I need your expert opinion on Remarque's style of writing and how you think it contributes to the portrayal of war as being brutal and inhumane.I...

As his chronicle of the war continues, there is an
emotionless, benumbed quality to Remarque's writing, as though he is conditioned to the
horror.  For instance, in Chapter Six in a mention of the new recruits and their
questions about the bayonets on the rifles, Remarque dispassionately describes how the
sharpened spade is a better weapon:

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The sharpened spade is a more handy and
many-sided weapon; not only can it be used for jabbing a man under the chin, but it is
much better for striking with because of its greater weght; and if one hits between the
neck and shoulder it easily cleaves as far down as the chest.  The bayonet frequently
james on the thrust and then a man has to kick hard on the other fellow's belly to pull
it out again; and in the interval he may easily get one himself.  And what's more the
blade often gets broken
off. 

Remarque himself admits
to the psychological numbing as, in Chapter Five, he describes the battlefront as a cage
in which the soldiers must await fearfully whatever may
occur: 

We
lie under the network of arching shells andlive in a suspense of uncertainty. Over us,
Chance hovers.  If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can
determine where it will
fall.

At times Remarque's
prose evinces his disorientated state of mind as he writes impressionistic passages. For
example, he writes in Chapter Six of the shelling and the hits like a big Paw clawing in
the trench, and he describes the men as "wild beasts."  He remarks, "What do we know of
men in this moment when Death is hunting us down...."

His
plain and direct style, much like the minimalist style of Hemingway, reduces situations
to their basic essence.  "This is what it is," Remarque says dispassionately.  Yet,
there is a moribund quality to his tone.  For, it is as though he tells his readers,
We are desensitized like animals in a cage who can do nothing about our
fate:

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It is just as much a matter of chance that I am
still alive as that I might have bee hit....No soldier outlives a thousand chances.  But
every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his
luck.