Question

The following excerpt is the epigraph from All Quiet on the Western Front. An epigraph is a sentence or short paragraph that prefaces a book. Read the excerpt and then answer the questions. This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.

Part A What do you think is the main point of the excerpt?

Answer 1

The main point of the excerpt is that readers should be aware of the damage that the war has done to a generation of men who were impacted by it, and read the book with this idea in mind.

The epigraph wants to make sure that readers who approach this book do it with the same purpose as the one with which the author wrote it. He does not want the readers to think of this book as an accusation, a confession or an adventure.