a lethal or incapacitating gas used as a weapon in war. It was used extensively between the years 1914-1918 to torture enemies during the war. Another important weapon used during the war was the machine gun. “The machine gun was a fairly primitive device when general warfare began in August 1914.” (http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/index.htm) The machine gun is an automatic weapon that fires rapidly and repeatedly without requiring separate trigger pulls each time. This weapon was one of the most effective weapons and killed the greatest number of enemies. These weapons were similar to the weapons described by Remarque in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. As stated in the previous paragraph. The weapons used in the novel and during World War I were similar, but there is a large selection of weapons in the novel. "Bomberings, barrages, curtain fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine guns, hand grenades: words, words, but they contain the horror of the world." (Chapter 6 page 132) All of these weapons played a huge role in helping soldiers defend themselves. Every soldier used one of these weapons at least once during the war.