Novels and their Power

Many of us have experienced that special moment when we fall in love with a book and can’t stop reading it. For 13-year-old Mordecai Richler, the moment comes when he starts All Quiet on the Western Front. He starts reading the book and soon fills seduced by the novel. It creates turbulence in his life and eventually obligates him to see the truth. The novel has a deep effect on his point of view. The novel changes his assumptions about fiction and Germans

For the young Richler, novels are untrue and romantic stories. He looks for facts and reality not for untrue novels: “I want fact. I can’t be bothered with stories … I just haven’t got the time for such non-sense” (P 65). There are some reasons that he likes facts and true stories. He use these book to show that he is a smart boy. As a teenage boy, he is experiencing lack of attention from girls. This is one of the reasons he pays more attention to reading serious book. Despite this fact he falls in love with the novel and, like all the great loves, the affair challenges his presumptions. He admits this when he writes:
“I never expected that a mere novel, a stranger’s tale, could actually be dangerous, creating such turbulence in my life, obligating me to question so many received ideas”(P 66). Reading the All Quiet on the Western Front wakes him up to show him the power of novel and its effects.


In 1944 and before Richler reads the novel, He was wishing “an excruciating death” for every German on the earth. He was cheering every German city that was bombed. He saw Germans as cruel enemies. When he started reading the book, he didn’t know that it would change his impression about Germans. The novel that reveals a lot of truths that Richler didn’t realize was unaware of. One of the truths is that Germans are like any other human being. As story goes, he finds more similarity between German soldiers and himself, which enables him to empathize with them. This empathy continues and eventually novel wins his love for a German’ soldier.

Novels and fictions will help us to sense and experience the story. They will touch the soul and heart of reader and eventually will help him or her to understand the story. As an example the recalled novel creates a connection between being a young Jewish in 1944 and feeling sorry for the death of German soldiers. It shows that such a thing is possible through the magic of novel and its power to open the eyes of readers.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the sample of a powerful novel which “seduces” Richler and eventually changes his worldview and reading habits.