 BARRON'S BOOK NOTES (tm) on CD-ROM  Windows (tm) Ver. 2.0
All Quiet on the Western Front  Erich Maria Remarque
---------------------------------------------------------
                                      1929                                  
                                                                            
                             ERICH MARIA REMARQUE'S                         
                         ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT                     
                                                                            
                                  by Rose Kam                               
                                                                            
                                 SERIES EDITOR                              
                                 Michael Spring                             
                           Editor, Literary Cavalcade                       
                                Scholastic, Inc.                            
                                                                            
                                ACKNOWLEDGMENTS                             
        We would like to acknowledge the many painstaking hours of work     
        Holly and Thomas F. Hirsch have devoted to making the Book Notes    
                               series a success.                            
                                                                            
            (C) Copyright 1984 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc.         
                                                                            
   Electronically Enhanced Text (C) Copyright 1993, World Library, Inc.     
                                                                            
CONTENTS                                                                    
                               CONTENTS                                     
                  SECTION.......................... SEARCH ON               
                                                                            
          THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES................. RALLAUTH                
                                                                            
          THE NOVEL                                                         
          The Plot................................. RALLPLOT                
          The Characters........................... RALLCHAR                
          Other Elements                                                    
               Setting............................. RALLSETT                
               Theme............................... RALLTHEM                
               Style and Structure................. RALLSTYL                
               Point of View....................... RALLVIEW                
               Form................................ RALLFORM                
          THE STORY................................ RALLSTOR                
                                                                            
          A STEP BEYOND                                                     
          Tests and Answers........................ RALLTEST                
          Term Paper Ideas......................... RALLTERM                
          Glossary................................. RALLGLOS                
          The Critics.............................. RALLCRIT                
                                                                            
          Advisory Board........................... RALLADVB                
                                                                            
          Bibliography............................. RALLBIBL                
                                                                            
AUTHOR_AND_HIS_TIMES                                                        
                       THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES             (RALLAUTH)      
-                                                                           
  Born Erich Paul Remark on June 22, 1898, he grew up in a Roman            
Catholic family in Osnabruck in the province of Westphalia, Germany- a      
city in the northwest part of what is now West Germany. He adored           
his mother, Anna Maria, but was never close to his father, Peter.           
The First World War effectively shut him off from his sisters,              
Elfriede and Erna. Peter Remark, descended from a family that fled          
to Germany after the French Revolution, earned so little as a               
bookbinder that the family had to move 11 times between 1898 and 1912.      
The family's poverty drove Remarque as a teenager to earn his own           
clothes money (giving piano lessons). He developed a craving for            
luxury, which he never outgrew. His piano playing and other interests,      
such as collecting butterflies and exploring streams and forests,           
later appeared in his fictional characters. His love of writing earned      
him the nickname Smudge.                                                    
  Because of the frequent moving, Remarque attended two different           
elementary schools and then the Catholic Praparande (preparatory            
school). He loved the drama of Catholic rituals, the beauty of              
churches, the flowers in cloister gardens, and works of art. He             
later wrote with a sense of theater, and he featured churches and           
museums, flowers and trees as symbols of enduring peace. While in           
school, he had problems with teachers, however, and eventually paid         
them back by ridiculing them in his novels. At the Praparande he            
argued so much with one teacher that he used the man's personality and      
another's name (Konschorek) to produce a specific character in Ail          
Quiet on the Western Front: Schoolmaster Kantorek.                          
  In November 1916, when Remarque was eighteen and a third-year             
student at Osnabruck's Lehrerseminar (teachers college), he was             
drafted for World War I. After basic training at the Westerberg in          
Osnabruck (the Klosterberg of All Quiet), he was assigned to a reserve      
battalion, but often given leave to visit his seriously ill mother. In      
June 1917, he was assigned to a trench unit near the Western Front. He      
was a calm, self-possessed soldier, and when his classmate Troske           
was wounded by grenade splinters, Remarque carried him to safety. He        
was devastated when Troske died in the hospital of head wounds that         
had gone unnoticed. Still, he rescued another comrade before he             
himself was severely injured- also by grenade splinters- and sent to        
the St. Vincenz hospital in Duisburg for much of 1917-1918. He was          
there when his mother died in September 1917. A year later, still           
grieving for her, he returned to Osnabruck for further training. After      
the war he substituted her middle name, Maria, for his own, Paul.           
  The war ended before Remarque could return to active service, but         
even though he had not experienced frontline fighting at its worst,         
the war had changed his attitudes forever. He had learned to realize        
the value- and fragility- of each individual life, and had become           
disillusioned with a patriotism that ignored the individual. To him         
and many of his companions, civilian careers no longer held any             
meaning.                                                                    
  The next few years in Germany brought shortages, profiteering,            
runaway inflation, unemployment, riots, and extremist politics-             
including the rise of National Socialism from the postwar German            
Workers Party, a group almost fanatic in stressing nationalism. For         
lack of anything better to do, Remarque and several friends returned        
to the Seminar, but they found the studies and the older teachers'          
attitudes ridiculous. Remarque became involved in many disputes. For        
example, to ridicule the town authorities for their continued belief        
in the glory of war, he had himself photographed with his dog for           
the local paper- he in an officer's uniform decorated with two Iron         
Crosses and other medals. The scandalized Osnabruck officials demanded      
a public apology.                                                           
  Still, at graduation he was given the customary letter of                 
recommendation (although it did describe him as more freethinking than      
the average teacher), and in June 1919 he began two years' work as a        
substitute for teachers on leave. He was blond, strikingly                  
goodlooking, and very muscular, and managed to dress elegantly              
whatever his income. He stayed out of politics but became interested        
in all sports, especially cars and racing. Finally, bored with              
teaching, he wandered from job to job: playing organ on Sundays in          
an insane asylum, working for a tombstone firm, working as a                
small-town drama critic, writing advertising copy for an automotive         
firm. He married an actress, Jutta Ilse Zambona, in 1925, shortly           
after taking a job in Berlin as associate editor of the illustrated         
magazine, Sport im Bild, and became a regular in Berlin society, often      
sporting a monocle, superficially happy.                                    
  Early in 1920, as Erich Remark, he published a novel so poorly            
received that the embarrassment caused him to adopt his great               
grandfather's spelling of Remarque. His journalistic writing was stiff      
often mediocre and overly sentimental. Thus, the great success of           
his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, published in 1929,                
astonished him and everyone else. He hadn't even set out to write a         
bestseller but had written, instead, to rid himself of the bleak moods      
that he and his friends were still experiencing. "The shadow of war         
hung over us," he said, "especially when we tried to shut our minds to      
it." The result, known in German as Im Westen nichts Neues, deeply          
moved people on both sides of the Atlantic who were also still seeking      
to make sense of the war.                                                   
  In its first year, German readers alone bought more than one million      
copies of All Quiet; and the British, French, and Americans bought          
thousands more. The novel also attained success as an American              
motion picture. (One of the first "talkies," the film, starring Lew         
Ayres and Lewis Wolheim, is still considered a classic. A 1979              
made-for-television version starred Richard Thomas as Paul, Patricia        
Neal as Mrs. Baumer, and Ernest Borgnine as Katczinsky.) By 1932 All        
Quiet had been translated into 29 languages, and the unknown                
journalist had been transformed into a world-famous author.                 
  Despite its popularity, the book generated a storm of controversy.        
Some people charged that Remarque had written solely to shock and to        
sell. Others called the book sentimental pacifism. The Nazis chose          
to read it as an attack on the greatness of the German nation.              
Ignoring the book as literature, they spread rumors to undermine            
Remarque's popularity. They variously claimed that he was a French          
Jew, an old man who had never seen a battlefield, or the worthless son      
of millionaire parents. Remarque refused to comment, later telling          
an interviewer, "I was only misunderstood where people went out of          
their way to misunderstand me."                                             
  During the controversy Remarque and his wife lived in Berlin. They        
were divorced in the early 1930s after the Nazis exiled him but             
remarried almost immediately so that Ilse, who suffered from                
tuberculosis, would not lose her Swiss residence permit. They lived         
separately until their final divorce in 1951.                               
  Remarque's sequel to All Quiet, based on his and his friends'             
experiences after they returned from the front, was published in 1931.      
It was called Der Weg zuruck, or The Road Back. At the time,                
Remarque was neutral (or noncommittal) rather than a convinced              
anti-Nazi, but the sequel aroused further Nazi persecution.                 
Goebbels, chief organizer of the witch-hunt, had first brought              
things to a head in 1930, when the American film version of All             
Quiet was screened in Berlin. His bands of Hitler Youth had rampaged        
through the theater hurling stink bombs, scattering white mice, and         
shouting, "Germany, awake!" The film was banned, and in 1931                
Remarque was forced to leave Germany, where both his novels were            
thrown into the fire during the infamous bookburning of 1933.               
  Remarque commented in 1962, "I had to leave Germany because my            
life was threatened. I was neither a Jew nor orientated towards the         
left politically. I was the same then as I am today: a militant             
pacifist." It is said that Goebbels later invited Remarque back, but        
that Remarque replied, "What? Sixty-five million people would like          
to get away and I'm to go back of my own free will? Not on your life!"      
  In 1932 German officials seized his Berlin bank account-                  
supposedly for back taxes- but he had transferred most of his money as      
well as his Impressionist paintings to Switzerland, where he bought         
a villa at Porto Ronco on Lake Maggiore, gradually filling it with          
valuable antiques.                                                          
  By the time Remarque was actually deprived of his German citizenship      
in 1938, his first three books had already been made into films in          
America and he was sometimes called the King of Hollywood. Until            
1939 he divided his time between Porto Ronco and France; from 1939          
to 1942 he rented a bungalow in Hollywood. His female companions            
included Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo; his male friends, Charles        
Chaplin, Cole Porter, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway.            
Eventually, he tired of the Hollywood glitter, and in 1942 began to         
divide his time between New York and Porto Ronco. In 1957 he                
received critical acclaim as an actor for his role in the film version      
of his novel A Time to Love and a Time to Die. In 1958 he married an        
American actress, Paulette Goddard, whom he had met in the 1940s.           
  When he first came to America in 1939, Remarque had none of the           
passport difficulties experienced by most German political exiles at        
that time. But he felt the injustices of his fellow countrymen              
deeply and described them fully in his novels. He applied for American      
citizenship in 1941, becoming a citizen after the time required by          
law. He loved America- especially the easygoing friendliness of the         
people- but never felt fully accepted by the Germans and always             
resented the loss of his German citizenship. Nor was he the only            
member of his family to suffer at the hands of the Nazis. In 1943           
his younger sister Elfriede Scholz was beheaded for spreading               
subversive propaganda. He was deeply moved when Osnabruck named a           
street for her in 1968. In 1971 the authorities also named a section        
of road along the town walls the Erich-Maria-Remarque-Ring.                 
  Wherever he was living he continued to write, and, despite his            
financial success and love of fine living, never forgot the lessons of      
World War I. His work eventually included 11 novels, all written in         
German but immediately translated and published in English as well.         
They developed themes first introduced in All Quiet. (Each is               
described in the Further Reading section of this guidebook.) Early          
in the 1950s Remarque returned briefly to Germany to collect                
material for a book, but he never returned to his hometown, even            
when attending his father's funeral near there in 1956. He felt that        
the new city, rebuilt after World War II, wasn't the town he had            
enshrined in All Quiet, The Road Back, and The Black Obelisk.               
  A series of heart attacks in the late 1960s obliged Remarque to           
choose Rome instead of New York for his winter quarters, and he             
lived there and in Porto Ronco until his death in a hospital in             
Locarno on September 25, 1970.                                              
  Tributes from the world press were varied, and sometimes stressed         
strange things. In his native Germany, the weekly journal Der               
Spiegel published an obituary that managed to omit his ever having          
written a great World War I novel. Remarque would not have been             
surprised. The news media had always been far more interested in his        
glamorous life than in his novels. But the public had bought more than      
13 minion copies of his books. And All Quiet on the Western Front,          
accounting for 8 million in sales, is still one of the greatest             
European bestsellers of the 20th century.                                   
                                                                            
PLOT                                                                        
                              THE NOVEL                                     
-                                                                           
                               THE PLOT                     (RALLPLOT)      
-                                                                           
  All Quiet on the Western Front tells what happens to a group of           
German teenagers during World War I. The narrator is Paul Baumer. He        
and his classmates had patriotically marched off for recruitment,           
spurred on by the slogans of their teacher, Kantorek. But they find no      
glory in war.                                                               
  As the story opens, 80 men have just returned from two weeks at           
the front. Seventy of their comrades may be dead or wounded, but their      
empty bellies concern them more. They nearly riot when the cook             
won't dish out the food prepared for twice their number. But the            
commander steps in, and for once they eat their fill. Afterward,            
Paul and his friends visit their classmate Kemmerich, dying from a leg      
amputation. All Muller can talk about is who will get Kemmerich's fine      
leather boots. The more sensitive Kropp laughs bitterly at                  
Kantorek's having called them Iron Youth.                                   
  Lounging around the next few days, Paul recalls the basic training        
methods of the sadistic Corporal Himmelstoss. Cruel as he was,              
Himmelstoss did a lot more than Kantorek to toughen them for battle.        
Alone with Kemmerich, Paul can hardly bear it when his friend dies and      
all the orderly cares about is getting the bed cleared. Outraged at         
the senseless death of all such frail-looking boys, Paul                    
nevertheless takes Kemmerich's boots to Muller- they are of no use          
to Kemmerich now.                                                           
  Soon, underfed replacements arrive. Katczinsky, a scavenger who           
could find a dinner roast in the Sahara, surprises everyone with            
beef and beans. He listens as Paul and his friends gleefully recall         
the night they trapped Himmelstoss with a bedsheet and soundly              
thrashed him, and joins in as they argue heatedly that the leaders          
simply ought to slug out their war with each other, while the soldiers      
watch them.                                                                 
  Horror descends anew the night they string barbed wire at the front.      
In the dark, the men instinctively avoid incoming shells, but the           
screaming of horses innocently caught in the bombardment chills them        
to the bone. When the shelling eases they trudge to a cemetery to wait      
for transport. Many nearly suffocate in a surprise gas attack, and          
after a new bombardment their stomachs turn at the sight of dead            
companions mixed with corpses from blown-up graves. At dawn they            
mindlessly return to camp.                                                  
  Resting the next day, Paul's group reluctantly conclude that war has      
ruined them. After their horrifying experiences, how can they ever          
again take jobs or studies seriously? Their spirits lift when               
Himmelstoss appears, sent to the front at last! Tjaden and Kropp            
openly insult him and leave him sputtering. When the matter is              
officially reviewed that evening, their light punishment is amply           
balanced by the lecture Himmelstoss gets on the idiocy of saluting          
at the front. Much later, Paul and Katczinsky slip off to a farm.           
Neither squawking goose nor growling bulldog thwarts Paul, and he           
and his comrade Katczinsky spend a companionable night roasting and         
eating their goose.                                                         
  Then it's back to rat-infested trenches at the front. At night            
they scramble for masks when the enemy sends gas; by day, they cower        
in stiffness to deceive observers in balloons. Terror is their              
companion through deafening barrages; Paul's dugout survives a              
direct hit. One night the French infantry attack. All through the next      
day Paul's company fights in a frenzy, the men armed only with              
grenades and sharpened shovels. For days, attacks and counterattacks        
alternate. Once Himmelstoss panics until Paul shouts sense into him         
and he plunges back into battle. Paul's only relief is to dream of          
quiet cloisters. By the time the siege ends, only 32 men are left in        
the company.                                                                
  Back at a field depot for reorganization, the men loaf and joke as        
if they hadn't a care in the world. Thinking about their lost comrades      
would only drive them mad. Even Himmelstoss has changed. Not only           
did he rescue Westhus, who had been wounded, but, as substitute             
cook, he is slipping Paul's group badly needed extra rations. Twice,        
Paul, Kropp, and another classmate, Leer, swim a closely guarded            
canal, not for the brief pleasures of a soldiers' brothel but for           
the luxury of hours with three French girls. When Westhus dies after        
all, Paul- due for leave and temporary reassignment- wonders in             
agony who will be there when he returns.                                    
  On leave in his hometown, Paul relishes the way his classmate             
Mittelstaedt torments their old schoolmaster Kantorek, now a pitiful        
specimen of a soldier in the reserve unit Mittelstaedt commands.            
Nowhere is Paul comfortable. Duty drags him to visit Kemmerich's            
mother, but his own sensitivity has been dulled by the carnage and          
he can't begin to comprehend her hysterical grief over a single             
soldier. His own books and papers no longer comfort him, his                
civilian clothes don't fit, old men lecture him on how they think           
the war is really going, and his mother, whom he adores, is                 
seriously ill. So out of place does he feel that he is glad to              
report for duty at a nearby camp. There he often guards Russian             
prisoners of war, whom he begins to identify as men like himself and        
his comrades. The more he sees their suffering, the less he can             
grasp why he must call them enemy.                                          
  When Paul rejoins his company, he is relieved to find that all his        
closest friends have survived. Polishing is the order of the day;           
the troops are preparing for an inspection by the Kaiser. The whole         
ridiculous display leaves them burning with resentment at the               
blindness of their leaders. Up at the front again, Paul volunteers for      
a scouting mission with his friends. He is briefly separated from them      
in the dark trenches and panics until their distant voices steady him.      
Only comradeship sustains him now. Later, trapped by shelling, he           
blindly, repeatedly, stabs a French soldier who falls into his foxhole      
and must listen and watch for hours as the man's life slowly ebbs.          
He is guilt stricken at having personally killed a plain soldier            
like himself. It takes the cool way the sniper Oellrich tallies up his      
kills to snap him back to front-line reality.                               
  By sheer luck Paul's entire group next find themselves guarding an        
abandoned village and supply dump. For two glorious weeks they lose         
themselves in feasting sleeping, and joking. Then, again by chance,         
both Paul and Kropp receive leg wounds while helping to evacuate a          
village. During their stay in a Catholic hospital, the wonder of clean      
sheets soon evaporates, and Paul discovers just how many ways a man         
can be killed- or maimed for life. The wards seem worse than the            
battlefield. Kropp's leg is amputated, but Paul recovers.                   
  After a short while Paul is back to animal existence at the front,        
except that conditions have grown even worse. Starved and short of          
supplies, the men are emaciated and their nerves so frayed that they        
are prone to snap at the slightest provocation. It takes only the           
wonder of cherry blossoms at the edge of a field to madden one man          
with thoughts of his farm: he deserts and is court martialed. Another,      
who stoically bore the screaming of the horses in the earlier               
battle, dies in an insane attempt to rescue a messenger dog.                
  As the summer of 1918 wears on, existence is reduced to a paralyzing      
round of filth, mud, disintegrating gear, dysentery, typhus,                
influenza- and battle. Muller, shot point blank in the stomach,             
gives Kemmerich's boots to Paul- the boots are sturdy and may               
survive them all. When pleasure-loving Leer collapses of a hip              
wound, all Paul has left is his friend Katczinsky. Then even                
Katczinsky is wounded: his shin is shattered. Paul doggedly cames           
him far behind the lines to an aid station. But the medics can only         
shake their heads. Katczinsky has died on Paul's back from a tiny           
splinter of shrapnel that freakishly pierced his head.                      
  The months wear on to October, and Paul is alone. Back at the             
front after two weeks of rest for a trace of gas poisoning, he has          
nothing to hope for. He is killed on a day so quiet that the army           
report consists of a single line: "All quiet on the Western Front."         
                                                                            
CHARACTERS                                                                  
                            THE CHARACTERS                  (RALLCHAR)      
-                                                                           
                           MAJOR CHARACTERS                                 
-                                                                           
  PAUL BAUMER                                                               
  Paul Baumer is the 19-year-old narrator of the story.                     
  At the front, Paul's special friends in Second Company include his        
classmates Behm, Kemmerich, Muller, Leer, and Kropp. The six of them        
were among 20 who enlisted together, prodded on by Schoolmaster             
Kantorek. Although he doesn't say so, Paul is obviously a natural           
leader: Franz Kemmerich's mother implored him to look after her son         
when they left home. Paul is also courageous. He may momentarily            
panic, but he doesn't break under the most terrible battle conditions.      
He learns the sound of each type of shell; he dives for cover or grabs      
his gas mask at the right instant. In one battle, he gently comforts        
an embarrassed rookie who has soiled his underpants, and later soberly      
contemplates shooting the same man to spare him an agonizing death          
after his hip has been shattered.                                           
  Cool as he is in battle, though, Paul has a hard time making sense        
of it all. He keeps recalling Behm, the first of his class to die, and      
when a second- Kemmerich- dies, he rages inwardly at the senseless          
slaughter of scrawny schoolboys. The callous attitude of commanders         
and orderlies toward an individual death saddens and disillusions him.      
His elders were wrong- there is nothing glorious about war- but he has      
no new values to replace the patriotic myths they taught him.               
  At first his companions seem shallow to him- immediately                  
forgetting the dead and turning their total attention to stockpiling        
the cigarets and food originally meant for the deceased soldier- and        
he is at pains to tell us why this callousness is necessary.                
Gradually, though, he comes to accept their approach: that poetry           
and philosophy and civilian paper-pushing jobs alike, all are               
utterly pointless in the midst of so much carnage. All you have is the      
moment at hand, and getting from it all the physical comfort you can        
is a worthwhile goal. There is another important element, too, to           
being with your comrades, as going on leave proves to Paul: no              
civilian understands you the way these men do, and nothing from your        
former life sustains you the way their friendship does. These values        
come together for Paul the evening he joins an older friend,                
Katczinsky, on a goose-hunting raid. They spend the night roasting the      
goose before eating it, and each time that Paul awakens for his turn        
at the basting, he feels Katczinsky's presence like a cloak of              
comfort. At other times, panicked and alone in the dark of the              
trenches, all it takes to steady his nerves is the sound of his             
friends' voices. If he awakens from a nightmare, the mere sound of          
their breathing strengthens him: he is not alone.                           
  Paul gradually comes to realize that the enemy is no different            
from himself or from one of his friends. The Frenchman he kills in the      
trenches, Duval, looks like the kind of man whose friendship he             
would have enjoyed. The Russian prisoners he guards have the same           
feelings and desires and needs as he. He comes to see war as the            
ultimate horror. It's bad enough that it pits man against man. But          
even animals and trees and flowers and butterflies are innocently           
caught up in the carnage inflicted by Man, the great Destroyer.             
  As his friends are killed one by one, Paul can only cling to his          
newfound beliefs in the brotherhood of all men and the value of the         
spark of life within each individual. At the end, alone, he has only        
the blind hope that his own mysterious inner spark will somehow             
survive and guide him after the war. Otherwise, he sees no                  
meaningful future.                                                          
-                                                                           
  KANTOREK                                                                  
  Kantorek is a provincial schoolmaster, an energetic little man            
with a face like a shrew. His whole life centers on the Prussian            
myth of Destiny: he believes with all his heart that war will bring         
his country greatness. He sees Paul and his schoolmates not as growing      
boys but as Iron Youth whose finest destiny lies in serving their           
Fatherland. His romantic notions change only when he is called up as a      
reservist and placed under the command of a former pupil named              
Mittelstaedt. He is a poor excuse of a soldier who shrinks emotionally      
when Mittelstaedt taunts him with his own former slogans. But even          
then, we never quite know him as a real human being. He is instead a        
pathetic illustration of all those elders whose values the young            
soldier comes to reject.                                                    
-                                                                           
  CORPORAL HIMMELSTOSS                                                      
  For most of the novel Himmelstoss is the stereotypical military           
man who becomes a tyrant in his own small sphere on the basis of a          
little rank. He sports a waxed mustache and is, like Kantorek,              
physically undersized. A mail carrier in civilian life, he lets             
power go to his head. As the corporal in charge of basic training           
for recruits, he becomes a sadistic drillmaster known as the Terror of      
Klosterberg. He takes a special dislike to Paul and his friends, being      
sensitive enough to detect their quiet defiance, and earns the beating      
they give him one night after trapping him in a bedsheet. Later             
Himmelstoss is himself assigned to the front, to Paul's company.            
Before his first battle, he is the same pompous strutter as always,         
but during the siege he falls into momentary shell shock. Paul snaps        
him out of it and Himmelstoss fights bravely, together with his former      
recruits, even rescuing a friend of Paul. He emerges from battle so         
changed that he uses his influence to slip Paul's group extra rations.      
-                                                                           
  STANISLAUS KATCZINSKY                                                     
  Katczinsky, known as Kat, is a 40-year-old, down-to-earth soldier         
with bent shoulders, blue eyes, and a scraggly mustache. In civilian        
life he was a cobbler or shoemaker, but he knew a little about all          
trades. In war he becomes the leader of Paul's group, a welcome             
substitute for all those older men whose twisted values brought on the      
war. Despite their differences in age and experience, he forms an           
especially warm friendship with Paul. Sharp, tough, and resourceful,        
Kat is unequaled at finding excellent food in the most unlikely             
places. He is shrewd and cunning- the embodiment of the practical           
man who can turn his inventive imagination to use in any situation. In      
the summer of 1918, when Paul is carrying Kat to an aid station for         
treatment of a shin wound, they recall how Kat once similarly               
rescued Paul. They reach the station but Kat is dead- killed on Paul's      
back by a stray splinter to his head. This loss of the last of his          
friends drains Paul of his one remaining source of comfort at the           
front.                                                                      
-                                                                           
  FRANZ KEMMERICH                                                           
  The second of Paul's classmates to be killed, Kemmerich dies in           
great pain after a leg amputation. He had been excellent at                 
gymnastics, but even after a year at the front he is still a slender        
boy. His nearness to death makes his face look childlike again. His         
dreams of a simple, peaceful life of forestry work die with him, and        
Paul trembles with rage at the wastefulness of war. All supplies being      
scarce at the front, Kemmerich's well-made leather boots are a prize        
passed on first to Muller and later to Paul. Since they originally          
came from a downed English flier, the boots become a tangible symbol        
both of brotherhood and of death as they move from man to man.              
-                                                                           
  MULLER                                                                    
  Another volunteer and classmate of Paul, Muller still dreams of           
passing school examinations. Even during bombardment he mutters             
propositions in physics. Muller, with his protruding teeth and booming      
laugh, is a practical man, coarsened by the war. He eats all that is        
available in anticipation of lean times and asks for Kemmerich's boots      
even before the unfortunate soldier realizes he is dying. (Muller is        
indeed the first to inherit the boots and later gives them to Paul          
before dying of a stomach wound.) His transforming a comrade's death        
into a chance for good boots is one of the first shocking instances we      
see of what war does to men.                                                
-                                                                           
  LEER                                                                      
  Also a volunteer and one of Paul's classmates, Leer shows an              
interesting mixture of a keen interest in mathematics and an obsession      
with women. Bearded and battle-hardened, he appears to be at least          
40 years old. He claims the blond as his own when he, Paul, and             
Kropp visit the three French girls. He collapses of a hip wound in the      
summer of 1918 and bleeds to death within two minutes. Paul thinks,         
regretfully, what little use his math is now.                               
-                                                                           
  TJADEN                                                                    
  Tjaden is a former locksmith with a sharp, thin appearance and an         
enormous appetite. He is Paul's age, though not one of his classmates.      
When we first meet him, he is ready to pick a fight with the cook           
who does not want to serve 80 men the food prepared for twice as many.      
Because of a bladder problem, Tjaden was considered lazy by                 
Himmelstoss, who persecuted him in basic training. He is bolder at the      
front, however. He is a fine enough companion in fighting and               
joking, but Paul and Leer and Kropp dump him when they visit the            
French girls.                                                               
-                                                                           
  DETERING                                                                  
  Detering is a one-dimensional stereotype of the simple, peace-loving      
peasant. He constantly dreams of his home, his wife, and his farm, and      
cares little for philosophy or military doctrine. In the spring of          
1918, surrounded by battlefield carnage, he is driven nearly mad by         
the sight of cherry blossoms. They unlock his memories of growing           
things and, losing all caution, he deserts. He is caught and court          
martialed.                                                                  
-                                                                           
  ALBERT KROPP                                                              
  A classmate, volunteer, and special friend of Paul, Kropp is a small      
man. Since he is regarded as the best thinker in the class, no one          
is surprised that he is the first to make lance-corporal. In group          
discussions he is the one who offers profound solutions and                 
comments. It is Kropp, for instance, who suggests turning war into a        
public festival, with the generals fighting it out in an arena while        
the common people sit and watch. It is also Kropp who sums up their         
youth, their disillusionment, and their lack of training for the            
future by observing, "The war has ruined us for everything." With Paul      
he is sent to a Catholic hospital behind the lines because of wounds        
suffered during the evacuation of a village. Scheduled to receive an        
artificial limb after a leg amputation, he withdraws into long periods      
of sober silence.                                                           
-                                                                           
  HAIE WESTHUS                                                              
  Westhus is a 19-year-old peat digger with hands so huge that in           
one he can conceal a loaf of bread. He operates as Katczinsky's             
executive on foraging expeditions, and, on the whole, prefers army          
life to cutting sod. The army gives him food and a place to sleep, and      
in peacetime would offer what he considers nice, clean work. He is the      
one member of Paul's group who plans to reenlist after the war but          
dies of a back wound after being rescued by Himmelstoss.                    
-                                                                           
                           MINOR CHARACTERS                                 
-                                                                           
  BULCKE                                                                    
  The fat First Company cook, he is willing to trundle his pots             
right up to the front lines for his men. He provides a contrast with        
Ginger.                                                                     
-                                                                           
  GINGER                                                                    
  The red-headed Second Company cook is more concerned with his             
personal safety and regulations than with feeding the men. His              
pettiness contrasts with Bulcke's courage and generosity.                   
-                                                                           
  JOSEF BEHM                                                                
  One of Paul's classmates, Behm is a plump, homely volunteer who dies      
two months before he would have been drafted. Wounded in the eye, he        
is shot down while blindly attempting to return to safety. His death        
greatly affects his classmates. Later, Mittelstaedt upbraids                
Kantorek with the fact that had it not been for his marching the whole      
class down to enlist, Behm would have had at least two more months          
to live.                                                                    
-                                                                           
  LIEUTENANT BERTINCK                                                       
  Paul's company commander, Bertinck is a fine officer who came up          
through the ranks. He bears Himmelstoss's complaint and treats              
Tjaden and Kropp as fairly as possible. He dies saving his                  
companions from an approaching enemy team using a flamethrower.             
-                                                                           
  HEINRICH BREDEMEYER                                                       
  Bredemeyer is a soldier and fellow townsman of Paul who tells Paul's      
mother about the increasing dangers in the front lines. His                 
tactlessness makes Paul's first leave more miserable than it might          
otherwise have been.                                                        
-                                                                           
  FRAU (MRS.) BAUMER                                                        
  Paul's mother is a courageous woman who is dying of cancer. She is        
the most comforting person Paul finds at home. She alone does not           
pretend to understand what it is like at the front. Paul is in agony        
over her illness and is overwhelmed by the love she shows him by            
preparing his favorite foods and depriving herself in order to buy him      
fine underwear.                                                             
-                                                                           
  FRAU (MRS.) KEMMERICH                                                     
  Unlike Paul's quiet mother, Franz Kemmerich's mother tends to weep        
and wail. She had unreasonably expected Paul to watch out for her son,      
Franz, and blames him for surviving while Franz died. The two               
mothers show different reactions to the brutality of war.                   
-                                                                           
  MITTELSTAEDT                                                              
  This classmate of Paul takes revenge on schoolmaster Kantorek when        
the latter is assigned to the home guard unit Mittelstaedt commands.        
Once Kantorek had held Mittelstaedt's future in his hands by his            
potential influence in connection with examinations. Aware now that         
survival is more important than any test, Mittelstaedt ridicules            
Kantorek, even using the schoolmaster's favorite phrases.                   
-                                                                           
  BOETTCHER                                                                 
  The former porter at Paul's school becomes a model reserve                
soldier. Mittelstaedt sends him on errands through town with the            
former schoolmaster, Kantorek, who is an impossible soldier, so that        
everyone may enjoy the irony of the reversal of roles: the nobody is        
now the teacher.                                                            
-                                                                           
  GERARD DUVAL                                                              
  Duval is a French printer with a wife and child. The soldier Paul         
instinctively stabs after he falls into Paul's shell hole. Paul's           
horror grows as he waits hours for Duval to die, and then learns the        
facts of his life from his wallet. Duval is a pleasant-looking man,         
and now he is dead at Paul's own hand. Guilt nearly drives Paul mad         
before a slowdown in the firing finally allows him to leave the             
shell hole.                                                                 
-                                                                           
  SERGEANT OELLRICH                                                         
  In contrast to Paul, Oellrich is a sniper who is proud of his             
ability to pick off enemy soldiers. Katczinsky and Kropp point him out      
to Paul to shock him back to the reality of front-line warfare after        
Paul has killed Duval. Oellrich boasts about how his human targets          
jump when he hits them, and Katczinsky and Kropp remind Paul that           
the man will probably get a decoration or promotion if he keeps             
shooting so well.                                                           
-                                                                           
  JOSEF HAMACHER                                                            
  Hamacher is a popular soldier in Paul and Kropp's hospital ward.          
He can get away with anything because of a "shooting license," a paper      
stating that he experiences periods of mental derangement.                  
-                                                                           
  LITTLE PETER                                                              
  Another patient, Peter is small and has black, curly hair. His            
lung injury is so serious that he is sent to the Dying Room, a room         
located next to the elevator to the morgue. He vows to return- and          
does, to everyone's amazement.                                              
-                                                                           
  SISTER LIBERTINE                                                          
  Sister Libertine is one of the nurses at the hospital where Paul and      
Albert are patients. Unlike some of the callous medics and surgeons,        
and even the other serious-minded nuns, she spreads good cheer              
throughout her entire wing of the hospital. The men would do                
anything for her.                                                           
-                                                                           
  FRANZ WACHTER                                                             
  Wachter dies in the hospital. Unable to get anyone to take care of        
his hemorrhaging arm wound, he makes Paul realize that patients can         
die just from neglect.                                                      
-                                                                           
  THE THREE FRENCH GIRLS                                                    
  Three girls live in a house across the river from a German camp.          
Paul, Kropp, and Leer swim a closely guarded canal to spend two             
evenings with them. Leer's favorite is the blond; Paul's girl is the        
little brunet. She is not particularly concerned that he is going on        
leave. Considering the shortages, she will welcome any decent soldier,      
whatever his uniform, if he can also bring food.                            
-                                                                           
  BERGER                                                                    
  Berger is the strongest soldier in Paul's company. At one time he         
stoically listened while the screaming horses died, but by the end          
of the war his protective shell has grown as thin as anyone else's. He      
loses all judgement and insanely tries to rescue a wounded messenger        
dog two hundred yards off. He dies of a pelvis wound in the attempt.        
-                                                                           
  KAISER WILHELM                                                            
  William II (1859-1941), or Kaiser Wilhelm, who briefly appears to         
inspect troops, is a figure from world history. Emperor of Germany and      
King of Prussia from 1888 to 1918, he was the son of Frederick III and      
a grandson of both William I of Germany and Queen Victoria of England.      
When he was a young man, his parents rejected his belief in the divine      
right of kingship and disliked his impulsiveness and love of                
military display. These traits have often been explained as his             
attempts to compensate for a withered left arm. His visit to the            
troops in this novel shows both his love of military display and his        
lack of an imposing physical appearance.                                    
  His goal was to make Germany a major world power, and he was the          
dominant force in his own government. He loved foreign travel but           
often spoke impulsively and insulted other heads of state. His actions      
helped drive Great Britain into an alliance with France. He engaged in      
the famous "Willy-Nicky" correspondence with Czar Nicholas of               
Russia, but undermined the friendship by supporting Austria in              
policies offensive to Russia. He strained relationships with France by      
interfering in colonial affairs in Morocco. Alarmed at the growing          
isolation of Germany, he allied his country with Austria, Italy, and        
Turkey.                                                                     
  His power declined after the outbreak of the First World War. His         
abdication was one of the peace requirements demanded by the Allies in      
1918.                                                                       
                                                                            
SETTING                                                                     
                            OTHER ELEMENTS                                  
-                                                                           
                               SETTING                      (RALLSETT)      
-                                                                           
  The story told in All Quiet on the Western Front occurs during the        
two years just before the Armistice ended World War I in November           
1918. In Chapters 1 and 2 we learn that Paul Baumer, the narrator, and      
his friend Kat had been together three years- one year longer than the      
time period covered by the novel.                                           
  By 1916 when the story begins, World War I had already been underway      
for two years. It broke out in August 1914 between the Allies               
(Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, and later the United             
States) and the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary and Germany). In            
June 1914 Austrian Archduke Frances Ferdinand and his wife had been         
assassinated at Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist, leading to               
Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia. German leaders,             
alarmed at Russian mobilization and eager to establish the Reich as         
a power on a par with Britain, declared war on both of Germany's            
neighbors, Russia and France. They also refused to guarantee the            
neutrality of Belgium. Great Britain, in turn, declared war on Germany      
in response to the threat to British allies. At the time, Paul and his      
classmates would have been 16-year-old schoolboys.                          
  German desire to become a major power was nothing new. Prussian           
beliefs included the idea that Germany had to be a military state           
because it lacked natural protective boundaries. The Prussian goal was      
to make Germany a glittering, well-organized, self-confident                
machine. The idea that Paul rejects- 18-year-olds as Iron Youth-            
fits perfectly into this Prussian mentality.                                
  From the beginning, World War I was fought in two areas, named for        
their geographical relationship to Germany. The Eastern Front extended      
into Russia, and the Western Front extended through Belgium into            
northern France. Germany hoped to knock out France in six weeks and         
then turn its full strength against Russia. The Allies, however,            
soon halted the German army at the Marne River, and the war in the          
West settled down to four years of trench warfare- the static or at         
a standstill kind of war described in the discussion of Chapter 6 in        
this guidebook.                                                             
-                                                                           
                         (See illustration.)                                
-                                                                           
  In All Quiet, Paul describes a battle with the French in Chapter 6        
and then, a short time later, is assigned to a camp (Chapter 8)             
where he guards Russian prisoners of war. Although he does not name         
the exact locations for the military offensives he describes- after         
all, the place names had little to do with life and death- the              
offensive in Chapter 6 could have been the French attack in 1917 at         
Aisne and Champagne. That offensive failed, with heavy French losses.       
  Meanwhile, behind the Fronts, all resources were being directed           
toward winning the war. At first, military methods used were mostly         
those from earlier wars- infantry, cavalry, and artillery- but this         
war boosted production of tanks, planes, machine guns,                      
high-explosive shells, flamethrowers, and poison gas. The strong            
industrial push left little for civil life, and economies and               
governments were shattered all over Europe. Forced drafts of men, food      
shortages, attacks on civilian populations, and hysteria reached            
heights never before seen.                                                  
  It is during this final period that the last few chapters of All          
Quiet occur.                                                                
  By late 1917 Germany had won the war in the East. In March 1918,          
Russia signed the harsh treaty of Brest-Litovsk, giving Germany huge        
chunks of its territory. Russia's withdrawal enabled Germany to             
transfer forces from the East and to mount a supreme effort to capture      
Paris. But by this time the United States was entering the war, and         
timing was essential to the German plan: the offensive had to               
succeed before American troops could reach the Western Front in             
sizable numbers. Ludendorff, the German leader who directed the             
operation, was prepared to lose one minion men to win. He poured his        
efforts onto the British sector. The situation became so desperate          
that the Allies stopped arguing among themselves and established a          
unified command under Marshal Ferdinand Foch. Nevertheless, at its          
height the German offensive came within 40 miles of Paris. Then in May      
1918 American divisions poured in, and the Allies fought back               
furiously. In July they broke through the new German lines and swept        
the Central Powers back toward the pre-1914 frontiers.                      
  In the fall of 1918, German allies began to surrender- in                 
September the Bulgarians, in October the Turks. One by one, ethnic          
minorities within Austria-Hungary began to proclaim independence,           
and on November 3 the Austrians capitulated. Germans were demoralized,      
and mutinies broke out in German fleets. There were revolts among           
civilians in Kiel and Hamburg. In early November the German king or         
emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm, fled to Holland. Finally, on November 11,          
1918, a German delegation appeared at Allied headquarters to request        
an armistice.                                                               
  Overall, the war was fought at tremendous cost. Most tragic was           
the loss in lives. Known dead included 1.8 million German soldiers and      
more than one million men each from Russia, France, Austria-Hungary,        
the United Kingdom, and Italy. Even the U.S., latecomer to the war,         
lost more than 100,000 men. Actual fatalities have been estimated as        
high as 13 million. In addition, nearly 22 million men were wounded, 7      
million of them permanently disabled or mutilated. More than 9 million      
civilians were also killed.                                                 
  The world of 1919 was stunned and uncertain. Ten years later the          
mood still lingered. People wanted to understand what had happened but      
could not. It is in that atmosphere that Remarque's All Quiet on the        
Western Front appeared.                                                     
                                                                            
THEMES                                                                      
                                THEMES                      (RALLTHEM)      
-                                                                           
  In the short note that comes just before Chapter 1, Remarque lets us      
know exactly what theme he intends. He says that All Quiet on the           
Western Front is the story of a generation of young men who were            
destroyed by World War I- even if they survived the shelling. To            
arrive at a fifth statement of this main theme, Remarque weaves             
several related themes into the story. The outline that follows points      
out chapters you can read to see how he presents each idea.                 
-                                                                           
  1. THE HORROR OF WAR                                                      
  Remarque includes discussions among Paul's group, and Paul's own          
thoughts while he observes Russian prisoners of war (Chapters 3, 8, 9)      
to show that no ordinary people benefit from a war. No matter what          
side a man is on, he is killing other men just like himself, people         
with whom he might even be friends at another time.                         
  But Remarque doesn't just tell us war is horrible. He also shows          
us that war is terrible beyond anything we could imagine. All our           
senses are assaulted: we see newly dead soldiers and long-dead corpses      
tossed up together in a cemetery (Chapter 4); we hear the unearthly         
screaming of the wounded horses (Chapter 4); we see and smell three         
layers of bodies, swelling up and belching gases, dumped into a huge        
shell hole (Chapter 6); and we can almost touch the naked bodies            
hanging in trees and the limbs lying around the battlefield (Chapter        
9).                                                                         
  The crying of the horses is especially terrible. Horses have nothing      
to do with making war. Their bodies gleam beautifully as they parade        
along- until the shells strike them. To Paul, their dying cries             
represent all of nature accusing Man, the great destroyer.                  
  In later chapters Paul no longer mentions nature as an accuser but        
seems to suggest that nature is simply there- rolling steadily on           
through the seasons, paying no attention to the desperate cruelties of      
men to each other. This, too, shows the horror of war, that it is           
completely unnatural and has no place in the larger scheme of things.       
-                                                                           
  2. A REJECTION OF TRADITIONAL VALUES                                      
  In his introductory note Remarque said that his novel was not an          
accusation. But we have seen that it is, in many places, exactly that.      
This accusation- or rejection of traditional militaristic values of         
Western civilization- is impressed on the reader through the young          
soldiers, represented by Paul and his friends, who see military             
attitudes as stupid and who accuse their elders of betraying them.          
  In an early chapter Paul admits that endless drilling and sheer           
harassment did help toughen his group and turn them into soldiers. But      
he points out, often, how stupid it is to stick to regulations at           
the front- how insane this basic military attitude becomes in               
life-and-death situations. One such scene occurs in Chapter 1 when          
Ginger, the cook, doesn't want to let 80 men eat the food prepared for      
150, no matter how hungry they are. Another occurs in Chapter 7 when        
Paul is walking around in his hometown and a major forces him to march      
double time and salute properly- a ridiculous display, considering          
what he has just been through at the front. The emptiness of all            
this spit and polish shows up again in Chapter 9 when the men have          
to return the new clothes they were issued for the Kaiser's                 
inspection: rags are what's real at the front.                              
  The betrayal of the young by their elders becomes an issue on             
several occasions. In the first two chapters of the book we learn           
how misguided Paul was by the teachings of parents and                      
schoolmasters. We also see how older people cling to the Prussian myth      
of the glory of military might when Paul goes home on leave in Chapter      
7. The Kaiser's visit in Chapter 9 adds some hints of Remarque's            
specific disillusionment with the leaders of his own country. From a        
broad study of literature and world history, we can see that these          
older people were not individually to blame for their views. They were      
simply handing on what was handed on to them. Still, we can also            
understand why Paul and his friends are so bitterly disappointed and        
so angry to discover that their elders were wrong. Most readers feel a      
little sad that young men should consider the act of ridiculing adults      
their greatest goal in life, but we can also understand why they            
take revenge on Himmelstoss and Kantorek (Chapters 3 and 7). We even        
get a certain kick out of what they do, understanding their need to         
take out their disappointment on someone they know. These situations        
are, in miniature, an acting out of the bitter anger and                    
disillusionment Paul feels when he says in Chapter 10, "It must all be      
lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could           
not prevent this stream of blood being poured out."                         
-                                                                           
  3. FRIENDSHIP: THE ONLY ENDURING VALUE                                    
  The theme of comradeship occurs often and gives the novel both            
lighthearted and sad moments. In Chapter 5 it's easy to overlook how        
the farmer felt about having his property stolen and to chuckle             
aloud when Paul is struggling to capture the goose! We appreciate           
the circle of warmth that encloses him and Kat that night as they           
slowly cook and eat the goose, and then extend their warm circle by         
sharing the leftovers with Kropp and Tjaden. In Chapter 10 we enjoy         
their sharing of the pancakes and roast pig and fine club chairs at         
the supply dump, and we understand why Paul fakes a high temperature        
to go to the same hospital as Albert Kropp.                                 
  Friendship emerges as an even more important theme at the front.          
In Chapters 10 and 11 we see men helping wounded comrades at great          
personal risk- or even, like Lieutenant Bertinck, dying for their           
friends. The handing on of Kemmerich's fine yellow leather boots            
also acts as a symbol of friendship- a symbol we can almost touch, and      
one that keeps us aware of how deeply a soldier feels the loss of each      
of his special friends. We can understand how hearing the voices of         
friends when one is lost (Chapter 9) or even just hearing their             
breathing during the night (Chapter 11) can keep a soldier going. We        
grieve with Paul and almost put down the book when Kat dies.                
-                                                                           
  4. A GENERATION DESTROYED BY WORLD WAR I                                  
  Taking all of the themes together and adding Paul and his friends'        
hopeless discussions of what is left for them to do after the war           
(Chapter 5), we can conclude that Remarque succeeds in his main theme:      
showing that Paul's generation was destroyed by the Great War, as           
World War I was then called.                                                
                                                                            
STYLE                                                                       
                         STYLE AND STRUCTURE                (RALLSTYL)      
-                                                                           
  All Quiet on the Western Front is, on the whole, a very serious           
and even a grim novel. Remarque presents his message through vivid          
description and imagery. The tone is not overwhelmingly bitter.             
  Two things stand out in Remarque's style: his vivid word pictures         
and the way he balances contrasting scenes against each other to            
make each one stand out.                                                    
  His descriptions bring every chapter to life, whether he is               
showing us the glare of flares or the darkness beyond the trenches,         
vicious rats or itchy lice, the steady drumlike beat of bombardment or      
the piercing shrieks of shells and wounded. His descriptions also           
include images of beauty and peace- usually in Paul's thoughts- that        
make clear how awful the front actually is. He converts a pair of           
boots, a goose, and the circle of light cast by campfires into symbols      
of friendship. And he uses similes to show the brutality of war: the        
men fight like thugs, like wild beasts. The tanks push relentlessly         
forward like steel beasts squashing bugs.                                   
-                                                                           
  CH   FAR FROM THE FRONT    NEAR THE FRONT          AT THE FRONT           
-                                                                           
   1   Recollections:        Second Company,                                
       school, Kantorek.     down to 80 men,                                
                             well fed.                                      
-                                                                           
   2   Recollections:        Kemmerich's death                              
       Himmelstoss,          in a field hospital.                           
       basic training        The boots.                                     
-                                                                           
   3   Reminiscences:        Kat's skill at                                 
       Himmelstoss.          foraging. Theories                             
                             of war.                                        
-                                                                           
   4                                                  Barbed wire           
                                                      duty. The             
                                                      wounded horses        
                                                      The upturned          
                                                      graves.               
-                                                                           
   5                         Insubordination                                
                             to Himmelstoss. Lack                           
                             of post-war goals.                             
                             The goose incident.                            
-                                                                           
   6                                                  Days upon days        
                                                      of trench             
                                                      warfare.              
                                                      Company down to       
                                                      32 men. Westhus       
                                                      wounded.              
-                                                                           
   7   Paul home on          The evening with                               
       leave.                the French girls.                              
       Mittelstaedt's                                                       
       humiliation by                                                       
       Kantorek.                                                            
-                                                                           
   8   Paul guarding the                                                    
       Russian prisoners                                                    
       of war.                                                              
-                                                                           
   9                         The Kaiser's visit.      Paul's killing        
                                                      of Duval in the       
                                                      trench.               
-                                                                           
  10   The hospital.         The supply dump.                               
       Kropp left behind.                                                   
-                                                                           
  11                                                  Starvation, lack      
                                                      of supplies,          
                                                      demoralization.       
                                                      Loss of               
                                                      Detering,             
                                                      Muller, Leer,         
                                                      Kat.                  
-                                                                           
  12                                                  Paul's death on       
                                                      a quiet day.          
-                                                                           
  Remarque's use of contrast, gives a new meaning to the phrase             
"theater of war." He keeps us moving between the trenches and the rest      
of the world. Even if Paul's hometown is suffering from war shortages,      
life there is safe and comfortable compared with the front. Even the        
hospital, filled with wounded, offers clean sheets and regular food-        
luxuries unimaginable at the front lines. These contrasts help us to        
understand what is happening to the emotional life of the young             
soldier.                                                                    
  The above chart will help you see more clearly how Remarque uses          
contrasts. The first part of All Quiet dwells on what happened at           
home, far from the front, and what it is like near the front. The           
middle chapters actually take us to the front and then pull us back         
several times- to civilian life, to a camp behind the lines, to a           
supply dump, to a hospital- so that we too feel the shock when we           
return, in the final chapters, to the unrelieved pressures of the           
front.                                                                      
  Finally, Remarque's style includes irony. We fully appreciate how         
little value is attached to a single human life by 1918 when we read        
the army report on the progress of the war on the day Paul dies:            
"All quiet on the Western Front."                                           
                                                                            
POINT_OF_VIEW                                                               
                            POINT OF VIEW                   (RALLVIEW)      
-                                                                           
  Stories usually are told from the first person or the third person        
point of view. We get these terms from grammar. "I love" is a first         
person structure, "you love" is second person, and "he (or she) loves"      
is third person. A story is told in the first person when the narrator      
says that I or we are doing thus-and-so: someone actually in the story      
is telling it. A third person story uses the he or they approach; some      
unnamed person outside the story is observing others doing something.       
  Except for the very last two paragraphs of the book, All Quiet on         
the Western Front is written from the first person point of view.           
The story is being told by someone who is actually in it- Paul Baumer-      
not by some invisible outsider. Remarque does switch to third person        
in the last two paragraphs for an obvious reason: Paul cannot report        
his own death.                                                              
  First person narration always has both advantages and disadvantages.      
A big advantage is that we tend to identify with the main character.        
In All Quiet we feel as if we are right there with Paul,                    
experiencing what he is seeing and hearing and feeling. We almost           
think his thoughts, share his ideas. First person narration makes           
the whole story seem direct and real and honest.                            
  On the other hand, first person narration also limits us to               
knowing and seeing only what the narrator- in this case, Paul- knows        
and sees. We get other news and views and opinions only as he               
filters them and reports them to us.                                        
  In the case of All Quiet, Paul is young and immature. Until he            
enlisted, he had never experienced real pain or tragedy in his life.        
Older people generally know from experience that human beings can           
survive incredible pain and still find meaning in life. Paul hasn't         
had any time to gain that kind of experience to sustain him. Therefore      
it's asking quite a bit to have us accept, from him, whole theories         
about war and life and the nature of human beings. Still, whatever          
Paul might lack in age or experience is balanced for us by the honesty      
and sensitivity we see in him.                                              
  Over all, then, in All Quiet on the Western Front, the advantages of      
first person narration outweigh the disadvantages. There is a               
perfect fit of first person point of view with what Remarque wanted to      
say about World War I- that it destroyed a whole generation of the          
young. How better to show us that than to let us experience the war         
through the eyes of a young soldier?                                        
                                                                            
FORM                                                                        
                                 FORM                       (RALLFORM)      
-                                                                           
  When critics use the word form to discuss a novel, they sometimes         
mean its overall style and structure- the elements already presented        
under that heading in this guidebook. Another meaning of form is the        
category a novel falls into- how it should be classified, what kind of      
fiction it is.                                                              
  You yourself use from in this narrow, second meaning when you say         
that you like to read mysteries or westerns or romances or some             
other kind of story. But if someone asked you what kind of book All         
Quiet is, you would find that it just doesn't fit standard                  
classifications. You might say it's a war story- but it's a lot more        
than that. It's also a story about a boy turning into a                     
disillusioned adult, or perhaps a story telling society that it             
ought to eliminate the great evil of war. The standard categories           
simply do not express all that.                                             
  The best term for a novel in which everything depends on a                
specific war setting is historical novel. Charles Dickens' A Tale of        
Two Cities, set during the French Revolution, is an example. All Quiet      
does happen during World War I, but Remarque doesn't dwell on               
historical details such as names of battles. Instead he concentrates        
much more on what any war does to people.                                   
  Usually a novel in which a young person matures by passing through        
some kind of crisis is called a novel of formation or a novel of            
initiation. This fits Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, in          
which Henry Fleming starts out as a naive boy, expecting war to be          
glorious, only to find how terrible it is. It also fits All Quiet to        
some extent, but not as well- by the time the book begins, Paul has         
already become disillusioned enough to call 70 deaths a                     
"miscalculation."                                                           
  If you see All Quiet as a novel telling society something wrong           
ought to be changed- in this case, war- you could try sociological          
novel, but again the label seems somehow off. It fits a book against        
slavery like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin but seems to         
express only one element of All Quiet.                                      
  All in all, form as classification is simply too narrow and               
artificial for this book. With All Quiet, you are better off using the      
word form in its broad senses meaning style and structure. All Quiet        
can be described as a novel made up of dramatic scenes, vivid               
language, and a series of contrasting episodes that make us feel how        
totally destructive war is.                                                 
                                                                            
AUTHORS_NOTE                                                                
                              THE STORY                     (RALLSTOR)      
-                                                                           
                            AUTHOR'S NOTE                                   
-                                                                           
  Remarque begins his book with a note before the first chapter. In it      
he says that his book "is to be neither an accusation nor a                 
confession, and least of all an adventure," but rather an account of a      
generation of young men who were destroyed by the war- World War I-         
"even though they may have escaped its shells."                             
  What does he mean? Biography and history tell us his situation. By        
1929 when his book came out, World War I had been over for ten              
years, but it was still affecting people like him and his friends, who      
had gone from the schoolroom right into the trenches. Many of them          
survived, but they felt as if a shadow still hung over their lives.         
After all that time, they still hadn't been able to sort out their          
feelings about the war.                                                     
  Remarque says that he doesn't want to accuse or blame anyone, that        
he certainly doesn't have anything new to confess, and that he is           
definitely not trying to write an adventure story- the kind of war          
story that's full of heroes and waving flags.                               
  If all of that is what we should not expect, then what should we          
expect? Well, if he means what he says, he's going to let the story         
itself show us just exactly what was so destructive about World War I.      
Maybe it's the deaths of friends; maybe it's the loss of ideals. We'll      
need to read the book to find out. But we can expect every chapter          
to tell us something to support his theme: that the First World War         
destroyed even those who came through it alive.                             
                                                                            
CHAPTER_1                                                                   
                              CHAPTER 1                                     
-                                                                           
  The very first paragraph takes us within five miles of the front          
lines. The men are resting on the ground, having just stuffed               
themselves with beef and beans (the cook is stiff dishing out more).        
There are double rations of bread and sausage besides, and tobacco          
is so plentiful that everyone can get his preference- cigarets,             
cigars, or chews. Whoever is telling the story is right there, in           
it; this is what is called first person narration. But the narrator         
(we soon find out that he's 19 years old and his name is Paul               
Baumer) makes clear that the whole situation is incredible:- "We            
have not had such luck as this for a long time."                            
  Where did the windfall come from? Paul says, "We have only a              
miscalculation to thank for it." It turns out that the quartermaster        
sent, and the cook prepared, food for the full Second Company- 150          
men. But 70 were killed at the end of a quiet two-week mission when         
the English suddenly opened up with high-explosive field guns.              
  Before we can stop to think about Paul's dismissing all those deaths      
as a miscalculation, he backs up to tell the whole story of how they        
nearly had to riot to get all that food and tobacco. The cook, it           
seems, didn't care about the count; he just didn't want to give any         
man more than a single share. In the course of retelling how their          
noise brought the company commander, who finally ordered the cook to        
serve everything, Paul introduces all his friends.                          
  They're an assorted lot: first, three of his classmates from school-      
Muller, the bookworm, Albert Kropp, the sharp thinker, and bearded          
Leer who likes officers' brothels. Then there are three other               
19-year-olds: the skinny locksmith Tjaden, the farmer Detering, and         
the peat-digger Haie Westhus. Finally he names an older soldier- the        
group's shrewd, 40-year-old leader, a man with a remarkable nose for        
food and soft jobs, Stanislaus Katczinsky.                                  
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: From their names we see that these major characters are             
German, but it really doesn't matter. They could just as well be            
French or English, so far as their experiences are concerned.               
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
-                                                                           
  At this point we don't really know if Paul, the narrator, is as cold      
and unfeeling as he appears. He and his friends seem to care much more      
about food than about the lives of their companions. Is Remarque            
indirectly telling us that war reduces people to animals? Or are the        
men just being realistic? We'll have to wait and see.                       
  The day continues to be "wonderfully good," says Paul, because their      
mail catches up with them. But one letter angers them. It's from their      
schoolmaster, Kantorek, who pumped them all so full of the glory of         
fighting for their country that they marched down to the district           
commandant together and enlisted. The only one who had to be persuaded      
was homely Josef Behm, and he's dead already- the first of their class      
to fall. Paul doesn't blame Kantorek personally for Behm's death,           
but he does blame the "thousands of Kantoreks" who were so sure             
their view of the coming war was the right one. We were only 18, he         
says; we trusted our teachers and our parents to guide us, and "they        
let us down so badly." He seems to be saying that the war has cut them      
adrift from a meaningful life, with no new values to replace the old        
ones. All the young soldiers know for sure is that it's good to have a      
full belly or a good smoke.                                                 
  The friends go over to visit Franz Kemmerich, a classmate who is          
dying after a leg amputation. Muller turns out to be totally crude and      
tactless. Kemmerich is dying, and Muller rattles on about                   
Kemmerich's stolen watch and just who will get Kemmerich's fine             
English leather boots. Paul, on the other hand, recalls Kemmerich's         
mother, crying and begging Paul to look after Franz as they left for        
the front. To Paul, Kemmerich still looks like a child accidentally         
poured into a military uniform. Perhaps war hasn't blunted his              
sensitivity yet, but Muller's crudeness shocks us.                          
  As they leave the dressing station, it is obvious that Kropp, like        
Paul, is still brimful of feelings. Erupting into anger, he hurls           
his cigaret to the ground and mutters, "Damned swine!" He is                
thinking of the leaders who sent them into battle and of people like        
Kantorek calling waifs like Kemmerich "Iron Youth." "Youth!" thinks         
Paul. "That is long ago. We are old folk."                                  
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: THE ROMANTIC VIEW OF WAR  From history we know that the             
Kantoreks passionately believed the ideals they taught their                
children and students. World War I broke out in what seems to us a          
largely innocent world, a world that still associated warfare with          
glorious cavalry charges and the noble pursuit of heroic ideals.            
Everyone- Allies and Central Powers alike- expected a quick, clean war      
with a glorious aftermath. Most Europeans, not just Germans, saw war        
as the adventure of a lifetime. The popular English poet Rupert Brooke      
thanked God in his poem "1914" for waking "us from sleeping" and            
providing the opportunity to do something new and clean in "a world         
grown old and cold and weary." Americans were no different, though          
Stephen Crane's Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage- showing           
war in all its ugliness- had been around for 20 years. Listen to the        
lighthearted tone of patriotic World War I songs by George M. Cohan.        
Later in the war and afterwards, poets and novelists (including             
Remarque) dispelled the myth. The English poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote      
about a battlefield, "I am staring at a sunlit picture of hell."            
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
                                                                            
CHAPTER_2                                                                   
                              CHAPTER 2                                     
-                                                                           
  We get to know Paul better in the second chapter. It is the next day      
and he is still thinking about his parents and about Kantorek. He           
recalls school life, hobbies, poetry writing, and observes, "of this        
nothing remains." The older men have wives and jobs to return to;           
the war is just an interruption for them. But the "Iron Youth" had not      
yet taken root: "The war swept us away" and they don't know how it          
will end. "We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we          
have become a waste land." He goes on to defend Muller's preoccupation      
with Kemmerich's boots- Muller is just being practical, he says. After      
all, Kemmerich has no further use for them. Paul claims that Muller         
would go barefoot over barbed wire rather than plot to get the boots        
if Kemmerich could use them. But as things are, Muller, who does            
need them, is much more entitled to them than some thieving hospital        
orderly.                                                                    
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: Let's pause a moment. Why is Paul working so hard to excuse         
Muller? Does he protest so much because there's a bit of Muller in          
himself? He certainly has an intellectual grasp of the situation and        
probably wrote good essays in school. Look at the phrases he can            
produce: "[W]e have become a waste land." Does he secretly wish he          
could translate his ideas into action as bluntly as Muller?                 
  Another question: Remember how Remarque said in his opening note          
that his book was not going to be an accusation? Is it or isn't it? An      
author usually speaks through his main characters- at this point,           
Paul. Paul says he doesn't blame the Kantoreks. Judging from all you        
already know of Paul, what do you think? Does he truly know his own         
feelings? Or do you think some bitterness he doesn't even recognize         
might underlie his words?                                                   
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
-                                                                           
  A definite note of bitterness creeps into Paul's next thoughts,           
but there's a strong trace of nostalgia, too. Now that he has               
experienced front-line fighting, boot camp, rough as it was, almost         
seems like the good old days! He recalls how quickly you learned            
that in the army, all the learning from Plato to Goethe is less             
important than knowing how to spring to attention or keep your buttons      
polished. He particularly reviews the cruel treatment he and his            
friends endured at the hands of the sadistic Corporal Himmelstoss, a        
former mailman. Under his orders Paul once scrubbed the corporals'          
dining room with a toothbrush, and another morning he remade the man's      
bed 14 times! Often the whole group ended drills covered with mud,          
or stood at attention for long sessions, without gloves, in freezing        
weather. Every rotten job in the camp came their way, but                   
Himmelstoss never broke them. Eventually, under Kropp's instigation,        
they developed the tactic of obeying Himmelstoss's orders so slowly         
that even he gained a certain respect for them and eased up on them         
a fraction. How insane such training was, Paul thinks, but you can          
almost see him grin as he adds, how well it worked! It made them hard,      
suspicious, bitter, and tough- not so great for civilian life, but          
perfect preparation for the trenches! Such discipline, Paul concludes,      
was exactly what they needed as recruits.                                   
  Paul continues to spend his day quietly. He goes alone to visit           
Kemmerich and says all the soothing things people say about a bright        
future when they know very well that someone is dying. But Kemmerich        
knows. He asks Paul to give his boots to Muller. For an hour Paul           
watches as his friend cries silently. He cannot get an orderly to help      
when death sounds begin to gurgle in Kemmerich's throat. Instead the        
orderly urges him to hurry up and clear out Kemmerich's things; he          
needs the bed. Really, the orderly has acted no worse than the whole        
company yesterday, clamoring for the food their dead companions             
couldn't eat. And the orderly at least wants the bed for another            
man. But this time it hits Paul. He can't be indifferent or                 
uncaring. He's had time to see what a young boy his friend still is;        
he's had time to rage at the senseless brutality that sends boys out        
to be killed for nothing. He gulps and leaves the huts as the               
orderlies haul Kemmerich onto a waterproof sheet. Paul's feet seem          
to push him forward and he finds himself feeling a strength rising          
up from the earth into his body. He is alive and he is glad! "The           
night lives, I live." He takes the boots to Muller, who immediately         
tries them on. They fit well.                                               
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: IMAGERY AND SYMBOLISM  As Paul leaves the dressing station,         
his mind fills with thoughts of girls, flowery meadows, white               
clouds. Watch for the return of such images whenever Paul is                
overcome by the brutality and senselessness of the carnage- the             
butchery- of battle.                                                        
  Keep an eye, too, on Kemmerich's boots. He was not the first              
owner. In Chapter 1 the boots were described as "airman's boots.            
They are fine English boots of soft, yellow leather which reach to the      
knee and lace up all the way." It doesn't take too much imagination,        
considering the state of aviation in 1916, to figure out how Kemmerich      
got the boots. Assuming the English airman is dead, the boots have now      
gone to their third owner- and fit him, too. Are all soldiers               
interchangeable, whatever side they are on? And how many owners will        
the boots outlast?                                                          
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
                                                                            
CHAPTER_3                                                                   
                              CHAPTER 3                                     
-                                                                           
  Reinforcements arrive. Some are older, but many are even younger          
than Paul and his schoolmates. When Kropp calls them "infants," Paul        
agrees. He and Kropp strut around feeling like "stone-age veterans."        
It's been a few days since the big feast, and everyone is astonished        
when Katczinsky ("Kat") produces a tub of beef and bean stew. He            
patiently teaches the new recruits the proper etiquette- payment            
next time with a cigar or chew of tobacco- but lets his friends off         
free, "of course." Paul recalls admiringly how Kat can stroll off           
and find hot bread, horse meat, and even salt and a frying pan in           
the midst of desolation. His masterpiece was four boxes of lobster,         
although his friends, admittedly, would rather have had a good steak.       
  It's a pleasant, drowsy day. Kropp has washed his socks and               
spreads them out to dry. Kat and Paul lean up against the sunny side        
of the hut. In the air there's a smell of tar and summer and sweaty         
feet. The men's rest period is, for us, like a bridge between the           
results of battle and actual battle. We saw the results in Chapters         
1 and 2- more food for some, death for others. But we know of               
slaughter only by hearsay; Kemmerich died a comparatively clean death.      
We have yet to experience shelling, gassing, and butchery; they will        
come in Chapter 4.                                                          
  This chapter, meanwhile, gives us more background on Paul's               
classmates and friends, and lets us see and hear infantry soldiers          
at rest. What kinds of things do such men talk about? What do you           
think you would talk about in their situation?                              
  Kat wants to talk about saluting. Tjaden failed to salute a major,        
so they've all been practicing, and Kat can't get it out of his             
head. He maintains their side is losing the war because they salute         
too well. Kropp, the thinker, begins to argue with him. Meanwhile they      
bet a bottle of beer on the outcome of an airfight going on far             
above them. For the attention they pay, you would think those were toy      
planes battling up there, but the man who will die is flesh and blood.      
  Kropp and Kat begin to argue about the management of war. Kat             
wants to drop all the saluting and military drill and adopt the             
principle in a piece of verse he knows: If everyone got the same            
grub and pay, "the war would be over and done in a day." The more           
philosophical Kropp, riled up as always about injustice, argues that        
war ought to be run like a festival, with such things as tickets and        
bands. The main event would be the generals and ministers of the two        
countries, dressed in swimsuits and armed with clubs, slugging it           
out in an arena. The winning side would be the one whose leaders            
survived. To Kropp that sounds a whole lot more fair than the               
situation they're in, where the wrong people do the fighting. (Maybe        
Remarque didn't intend his book to be an accusation, but it gets            
harder and harder to say that it does not indict the blindness of           
early 20th-century world leaders.)                                          
  The heat reminds Paul of the training camp barracks, with heat            
shimmering over the square. In hindsight the cool rooms seem inviting.      
  Meanwhile the German plane above them has been shot down and              
plummets headlong in streamers of smoke. It is Kropp who bet on that        
plane. Talk turns to reminiscences of Corporal Himmelstoss and basic        
training. Earlier, Paul had observed that little men cause much of the      
pain in this world. They are so much more energetic and uncompromising      
than the big fellows. Kantorek was small, and so is Himmelstoss. Kat        
observes that power always corrupts officers, especially those who          
were insignificant (little?) in civilian life. Kropp suggests that          
discipline really is necessary, but Kat shoots back that the kind of        
discipline taught in boot camp is practically criminal. Boys learn          
to drill and salute, and then think they know how to survive at the         
front!                                                                      
  At this point Tjaden, his face red with excitement, rushes up with        
news- Himmelstoss is joining their unit! Tjaden has special reason          
to hate the man: Himmelstoss put him and another bedwetter in the same      
set of bunks so they would disgust and "cure" each other. Since             
neither could help himself, one always ended up sleeping on the cold        
floor. Meanwhile Haie Westhus, the peat-digger, ambles over, sits           
down, and winks at Paul. Paul recalls how Tjaden, Westhus, Kropp,           
and he himself "squared accounts" with Himmelstoss the night before         
they left for the front. They ambushed him with a bedsheet as he            
left his favorite pub and gleefully- though anonymously- gave him a         
royal beating. Himmelstoss ought to have been pleased, Paul comments        
ironically, at how well the "young heroes" had learned his cruel            
methods!                                                                    
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: AIR POWER  Balloons were used for reconnaissance and                
observation by French forces in Italy in 1859 and by Union forces           
during the American Civil War. Paul later mentions their use in             
World War I as well. By 1914, successful models had demonstrated the        
feasibility of motor-driven airplanes, but it was the war itself            
that provided motivation for research and development of aircraft.          
At the beginning of the war Germany established its superiority in the      
air. The Fokker monoplane, with a fixed machine gun that could fire         
forward through the propeller blades, inspired Allied efforts.              
Developments and counter-developments followed, pushing the Allies          
ahead, and led to formation flying, aerial dogfights, and aerial            
bombing of enemy lines of communication and ammunition depots. Later        
in the novel- toward the end of the war- Paul mentions flyers making a      
game of pursuing individual soldiers. Still, during World War I,            
planes were employed mostly in support of ground forces. Development        
of air forces as a separate military branch followed World War I as         
the military capabilities of aircraft became more evident.                  
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
                                                                            
CHAPTER_4                                                                   
                              CHAPTER 4                                     
-                                                                           
  One night the men were trucked to the front to ram in iron stakes         
and to string barbed wire. It's a warm evening, a pleasant drive,           
and the men smoke as they roll along. They're not concerned about           
lurching into potholes the driver can't see without headlights. Many a      
man would just as soon be pitched out and sent home with a broken           
arm earned that way! Kat and Paul distinctly hear geese as they pass        
one house. They exchange glances- another Katczinsky raid is due            
when they return! At the front, they find the air acrid, with guns          
reverberating and shells whistling and exploding. The English have          
started early. Kat senses a bombardment coming, and at the front his        
opinion is gospel. Paul already feels as if he's entered a whirlpool        
which is sucking him into its spinning depths. Only clinging to the         
ground helps; the earth is like a mother offering shelter.                  
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: APOSTROPHE TO EARTH  In the paragraph following "Earth!-            
Earth!- Earth!," Paul prays directly to the earth. The name of this         
poetic device or rhetorical figure of speech is apostrophe. It is an        
address to an absent, abstract, or inanimate being. When that being is      
a god, the technique is called invocation. Read the paragraph               
carefully. Could it be considered an invocation? If so, what                
additional weight does this lend to Paul's thought in the preceding         
paragraph, "To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier"?       
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
-                                                                           
  The men become alert animals, throwing themselves to the ground           
instinctively just before a storm of fragments flies overhead. It is        
not conscious, but without obeying this animal insight, no soldier          
would survive. Columns of men move past into the mist like a dark           
wedge. Gleaming horses pass with the ammunition wagons, their riders        
looking like knights of another age. Paul and his group load up with        
iron stakes and rolls of barbed wire, and they stumble all the way          
to the front line in the dark. Bombardment lights the sky. Amid the         
sounds of the bombardment, Paul and his group string barbed wire.           
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: ONOMATOPOEIA  The technique in which the sound of a word            
imitates its meaning is called onomatopoeia, as in the word hiss. Find      
other onomatopoetic words in Paul's description of the sounds of            
bombardment, both in this paragraph and in paragraphs later in the          
chapter. What effect do these words have on your awareness of what          
it must have been like at the front? If you were filming this novel,        
how would you create these sounds?                                          
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
-                                                                           
  Finally, after hours of work, the job is done: the barbed wire has        
been strung. Paul's hands are torn from handling the close-set spikes,      
and the night has turned cold. Shells are still shrieking and pounding      
overhead, and beams of light sweep through the overhead mist. One           
searchlight pins an airman like a bug, and he is shot down. The             
scene assaulting our eyes and ears is terrifying- misty, steaming,          
roaring hell- but what happens to Paul? He falls sound asleep! Our          
picture of Paul fills out: he is that experienced, old soldier he           
claims to be, knowing when he is in danger and when he is not.              
Still, he awakens confused. Momentarily, he mistakes the glare of           
rockets for gala fireworks at a party. He doesn't know where he is          
or whether it's day or night; he feels like a lost child. But               
Katczinsky is sitting protectively near, calmly smoking a pipe. He          
tells Paul it's all right; it was just a shell landing nearby that          
startled him. He sounds for all the world like a daddy comforting a         
child who's had a nightmare. Paul, in turn, acts like a kindly              
father when a frightened recruit creeps right into his arms. The blond      
boy hides his head, and his thin little shoulders remind Paul of            
Kemmerich. Paul gently moves the youngster's fallen helmet to his           
buttocks where it will protect him best. Moments later a new                
bombardment so terrifies the boy that he empties his bowels, and he         
blushes with shame. But Paul offers no ridicule- he just sends him          
behind a bush to throw away his underpants.                                 
  The bombardment eases, but terrible cries break out- the screaming        
of horses. Detering, a farmer, finds their agony unendurable and cries      
for someone to shoot them. He even aims his own gun, though they're         
much too far away, and Kat has to knock his rifle into the air lest he      
hit a man. The appalling sounds continue, and some of the wounded           
horses run berserk, dragging their own intestines. The men in Paul's        
area hold their hands over their ears; they can't bear it, yet there's      
absolutely nothing they can do. Finally the horses are shot and it          
is mercifully still.                                                        
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: THE HORSES  If you think back to Paul's earlier comments on         
the horses, you can see how deeply he appreciates the beauty of             
nature. Now he identifies their pain as nature itself protesting the        
savagery of human beings. To him the cries of the horses are "the           
moaning- of the world,... martyred creation, wild with anguish." It         
would not have been Paul alone who saw the horses as symbolic of all        
of creation. We tend to use the words romance and romantic to mean          
love story. But in literature romantic means an 18th- and 19th-century      
emphasis on mysticism, feeling, and sympathy for nature. That's the         
kind of literature Paul and his companions would have been familiar         
with before they were plunged into the war.                                 
  The presence of the horses also helps set the time of this novel.         
Horses and donkeys were used extensively in the First World War, since      
trucks, tanks, and planes were still in the early stages of                 
development. That's also why Paul calls trucks motor lorries, to            
distinguish them from horse-drawn wagons, which were still sometimes        
called, in English, trucks or lorries.                                      
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
-                                                                           
  As readers, we almost sigh with relief when the troops trudge back        
at three in the morning toward the place where the trucks will pick         
them up. They make their way through trenches and a small forest,           
and into a cemetery, but Kat, whose feelings are always accurate at         
the front, is uneasy. He's right: another bombardment begins. This          
time Paul receives a blow on the head and is struck by flying               
splinters, but he is not seriously wounded. Ironically, it is a coffin      
that shelters him; the arm he feels is that of a long-dead corpse, not      
a fellow soldier.                                                           
  Bells and metal clappers warn of a new danger, poison gas. Paul           
and Kat don their gas masks in time, but some of the new recruits do        
not. They will cough out their seared lungs in clots. History tells us      
that gas victim died in great pain, their faces burnt and blackened.        
Tensely waiting to see if their masks are functioning, Kat and Paul         
and Kropp scowl at the obscene stuff, the gas hanging like a jellyfish      
over the field. A new bombardment churns up the cemetery, as if             
killing the dead a second time. When the explosions ease, Paul and          
Kat- heads buzzing from the stale air circulating through their masks-      
dig a man out from under a coffin, dumping the corpse to make the work      
go better. They bandage their comrade, using a coffin board. They also      
bandage the rookie that Paul comforted earlier. His hip is shattered        
and they think of shooting him as an act of kindness, but too many men      
gather. War may be war, but it's still not right to shoot a man in          
cold blood. Two dead men lie in an upturned grave; the living throw         
more dirt over them. The earth may sometimes protect a man, but as          
Paul will comment later on, she also erases all sign of his ever            
having existed.                                                             
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE  Earlier in this chapter Paul            
thought of the screaming of the horses as nature crying out in protest      
at what man was doing. If you keep an eye out for other comments on         
nature as the story develops, you'll notice that he never does this         
again. Instead, his references to nature show that earth simply covers      
the dead and erases their identities. It's like the poem "Grass" by         
American poet Carl Sandburg. Nature just doesn't care one way or            
another, but goes calmly on. Grass covers all signs of what happened        
on a battlefield just as easily as it covers a front lawn. In               
Chapter 11 we will also see how the seasons march on, paying no             
attention at all to the desperate gyrations of the two-legged beings        
struggling on the surface of the earth. Blossoms come out in spring;        
rain during the summer leaves the men soaked and caked with mud.            
Nature is so big it doesn't even notice man.                                
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
-                                                                           
  At last Paul's unit clambers numbly into the trucks, too battered to      
care about the insensitive men at the dressing station with all             
their babbling about numbers and labels. Driving back to camp, the          
standing men mindlessly duck their heads at each call of "Wire"- a          
warning of low, dense, overhead telephone lines. It is raining, and         
the rain, Paul says, "falls in our hearts."                                 
                                                                            
CHAPTER_5                                                                   
                              CHAPTER 5                                     
-                                                                           
  After the nightmare in Chapter 4, we're ready for some relief, and        
this chapter offers it. Remarque- or Paul- shows us by contrast how         
friendship can create a tiny island within the sea of death.                
  Once again the men idle behind the lines, nonchalantly killing            
lice while they talk about plans for after the war. Suddenly the newly      
assigned Himmelstoss appears and roles are reversed: they are the           
veterans. Tjaden sneers at the man and rudely refuses to salute. The        
others enjoy the encounter, but, once it is over and Tjaden and             
Himmelstoss have stormed off in different directions, they go right         
back to their discussion. Paul does some counting- of the twelve            
privates among the 20 classmates who volunteered as a group, seven are      
already dead, four are wounded, and one is insane. Muller and Kropp         
and Paul feel lost. Kat and Westhus and even Himmelstoss can return to      
their old jobs after the war, but what future do Muller, Kropp, and         
Paul have? Kropp, the intellectual, puts the fate of his generation         
into the simplest of words: "The war has ruined us for everything."         
Paul agrees. They no longer care about "achieving" or believe in the        
progress of civilization. They know only war.                               
  The discussion ends when Himmelstoss comes steaming back. He wants        
Tjaden. Kropp and Muller comment on ways to "get" Himmelstoss, and          
Paul observes how pitiful their goals have become. The biggest              
ambition they have left is to knock the conceit out of a mailman. Half      
an hour later Himmelstoss is back, still seeking Tjaden. He interrupts      
their card game. Kropp angrily points to puffs of antiaircraft fire         
high above them and tells Himmelstoss off: What does he want them to        
do? Salute and ask permission before they die? Himmelstoss                  
disappears like a comet, with Kropp obviously added to his complaint        
list.                                                                       
  That evening Lieutenant Bertinck gives Himmelstoss's complaints a         
fair review, and he does punish Kropp and Tjaden but only lightly,          
with open arrest behind wire fencing instead of closed arrest,              
locked up in a cellar. Kat and Paul play cards with the two                 
prisoners far into the night, but events haven't erased Kat's memory        
of the geese. With a little bribery, he and Paul hitch a ride to the        
spot. And then we enjoy the most comic scene of the novel! Try reading      
it aloud: Paul, in the goose-shed, battling a bulldog and kicking           
geese in order to steal a goose and toss it to Kat. Our formerly            
law-abiding schoolboy is even ready to shoot some farmer's dog to           
steal the man's property! But to Kat and Paul, it's a soldier's             
right to supplement his rations however he can. At last Paul succeeds,      
and he and Kat spend the rest of the night in quiet camaraderie in          
an out-of-the-way shed, cleaning, roasting, basting, and eating all         
the goose they want. Near dawn they pack up the feathers for later          
use. Extending their circle of peace and brotherhood, they take the         
rest of the meat to Tjaden and Kropp. For the moment, all's right in        
their world.                                                                
                                                                            
CHAPTER_6                                                                   
                              CHAPTER 6                                     
-                                                                           
  This chapter opens a whole new stage in the novel. Battered and           
numbed as Chapter 4 left Paul and his friends, with its screaming           
horses and twice-killed corpses, it was only one night- a series of         
flash impressions of war. Now Remarque moves Paul- and us- into the         
deadening cage of weeks of trench warfare. In 1929 a few critics            
accused Remarque of sensationalizing the war in chapters like this          
one, of deliberately trying to shock readers to sell more books. The        
National Socialists, or Nazis, who were then coming to power,               
pounced on every mention of worn-out equipment or lack of supplies          
as an attack on the Fatherland. But everyone else found Remarque's          
account, if anything, an understated report on the horrors of war           
for men on either side. Things that we world scream about at home-          
infestations of rats or days without food- are simply reported as           
facts of the soldier's life. The chapter also helps us see why              
fighting men sometimes lose religious faith: they see only blind            
luck in operation on the battlefield, no evidence of the orderly            
plan of a loving God. For men Paul's age, a scene glimpsed on the           
way to the front says it all: brand new coffins, stacked against a          
bombed-out schoolhouse. The scene predicts their future and shows that      
nothing remains of their past.                                              
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: WORLD WAR I TRENCH WARFARE  In World War I, attacks changed         
from those of earlier wars, since a machine gun behind barbed wire          
could mow down whole columns of attackers. Flag-waving cavalry charges      
were replaced with prolonged bombardment, followed by days upon days        
of infantry attacks and counterattacks. Often, both sides ended up          
in their original positions. Battles became sieges, the aim simply          
being to drain the other side's resources. As it became clear that          
this was static warfare- war at a standstill- leaders began to compute      
even human casualties like an inventory of shells or fuel. Any loss         
was acceptable if the enemy loss was greater. In the 1916 battle of         
the Somme, for instance, casualties totaled more than one million,          
approximately one man for every four square yards of contested ground.      
  Trenches became fortresses: above ground- barbed wire, mines, and         
a maze of foxholes; below ground- command posts, supplies, and damp,        
rat-infested living quarters. Men burrowed in these places for months,      
surrounded by corpses and exposed to constant danger from gas and           
artillery. They hoped to be wounded seriously enough to be sent to the      
rear for convalescence. Morale grew so bad by the spring of 1917            
that mutinies broke out in some French, Italian, and Russian units.         
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
-                                                                           
  Paul remarks that the trenches are in poor condition. For days his        
group loafs and makes war on the rats, rats so voracious they devoured      
two cats and a dog in an adjoining sector. At night the enemy sends         
gas; by day, observation balloons. Morale is lowered by rumors of           
tanks, low-flying planes, and flame-throwers. Deafening bombardment         
continues; the trench is cratered and battered. Food cannot be brought      
up. One night the men battle a swarm of fleeing rats; one noon a            
recruit turns into a raving madman from being enclosed in the               
underground living quarters. That night the dugout survives a direct        
hit. Suddenly the nearer explosions stop, and the French attack.            
Paul's company fight and throw grenades and use their sharpened spades      
like wild beasts, killing to save themselves. The fight continues into      
the next day, Paul's side chasing the retreating French right into          
their own trenches. They seize what provisions they can carry and           
clear out. Back in their own trench, they are too tired even to             
enjoy their booty- the rare luxuries of corned beef, bread, and             
cognac.                                                                     
  Night comes, and Paul, on sentry duty, dreams of cloisters and an         
avenue of poplar trees- quiet dreams in a place where there is no           
quiet. He believes his generation is lost, unable ever to have              
innocent peace again. For several days attacks and counterattacks           
alternate; the dead pile up between the trenches. The men search two        
days in vain for a crying man. The dead swell and hiss and belch            
with gas; the smell is nauseating. On quiet nights the soldiers search      
for souvenir parachute silk and for copper bands from bombs. Two            
butterflies settle one morning on a skull. Three layers of bodies fill      
a huge shell hole. Recruits in clothes too big fall like flies; a           
surprise gas attack kills many. One day Himmelstoss panics and Paul         
shouts at him until he can grasp an order and regain his wits. Haie         
Westhus, who had hoped to reenlist in the army for a nice, clean job        
after the war, suffers a serious back wound. Still, says Paul, they         
have held their little piece of convulsed earth. It's the only kind of      
victory to be seen in this war. On a grey autumn night they return          
behind the lines. Second Company is now down to 32 men.                     
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: IMAGERY  Paul again dreams of quiet beauty. He notices a            
butterfly amid the devastation and comments on how terribly young           
the replacement recruits are. Of his own group he says, "We are             
forlorn like children.... I believe we are lost." He has felt like a        
child at least twice before- the night they strung barbed wire and the      
night he helped Kat baste the goose. Both times he awoke to find Kat        
there, like a father. Why does part of him long for that element of         
childhood? What is it from childhood that he thinks he and his              
classmates have lost so completely?                                         
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
                                                                            
CHAPTER_7                                                                   
                              CHAPTER 7                                     
-                                                                           
  This chapter gives us some breathing space. We follow the men back        
to a field depot for reorganization. The change in Himmelstoss seems        
to be permanent: not only did he rescue Westhus; he has also wangled a      
job as substitute cook and slips Tjaden some butter and the others,         
sugar.                                                                      
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: By this time we could make a list of the ways Remarque has          
developed his theme: how World War I destroyed a generation of young        
men. It has taken from them the last of their childhood years, it           
has destroyed their faith in their elders, it has taught them an            
individual life is meaningless- and all it has given in return is           
the ability to appreciate basic physical pleasures. According to Paul,      
though, the men haven't entirely lost human sensitivity: they're not        
as callous as they appeared in Chapter 1, wolfing down their dead           
companions' rations. It's just that they must pretend to forget the         
dead; otherwise they would go mad.                                          
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
-                                                                           
  A theater poster starts a new series of events in this chapter. At        
the front, or even a few miles behind the lines, dirt and grime and         
basic survival are the main elements of life. The poster, showing a         
well-dressed, healthy pair of actors, reminds Paul and his                  
classmates of another world out there somewhere, a civilian world.          
From history we know that civilians also did not fare well during           
World War I, but Paul and his friends don't know that; they have not        
yet gone home on leave. But the poster awakens desires. They try to         
recover that world in stages. The first stage is simple. They can't do      
much about their dirty, ragged, clothing, but they can stop the             
itching awhile- they get deloused. The next stage is better. That           
evening Leer, Kropp, and Paul dump Tjaden and swim a guarded canal for      
an evening with three French women. They do the same the next night,        
carrying the girls bread, sausage, and cigarets kept dry, overhead, in      
their boots. To us it is clear that the girls are hungry and do not         
care what uniform a man wears, as long as he's a decent guy and has         
some food. But Paul wants more; he wants the little brunet really to        
care about him personally.                                                  
  One afternoon Paul stands the others drinks: he's been given two          
weeks' leave plus travel time and temporary reassignment to another         
camp. He tries to forget which of his friends will still be there when      
he gets back.                                                               
  The train trip home provides Paul- and us- with a sense of                
transition to an entirely different kind of life, as old landmarks          
appear, even the poplars. He doesn't understand why tears start             
pouring down his face at the sound of his sister's voice calling to         
their mother, "Paul is here." Perhaps it is simply homesickness,            
catching up with him at last. His mother is ill with cancer, and            
Paul does the most he can for them, offering cheese from Kat and            
food from his own military rations. In the towns, shortages are acute,      
though his family has saved Paul his favorite dishes. One day he            
stands in line at the butcher's with his sister for three hours, but        
the promised bones are sold out before they can get any. He can't even      
talk to people any more. If he were to talk about front-line                
horrors, as another soldier has done, upsetting Paul's mother, how          
could he stand to go back?                                                  
  On the whole, the leave he'd wanted so badly is a disaster. After he      
reports to the district commander, some major whom he fails to              
salute properly gives him a bad time. To avoid similar situations he        
changes into his civilian clothes, even though they hardly fit any          
more. His father and other old men press "the young warrior" with           
opinions and questions that don't begin to connect with his own             
knowledge of war. He can't even gain any comfort from the books and         
papers in his own room.                                                     
  When he goes to see Franz Kemmerich's mother, she blames him for          
living while her son has died. In a gesture of kindness, he swears          
Kemmerich died instantaneously and without pain, but he has seen so         
many deaths since then that he forgets how he himself felt. He can          
no longer understand so much grief for one man dead among so many.          
  The only relief is a visit to his classmate Mittelstaedt, who is now      
the commander of a reserve unit. To his and Mittelstaedt's delight,         
Schoolmaster Kantorek is in the unit! He's an absolutely                    
pathetic-looking soldier. Mittelstaedt demonstrates how he                  
humiliates Kantorek and throws his own slogans back into his face. Not      
satisfied with that, he sends Kantorek on errands with a model              
reservist, Boettcher, the former school porter, so the whole town           
can laugh. The scene is comic, yet sad. Even though Paul doesn't blame      
Kantorek for anything, it's interesting that he doesn't seem to feel        
the slightest shame at his classmate's behavior. Is this still the          
same boy who, before his last stint in the trenches, found it sad that      
the only ambition he had left was to humiliate a mailman?                   
  Finally, the last night of his leave arrives. His mother sits long        
into the night watching him sleep. At last he lets her know he is           
awake. She alone has not asked foolish questions. Now she asks gently,      
"Are you very much afraid?" He walks her back to bed, choked up at her      
getting him good wool underwear when she is so destitute and ill. He        
is in agony for what he has lost and for what is happening to her.          
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: SHORTAGES  From history we know that in August 1914 the             
Prussian War Raw Materials Department began stockpiling and allocating      
raw materials on a priority basis. Civilians weren't high on the            
priority list. In November 1914 staple foods such as flour and sugar        
were placed under government control, and in 1915 complete food             
rationing was introduced in Germany.                                        
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
                                                                            
CHAPTER_8                                                                   
                              CHAPTER 8                                     
-                                                                           
  Paul goes to his assignment, the training camp near his home town         
where Himmelstoss "educated" Tjaden. During days of drill, evening          
of poker and newspapers, he again notices the beauty of nature. At          
other times he guards Russian prisoners of war in the camp                  
alongside. They are sick and feeble, hanging on to life by picking          
over the none-too-plentiful garbage from Paul's camp and trading their      
last few possessions for bread. He loves their courage and their            
music, and when he guards them he cannot understand why they must be        
enemies- just because, at some table, a document was signed. As he          
looks at them, he knows that any soldier would see an officer as            
more of an enemy; any schoolboy, a teacher as more of an enemy. But he      
dare not think that way too long, any more than he could tell his           
family what the front was really like. It's still his job to go back        
there and kill. But he stores away his thoughts for after the war.          
He can vaguely see that spreading the truth afterward may be the            
only good thing he can bring out of this war.                               
  Recall Remarque's introductory note before Chapter 1- is Paul             
perhaps speaking here for Remarque himself? Could writing this book be      
a task Remarque set for himself when he fought in World War I? This is      
at least the second time Remarque has suggested, through his                
characters, that all men are the same- that only the leaders want war.      
Recall Kropp's theory for having the right people fight, in Chapter 3.      
  Paul's father and sister visit him the Sunday before he returns to        
the front, telling him that his mother is dying and they cannot afford      
the proper care. At least when it comes to his mother, Paul is not          
callous: he can't choke down the jam and potato cakes she has sent. He      
gives two cakes to the Russians and saves the others for his friends.       
                                                                            
CHAPTER_9                                                                   
                              CHAPTER 9                                     
-                                                                           
  Paul travels for several days and then loafs, awaiting his                
company. He is worried about his friends; the company has been              
designated a "flying division," one assigned wherever the need is           
greatest. How relieved he is when they return, and Kat, Muller,             
Tjaden, and Kropp have all survived! The slightly moldy potato cakes        
serve for a meal of celebration. All are delighted to be issued             
clean new gear for once, too. But they get to keep the clothing for         
only eight days of drill and polish- and a visit from the Kaiser. Then      
it's back to rags. The Kaiser turns out to be a disappointingly             
small man (like Kantorek and Himmelstoss?) and that leads the               
friends to a discussion of his power. Would there have been a war if        
he had said no? Paul says he knows for sure the Kaiser did say no.          
We know from history that Paul, like many people who are certain, is        
wrong. Nobody directly contradicts him at this point, but later Kat         
observes that every grown-up emperor wants his very own war, so             
maybe the Kaiser figured it was his turn. Meanwhile everyone does           
agree that if 20 or 30 leaders had said no, there couldn't be a war.        
Kropp notes how strange it is: everybody's fighting for his own             
fatherland, sure that he's right. There must be something they are          
missing. War has always existed; it must be some kind of fever. But         
that is too philosophical for the others, and it is Kropp who               
finally growls that they might as well just drop the whole rotten           
discussion.                                                                 
  Think about Kropp's contributions to all the discussions. How do his      
ideas differ from those of his companions? Is he as willing as they to      
speculate that his own leaders might be wrong? What do you think the        
defeat of Germany will do to his ideals and emotions? Even if he            
survives, will he be destroyed in exactly the same way as the others?       
  After Kropp's outburst, a line of white space is our only transition      
to the next sentence: "Instead of going to Russia, we go up the line        
again." The Setting section of this guidebook points out the                
geography: they are going west, to France, despite rumors of going          
east.                                                                       
  This time they barely notice things that would have horrified them        
earlier. Bodies, many naked from the concussion of trench mortars,          
hang in some trees they pass. They casually report the situation at         
the next stretcher-bearers' post; there's no point getting upset. Back      
at the front, they volunteer to scout out the enemy position. Paul,         
separated from his friends in the dark, is overcome with fright             
until he again hears their voices. He blames his leave; it has              
thrown his instincts off. But the experience makes him realize that         
friendship is the one solid element he has left in his life: it             
steadies him.                                                               
  In the darkness Paul is pinned down by a bombardment. When a              
French soldier suddenly stumbles into Paul's shell hole, Paul stabs         
wildly with a small dagger, hitting the man again and again by reflex.      
Then, still trapped by the firing, Paul's guilt and horror grow as          
he bandages the man and waits until he finally dies, about three the        
next afternoon. He looks through the man's papers and vows not to           
forget the name: Gerard Duval, printer. He has killed a man, not            
some abstract enemy. When it is dark again, Paul is able to creep           
out and find his friends. When he mentions the dead printer the next        
morning, Kat and Kropp reassure him: "Mat else could you do?" They          
point out Sergeant Oellrich, a sniper who boasts about how his targets      
jump and about how high his kill score is. Paul comments that war,          
after all, is war.                                                          
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: That appears to be the end of the issue. From your own              
knowledge of Paul, do you think he does forget his vow to make amends?      
Remarque doesn't tell us; he leaves it open. Some readers think Paul        
is totally brutalized and that he does forget. Others notice rather         
that there is just no mention of Duval's wallet and pictures again.         
What do you think?                                                          
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
                                                                            
CHAPTER_10                                                                  
                              CHAPTER 10                                    
-                                                                           
  By pure good luck eight men, including Paul's "whole gang"-               
Detering, Kat, Kropp, Muller, Tjaden- draw an assignment that feels         
like soldier heaven: guarding an abandoned village and supply dump.         
The only cloud is that by now Haie Westhus isn't with them; he has          
died even though Himmelstoss had rescued him. Despite some shelling,        
life near the supply dump means real beds, excellent food, and all the      
cigars they want. Even when they leave, they do it in style in a big        
truck loaded with extra food, a canopied bed, two red plush chairs,         
and even a cat pulling in a parrot cage. These wonderful two weeks are      
the last light moments of the novel.                                        
  A few days later, while they are helping evacuate a village, Paul         
and Kropp are each wounded in the leg. Picked up by a passing               
ambulance wagon and treated, somewhat roughly, at a dressing                
station, they bribe their way onto a hospital train going to the rear.      
Paul hates to haul his dirty body onto the clean sheets and suffers         
embarrassment over getting a bottle for urination. On the train             
Albert's fever begins to rise. To prevent their being separated,            
Paul heats a thermometer to raise his temperature also. His doing so        
is more than just a childish prank; he and Kropp need each other's          
presence as much as they need medical care. Put off at the same             
station, they are also placed in the same ward at a Catholic hospital.      
The nuns' morning prayers give them headaches till Josef Hamacher           
takes responsibility for the bottle Paul threw into the corridor,           
its noisy shattering getting the nuns to close the door. Hamacher says      
he threw it because he has what is known as a "shooting license," a         
paper that says he has periods of mental derangement because of his         
injuries. They also meet Franz Wachter, who suffers such neglect            
that he dies of a hemorrhaging arm wound, and little Peter, said to be      
the only patient ever to return from the Dying Room.                        
  Paul's bones will not knit, so he is operated upon. Hamacher warns        
some new men not to let the chief surgeon try out his pet cures for         
their flat feet, but in the end they consent. If you've ever been           
seriously ill or hospitalized, you can understand their reaction;           
after awhile you'll let the doctor do almost anything, as long as it        
will get you out of there! Other men come and go; many die. Kropp's         
leg is amputated, and he becomes silent and depressed, but Paul can         
finally get around on crutches. At first Paul wanders the wards, doing      
so just to keep out of Kropp's sight (he doesn't want his friend to         
feel worse at the sight of his two legs). As he roams, he notices in        
how many places a man can be hit. The total image stuns him: shattered      
men in hospitals all over Europe. "It must all be lies and of no            
account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this         
stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their           
hundreds of thousands." He is utterly and completely disillusioned          
with the traditions and values handed down to him.                          
  After a few weeks Kropp's stump is well healed and he is to be            
sent off to an institution for artificial limbs. Earlier he would have      
shot himself, had he been able; now he is more solemn than he was.          
Even that is quite a change from the hot-tempered arguer we've              
known. Paul gets convalescent leave. Parting from Kropp is hard, but        
he tells himself that "a man gets used to that sort of thing in the         
army." If Paul is so used to it, why is it so hard?                         
  At home, he finds his mother very feeble; this time is worse than         
his first leave. He returns once more to the line.                          
-                                                                           
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
  NOTE: THE MEDICAL PROFESSION  Doctors are dealt a blow in this            
chapter. They are depicted as cruel, callous, preferring amputation to      
repair of shattered limbs, and too eager to perform experimental            
surgery. In the next chapter we hear stories of surgeons aiding the         
Fatherland by certifying everybody A-1. Each example is undoubtedly         
based on true cases, but consider also the pressures of mass                
operations under wartime conditions.                                        
---------------------------------------------------------------------       
                                                                            
CHAPTER_11                                                                  
                              CHAPTER 11                                    
-                                                                           
  By now Paul has lost a great deal: youth itself, faith in his             
elders, belief in the traditions of Western civilization. He's even         
lost much of his own ability to rise about pure animal reactions- to        
feel and think as a sensitive human being. Only comradeship now             
keeps him going, and he has already seen several friends killed or          
maimed. In this chapter Paul records the collapse of the Western Front      
during the last terrible year of World War I, and the deaths of his         
few remaining close friends.                                                
  It was winter when Paul returned to duty. His life has alternated         
between billets and the front until it is once again spring. His moods      
and thoughts depend on the kind of day it is; all soldiers are              
brothers in this. They have been reduced to relying on animal instinct      
to avoid death. Otherwise the madness around them would kill them,          
physically or emotionally. Says Paul, "We are little flames poorly          
sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness,      
in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.... Our only comfort        
is the steady breathing of our comrades asleep, and thus we wait for        
the morning." Every barrage cuts into this thin protective shell,           
however; everyone's nerves are dangerously frayed. With Detering it         
takes only the sight of a cherry tree in blossom to madden him with         
thoughts of his wife and farm. He deserts but is caught and                 
court-martialed. Another man, Berger, six feet tall and the most            
powerful man in the company, dashes into a barrage to help a wounded        
messenger dog. A pelvis wound kills him. Yet another man madly tries        
to dig himself into the earth with hands, feet, and teeth. Muller is        
shot point blank in the stomach. Before he dies he gives Paul               
Kemmerich's boots; they are to go to Tjaden next. (Is this simply           
being practical, or a premonition of death to come for Paul?) As the        
men bury Muller, they are saddened to think that well fed English           
and Americans will probably soon overrun his grave. For the enemy           
are sure to win. They are well fed on beef and bread, well supplied         
with guns and planes, while the Germans are emaciated, starved,             
short of all supplies. For every German plane there are five English        
and American planes. For every German soldier there are five of the         
enemy. Dysentery is constant, the artillery is worn out, the new            
recruits are anemic boys who can only die. Tanks are common now, new        
and terrible armored beasts that squash men like bugs. Things have          
grown so bleak that Paul is reduced to reciting lists. The men see          
only:                                                                       
-                                                                           
  Shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks- shattering, corroding,        
death.                                                                      
  Dysentery, influenza, typhus- scalding, choking, death.                   
  Trenches, hospitals, the common grave- there are no other                 
possibilities.                                                              
-                                                                           
  In one attack the company commander, Bertinck, a superb front-line        
officer, dies shooting a flamethrower team about to ignite the oil          
in his companions' trench. A final fragment that shatters Bertinck's        
chin plows on to tear open Leer's hip. It takes Leer only minutes to        
bleed to death. Still the bloody and terrible summer wears on. Weeks        
of rain leave rifles caked with mud, uniforms sodden, the earth an          
oily, dripping mass. Tormenting rumors of an armistice make the             
front even more unbearable. Then one late summer day, Kat is hit. Paul      
bandages his smashed shin and struggles to carry him to an aid              
station. But there the medics shake their heads; Kat has died on            
Paul's back, killed by a stray splinter to his head. Paul reels in          
shock. How is it that he can see and move- with Katczinsky dead? He         
faints at this loss, his last and best friend.                              
                                                                            
CHAPTER_12                                                                  
                              CHAPTER 12                                    
-                                                                           
  Soon it is autumn. Paul has been on two weeks' rest because of gas        
poisoning. On leave, he sat in the sun listening to news that the           
Armistice would come soon. But now he is back at the front alone,           
confronting the future dully, without even fear. Still he believes          
there is some bit of life within him that will seek its way out.            
  And then we come to a break in the text. The narration switches to        
third person- someone else, not Paul, is speaking. The narrator             
tells us that Paul fell on an October day, an October day so quiet          
that the army report confined itself to the single line: "All quiet on      
the Western Front." His face was calm, almost glad. He did not              
appear to have suffered long.                                               
  Our feeling is almost one of relief. In the last two chapters the         
misery has been so relentless that we are convinced of the                  
hopelessness of the chance that Paul (or any of his friends) could          
create a good life after the war. The bitter irony is that he should        
have survived so much terror and died so quietly- only one month            
before the Armistice.                                                       
                                                                            
TESTS_AND_ANSWERS                                                           
                            A STEP BEYOND                                   
                          TESTS AND ANSWERS                 (RALLTEST)      
-                                                                           
                                TESTS                                       
-                                                                           
  TEST 1                                                                    
-                                                                           
  _____  1. Remarque's principal purpose in the novel was to                
-                                                                           
            A. present a vivid portrayal of the horrors of World            
               War I                                                        
            B. show how a German generation was affected by the war         
            C. set the record straight about trench warfare                 
-                                                                           
  _____  2. Paul and his friends were encouraged to enlist by               
-                                                                           
            A. the editorials written by Heff Krauss                        
            B. the town's leading politician, Heinrich Boll                 
            C. the schoolmaster, Kantorek                                   
-                                                                           
  _____  3. A symbolic action which points up the war's effect upon         
            morality was                                                    
-                                                                           
            A. Muller's attempt to get the boots                            
            B. the theft of Kemmerich's watch                               
            C. Paul's killing of Gerard Duval                               
-                                                                           
  _____  4. In the process of training the young soldiers,                  
            Himmelstoss tried to                                            
-                                                                           
            A. break their spirits                                          
            B. inspire them with Germany's glorious destiny                 
            C. develop their sense of mutual responsibility                 
-                                                                           
  _____  5. Katczinsky's great skill lay in his ability to                  
-                                                                           
            A. cut through red tape                                         
            B. scrounge for food                                            
            C. be the best marksman in the company                          
-                                                                           
  _____  6. The halfway existence of the soldiers between life and          
            death is best illustrated by the scene in the                   
-                                                                           
            A. hospital                                                     
            B. cemetery                                                     
            C. field depot                                                  
-                                                                           
  _____  7. One of the terrible images of the battle scene is the           
-                                                                           
            A. dying horses                                                 
            B. bayonet charge by "the gladiators"                           
            C. suicide of the frightened soldier                            
-                                                                           
  _____  8. The theme which is NOT developed in this novel is that war      
-                                                                           
            A. is inevitable                                                
            B. destroys ambition                                            
            C. helps develop brotherhood among the soldiers                 
-                                                                           
  _____  9. The several references to butterflies in the novel              
-                                                                           
            A. provide a contrast to the horrors of war                     
            B. are inserted to show Paul's scientific interests             
            C. introduce Paul's vivid dream sequences                       
-                                                                           
  _____ 10. Paul shows compassion for Kemmerich's mother by                 
-                                                                           
            A. sending her an optimistic letter in her son's name           
            B. telling her that Franz is recovering satisfactorily          
            C. lying about the manner of her son's death                    
-                                                                           
  11. All Quiet is sometimes said to be lacking plot and                    
characterization. Is this true? If so, does it harm the novel?              
-                                                                           
  12. In wartime, society seems to suspend the Ten Commandments for         
soldiers. Explain this idea and use examples from the novel to support      
your points.                                                                
-                                                                           
  13. All through the war, Paul and his friends seem obsessed with          
food, comfort, and physical things. Give several examples involving         
food and comfort and explain how these examples provide an                  
indication of how the war is progressing.                                   
-                                                                           
  14. Explain the meaning of this statement: "Chance rules a soldier's      
life at the front." Give examples which support your explanation.           
-                                                                           
  15. Explain why Paul objects to his and his friends' being called         
"Iron Youth."                                                               
-                                                                           
  TEST 2                                                                    
-                                                                           
  _____  1. One sign of the deteriorating conditions in their army was      
-                                                                           
            A. the substitution of crepe paper for cloth bandages           
            B. the desertion of many German officers                        
            C. the making of coffee out of soy beans                        
-                                                                           
  _____  2. Paul realized that the difference between his first and         
            second leaves was that                                          
-                                                                           
            A. his family had started to blame the Kaiser                   
            B. the civilians now expected to lose                           
            C. he had changed                                               
-                                                                           
  _____  3. "Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late" are            
            Paul's words to                                                 
-                                                                           
            A. the dead Frenchman                                           
            B. the dying Kemmerich                                          
            C. the locksmith, Tjaden                                        
-                                                                           
  _____  4. Paul's mother, father, and teachers                             
-                                                                           
            A. attempt to build up his morale when he is on leave           
            B. are out of touch with the reality of Paul's situation        
            C. symbolize the wholesome side of Germany                      
-                                                                           
  _____  5. Paul's conclusions about the Russian prisoners of war are       
            that they                                                       
-                                                                           
            A. are inferior to the Germans                                  
            B. cannot be trusted                                            
            C. are similar to the Germans                                   
-                                                                           
  _____  6. Paul is unable to understand                                    
-                                                                           
            A. how both sides can be fighting for a just cause              
            B. why Germany has not been victorious                          
            C. why the Kaiser lied to the troops                            
-                                                                           
  _____  7. Paul wonders what will become of his generation now that        
-                                                                           
            A. "our education has been forever blunted"                     
            B. "our knowledge of life is limited to death"                  
            C. "our morals have been corrupted beyond redemption"           
-                                                                           
  _____  8. Josef Hamacher, the soldier in Paul's hospital ward, said       
            that war is a glorious time for all the                         
-                                                                           
            A. generals                                                     
            B. munitions makers                                             
            C. surgeons                                                     
-                                                                           
  _____  9. A final irony of the novel is that Paul's death came            
-                                                                           
            A. in a camp accident                                           
            B. shortly before the Armistice                                 
            C. as he, left for home on a furlough                           
-                                                                           
  _____ 10. On the day that Paul died, the army communique read:            
-                                                                           
            A. All quiet on the Western Front                               
            B. Our brave forces have repelled a vicious enemy thrust        
            C. Casualties were light in defense of the Fatherland           
-                                                                           
  11. Using examples to support your points, support or refute              
Paul's statement, "A hospital alone shows what war is."                     
-                                                                           
  12. Using several incidents that occurred while Paul was home on          
leave, explain why he concluded, "I do not belong here any more, it is      
a foreign world."                                                           
-                                                                           
  13. Although it is not true, Paul tells Kemmerich's mother that           
Kemmerich died instantly and without pain. Defend, or at least              
explain, the motives for Paul's actions.                                    
-                                                                           
  14. Explain why Paul and his friends believe that the war has ruined      
them for everything.                                                        
-                                                                           
  15. Using several examples, discuss the vital role played by              
friendship in this novel.                                                   
-                                                                           
                               ANSWERS                                      
-                                                                           
  TEST 1                                                                    
-                                                                           
  1. B     2. C     3. B     4. A     5. B     6. B     7. A                
  8. A     9. A    10. C                                                    
-                                                                           
  11. This question asks you to do two things: to decide whether All        
Quiet is weaker than other stories in plot and characterization and         
then to decide whether or not that weakness- if it exists- harms the        
novel. When you think of stories in which the main characters' desires      
cause each event, and each event in turn causes the next one, then you      
must admit that the plot of All Quiet is not set up that way. What          
causes the events in this novel occurs some place in government or the      
military command, and it doesn't really matter what the characters          
want. The war will still grind on. In fact, you could rearrange the         
order of events in the story, or even omit some of them, without            
really changing the author's message.                                       
  Much the same thing is true of the characters. Although some of them      
really come alive for us in vivid scenes- the stubborn, red-headed          
cook; the cruel Himmelstoss; the heroic company commander dying for         
his men- still, they do not change much in the course of the story,         
and their wishes and desires do not affect the course of the story. As      
to whether or not this lack of strong plot and characterization             
harms the story, you could argue convincingly that it does not. The         
whole point of the story is to show how World War I tore apart the          
lives of the young men involved, and setting up the story as a              
series of events in apparently random order shows exactly how little        
control they had over the forces destroying them.                           
-                                                                           
  12. The Ten Commandments direct people to worship God and to avoid        
killing, stealing, lying, and adultery. You might begin by restating        
the first sentence of the question as your topic sentence, and then         
continue by giving examples of how things usually considered sinful         
are expected of soldiers. The most obvious, of course, is killing. A        
soldier must kill to protect his own life. The killing of Duval in          
Chapter 9 or the mad charge in Chapter 6 would provide good                 
examples. An example of the need for stealing to supplement poor            
rations could be one of the Kat stories Paul recalls in Chapter 3. A        
case for lying is Paul's report to Kemmerich's mother of how Kemmerich      
died. Illicit sex occurs in the evenings with the French girls              
(Chapter 7) and might be defended as an assertion of life and an            
attempt to regain elements of civilian life. Society- through the           
army- even provides brothels for the men! As for worshiping God, the        
only god the men seem to have is Chance or maybe the Earth itself (see      
Chapters 4 and 6). In your concluding sentences you might comment on        
which commandments have to be suspended for physical survival and           
which ones seem to have more to do with psychological or emotional          
survival.                                                                   
-                                                                           
  13. It's important to read a question all the way through. Note           
especially the last 13 words of this one: you are expected to relate        
what you say about supplies and comfort to how the war was going. It        
will therefore be easier for you to answer if you take your examples        
from the last few chapters of the book: the conditions at aid stations      
and hospitals, the unusualness of the supply dump assignment, and,          
at the front, the scarcity of food, shells, decent clothing, and            
weapons, especially as compared with the apparently boundless supplies      
of the British and the Americans. The contrast makes it clear that the      
better supplied side is going to win. You might also include mention        
of technological innovations which are simply nonexistent on Paul's         
side: tanks and flamethrowers, especially, are mentioned in Chapter         
11.                                                                         
-                                                                           
  14. An obvious response to this question is that pure luck sometimes      
seems to determine who lives and who dies on a battlefield, that no         
matter how good a soldier someone is, his skill is no guarantee that        
he will survive. For examples to support such a statement, you might        
use the time Paul left his trench to visit another and came back to         
find it shelled. Or you might use the freak accident which killed           
Kat at the end of the novel. Review the discussion in this guidebook        
of the battle chapters (4, 6, and 11) or reread those chapters for          
further examples.                                                           
-                                                                           
  15. Paul himself discusses the phrase "Iron Youth" in Chapter 2.          
Reread that section. In your essay, discuss each word of the phrase.        
First explain why iron is not an appropriate description of skinny          
boys, either physically or emotionally, and then explain why youth          
is no longer a good description of the boys mentally or emotionally.        
-                                                                           
  TEST 2                                                                    
-                                                                           
  1. A     2. C     3. A     4. B     5. C     6. A     7. B                
  8. C     9. B    10. A                                                    
-                                                                           
  11. Turn to Chapter 10 where Paul and Kropp are sent to a Catholic        
hospital behind the lines. After Paul is well enough to move about, he      
discovers just how many different categories of wounded men are in the      
same hospital. Find that section and review Paul's ideas. if you agree      
with Paul, you might simply state Paul's meaning and then support it        
with figures from history as to how many men were killed, wounded,          
or maimed for life by World War I. (See the Setting section in this         
guidebook.) You might also add that seeing all these injuries neatly        
categorized in a civilian setting- a place where everyone is                
expected to have full use of his body- makes them seem even more            
horrible than at the front where you expect injury and death.               
  If, on the other hand, you disagree with Paul and think that the          
battlefield shows more truly what war is, you might use examples            
from Chapter 6 (the long chapter detailing what an endless period of        
trench warfare involved) or the screaming horses from Chapter 4. The        
crying of the horses dramatizes in quite a different way how                
directly contrary to nature war is.                                         
-                                                                           
  12. This question takes you directly to Chapter 7 in which Paul goes      
home on leave. Examples follow one another quite rapidly within that        
chapter. Ones you might want to include are the major who does not          
seem to understand anything about war and insists on marching and           
saluting, and the armchair strategists who tell Paul he couldn't            
possibly understand the overall picture of the war since he is              
fighting in only one part of it. Even Paul's mother, who seems more         
understanding than they, reduces the war to a discussion of how to get      
a safe job and the need to be careful of French women. In each example      
state what happened or was said and show that it is foreign to Paul by      
contrasting it with the kinds of things he has been experiencing at         
the front.                                                                  
-                                                                           
  13. Paul's lies to Frau (Mrs.) Kemmerich can be explained in several      
ways, some more flattering to Paul than others. Reread two sections:        
the end of Chapter 2 where Paul sits next to the dying Kemmerich,           
and the section in Chapter 7 where he actually talks to Kemmerich's         
mother. Then decide for yourself which motive is uppermost or               
whether Paul may have had mixed motives: a desire to spare her              
feelings, a desire to give Kemmerich's death greater dignity than it        
really had, the fact that he just didn't care and wanted to get a           
distasteful job done with the least trouble, or even a revenge motive-      
to deprive her of the truth because she blamed him for surviving.           
-                                                                           
  14. It is Kropp who actually says, "The war has ruined us for             
everything." The comment occurs in a discussion of plans for after the      
war in Chapter 5 and refers specifically to Paul, Kropp, and their          
classmates. In your answer contrast Paul and his classmates with other      
soldiers who have jobs or wives to return to. The Characters section        
of this guidebook will help you review which soldiers have something        
or someone to go back to. Consider also why it will be difficult for        
Paul and his classmates to take any job seriously after the war.            
What has happened to make all ordinary jobs or studies look                 
pointless to them?                                                          
-                                                                           
  15. Friendship is such a constant theme of the novel that you should      
be able to find examples in nearly every chapter. For a quick review        
of some of the scenes involving comradeship see the Theme section of        
this guidebook, and consider also how the classmates' beating of            
Himmelstoss and, later, the change in Himmelstoss demonstrate               
different aspects of friendship.                                            
                                                                            
TERM_PAPER_IDEAS                                                            
                           TERM PAPER IDEAS                 (RALLTERM)      
-                                                                           
  PAPERS BASED ON CHAPTERS OF THE NOVEL                                     
-                                                                           
  1. Chapters 1 and 2: Study the obituary page in a local newspaper.        
Write a similar obituary for Franz Kemmerich. Use details from the          
novel for the general facts, and fill in with suitable additional           
ideas as needed.                                                            
-                                                                           
  2. Chapter 3: Choose Kat's theory of equal pay or Kropp's theory          
of having the leaders fight the war personally. Argue for or against        
the theory as being a good way to conduct war.                              
-                                                                           
  3. Chapter 3: Discuss the way Paul and his friends took revenge on        
Himmelstoss. Were they right or wrong to do what they did? (If you          
wish, you may include a comparison with how Mittelstaedt treats             
Kantorek in Chapter 7.)                                                     
-                                                                           
  4. Chapter 4: Explain the statement, "To no man does the earth            
mean so much as to the soldier."                                            
-                                                                           
  5. Chapter 5: Explain how the goose incident shows that                   
comradeship means everything to the soldier.                                
-                                                                           
  6. Chapter 6: Explain either why "every soldier believes in               
Chance" or why the men must fight "like wild beasts."                       
-                                                                           
  7. Chapter 7: Why is leave "a pause that only makes everything after      
it so much worse"? Consider the words and actions of Paul's family and      
acquaintances in your response.                                             
-                                                                           
  8. Chapter 8: Paul guards Russian prisoners of war in this                
chapter. What does he seem to learn from this experience? What does he      
seem to have in mind as a possible goal for himself for after the war?      
-                                                                           
  9. Chapter 9: Explain the difference between "heightened caution"         
and "animal fear."                                                          
-                                                                           
  10. Chapter 9: Contrast Paul's killing of Duval with Oellrich's           
sniping at the enemy. What makes their actions different?                   
-                                                                           
  11. Chapter 10: Write a paper of comparison and contrast based on         
the men's lives at the supply dump and at the hospital. Include such        
areas as food, physical comfort, and comradeship. Explain both what         
was alike in the two situations and what was different.                     
-                                                                           
  12. Chapter 10: Find out more about medicine during World War I. Was      
Paul's opinion of the medical profession justified? (You might also         
consider a comparison with medicine during the Korean Conflict as           
shown in reruns of the television series "M*A*S*H.")                        
-                                                                           
  13. Chapter 11: Something mentioned again in this chapter is the          
callous attitude that a soldier must take toward an individual              
death. This attitude is shared by the orderly in Chapter 2, Paul            
when he is talking to Kemmerich's mother in Chapter 7, the medical          
profession in Chapter 10, and the soldiers themselves. Why is this          
matter-of-fact attitude necessary?                                          
-                                                                           
  14. Chapter 11: Study the obituary page in a local paper. Write a         
similar obituary for Stanislaus Katczinsky. Use details from the novel      
for the general facts, and make up suitable additional ones as needed.      
-                                                                           
  15. Chapter 12: Study the obituary page in a local paper. Write a         
similar obituary for Paul Baumer. Use details from the novel for the        
general facts, and make up additional ones as needed.                       
-                                                                           
  16. Chapter 12: How do you feel about Paul's death in the last            
chapter? What did he have left to live for? Argue that his death was        
either tragedy or a blessing and explain what led you to your               
conclusion.                                                                 
-                                                                           
  THE NOVEL AS A WHOLE                                                      
-                                                                           
  1. Explain the symbolic importance of the goose incident in the           
novel.                                                                      
-                                                                           
  2. Explain the symbolic importance of the screaming of the wounded        
horses in the novel.                                                        
-                                                                           
  3. Explain the importance of Kemmerich's boots in the novel. What do      
they tell you about the historical situation? about the theme of            
friendship?                                                                 
-                                                                           
  4. Explain the importance of Paul's daydreams in the novel. Are they      
present merely as a way for Remarque to show contrasts? Do they tell        
us something more about what happens to a soldier's inner values? Do        
they have no importance at all?                                             
-                                                                           
  5. Explain the importance of the earth itself in the novel. Use           
examples from several different chapters in order to show how the           
earth is a source both of safety and of pain to the soldier.                
-                                                                           
  6. Discuss the effectiveness of using first person narration in this      
novel. Why was it good or bad to have that particular soldier- Paul-        
telling it? Why not Kat or Kropp or Detering?                               
-                                                                           
  7. Discuss the author's use of contrasting scenes. How did this make      
the novel more vivid? How did it make it possible for you to visualize      
and to feel what was occurring? Use examples from the novel in your         
answer.                                                                     
-                                                                           
  8. Go back to the introductory statement made by Remarque just            
before Chapter 1. Has Remarque fulfilled the purpose he set for             
himself. Explain the reasons for your answer.                               
-                                                                           
  9. Explain the psychological defense mechanisms soldiers                  
cultivated in order to survive with some degree of sanity. What did         
they do to keep the war from getting to them?                               
-                                                                           
  10. Review the battle chapters (4, 6, 9, 11). List the words using        
onomatopoeia to describe the sights and sounds, and explain what            
effect these words have on the realism of the scenes.                       
-                                                                           
  11. Paul and his friends have several discussions about war. In           
addition, Paul's own thoughts go even deeper, to ideas about human          
nature. List the major conclusions you believe Paul reached about           
human nature. Use examples of his actions or thoughts to support            
your points.                                                                
-                                                                           
  FIRST PERSON WRITING                                                      
-                                                                           
  A. Select one of the following situations and become that person.         
Using "I," write out either your thoughts, or what you, as that             
person, would have written in your private diary. Be sure to use            
appropriate details from the novel, but also to make up additional          
ones suitable to the person and the situation.                              
-                                                                           
  1. You are Katczinsky. You have just been given a new group of            
recruits to take out on their first mission. You are looking at them        
and thinking about your own skills and luck and their chances of            
survival.                                                                   
-                                                                           
  2. You are one of the three French girls. You are really hungry. You      
see the German soldiers swimming; they look like decent types. What         
are you thinking before you wave to them and start talking?                 
-                                                                           
  3. You are Himmelstoss, receiving a decoration from the Kaiser.           
You realize how very much you have learned. You are thinking with           
shame about how you treated the recruits and how things were at the         
front. You do not hold a grudge against Paul and his friends for            
beating you up.                                                             
-                                                                           
  4. You are Detering and you have had it. You are thinking about your      
life before the war and building up to your decision to desert.             
-                                                                           
  B. Again, select one of the following situations and become the           
person indicated. Write the letter as that person would have written        
it, using his or her attitudes and ways of speaking.                        
-                                                                           
  1. You are Paul's sister. Write to him about the latest developments      
at home, now that your mother's cancer entirely confines her to bed         
and you have the responsibility for the household. What are your            
worries and concerns? How much are you willing to share or explain?         
-                                                                           
  2. You are Paul. You still have Gerard Duval's wallet and the             
picture of his wife and child. No matter what Kat and Kropp said,           
you still feel a need to write to Madame (Mrs.) Duval and tell her how      
bravely her husband died. No one else can do it, but you want to do it      
kindly. Will you actually sign your name? will you tell her you were        
the one who killed him? Make these decisions and then write the             
letter.                                                                     
-                                                                           
  3. You are Paul's company commander. Write to Paul's family to            
comfort them after Paul dies on such a quiet day, with rumors of a          
coming armistice filling the air.                                           
-                                                                           
  INTERDISCIPLINARY TOPICS                                                  
-                                                                           
  1. If no one had told you that All Quiet on the Western Front was         
set during World War I, how would you have determined what war was          
involved? More specifically, how would you have known that the novel        
occurs during the last two years of the First World War? Include in         
your response political, geographical, and technological allusions.         
-                                                                           
  2. Read also Remarque's novel The Road Back. It discusses more fully      
some of Germany's postwar problems, problems hinted at in All Quiet.        
Trace the relationship of the problems from one novel into the next.        
-                                                                           
  3. It is unfortunate but true that, historically, war has led to          
technological innovations. List new things first widely used in             
World War I and locate references in the novel which suggest the human      
impact of this technology of planes, tanks, poison gas, and so on.          
-                                                                           
  4. World War I is the first war from which we have documentary            
photographs. Seek out books containing some of this photography, and        
discuss the probable impact of photography itself on people's               
reactions to the war.                                                       
-                                                                           
  5. In his ironic poem "War Is Kind," written in reference to the          
American Civil War, Stephen Crane contrasts the supposed glory of           
war with its reality. Locate a copy of the poem and apply its               
stanzas to Paul, his friends, and their families.                           
-                                                                           
  6. Locate the poem "Grass" by Carl Sandburg, first published in           
his 1916 connection, Chicago Poems. Identify the wars in which the          
battlefields mentioned were important, and comment on the tone of           
the poem: How does it relate to Remarque's view of human ability to         
learn from war? to his comments on the earth itself?                        
-                                                                           
  7. Explain how the two following novels develop the theme of a young      
man's complete disillusionment as a result of war: The Red Badge of         
Courage (1895) by Stephen Crane and All Quiet on the Western Front          
(1929) by Erich Maria Remarque.                                             
-                                                                           
  8. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was a contemporary of Remarque's. He      
too believed that war caused a loss of values. Compare the moral            
collapse shown in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926) with                
Remarque's themes in All Quiet (1929). How do the two novels seem to        
express similar views? How do they differ?                                  
-                                                                           
  9. Read Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (1929) and                  
Remarque's A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1954). Both are love           
stories set during wartime. How are the two stories similar? How do         
they differ?                                                                
-                                                                           
  10. In 1649, Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace wrote of war as a             
glorious mistress in the poem, "To Lucasta, Going to the War."              
Locate a copy in an anthology of English literature and cite                
passages from All Quiet that suggest that Paul's elders and teachers        
still held this romantic view of war as a glorious, honorable pursuit.      
-                                                                           
  11. Wilfred Owen was a very promising English poet killed in 1918 in      
World War I. His poems were published in 1920. Locate Owen's "Dulce et      
Decorum Est" and relate it to Remarque's account of the gas attack          
in Chapter 4. You may include other references to lung injuries such        
as those in the hospital section of Chapter 10.                             
-                                                                           
  12 Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) often wrote about the ironies involved        
in human behavior. In his poem "The Man He killed," he sounds a bit         
like Paul Baumer. Locate a copy in an anthology of English poetry, and      
cite passages from All Quiet on the Western Front in which Paul or          
Paul and his friends reach similar conclusions.                             
                                                                            
GLOSSARY                                                                    
                               GLOSSARY                     (RALLGLOS)      
-                                                                           
  THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION                                                   
-                                                                           
  Originally published in German, All Quiet on the Western Front was        
quickly translated into English. At times, however, the English is          
distinctly British. While the words are not difficult to understand,        
you may feel more at home if you scan the American equivalents:             
-                                                                           
     British English               American English                         
-                                                                           
         aeroplane                     airplane                             
         civil life                    civilian life                        
         garden fete                   garden party                         
         in fine trim                  in fine shape                        
         mess-tin                      mess kit                             
         Mind!                         Watch out! Be careful!               
         motor lorries                 trucks                               
         munition-column               ammunition convoy                    
         pub                           bar, tavern                          
         queue                         line                                 
         wireless men                  radio operators                      
         wiring fatigue                wiring duty or detail                
-                                                                           
  IN THE ARMY                                                               
-                                                                           
  DIXIE  Oval-shaped British army cooking kettle (from the Hindi            
degshi, a pot or vessel). The navy equivalent is a fanny.                   
-                                                                           
  FROGS, FROGGIES  The French, from an ancient heraldic device (symbol      
for a shield or coat of arms) consisting of three frogs.                    
-                                                                           
  JOHNNY  As used in context in Chapter 7 it refers to a Russian. This      
is similar to an American's referring to Russians as Ivans. Ivan,           
Johann, and John are the same name in three different languages-            
Russian, German, and English.                                               
-                                                                           
  SKAT  A German card game played by three players using 32 cards.          
Bids are expressed in numbers. The winning bidder becomes the player        
and names the exact variant of the game to be played.                       
-                                                                           
  TOMMY, TOMMY ATKINS  Similar to G.I. Joe for an American soldier,         
Tommy means a British private soldier. (A Jack Tar is a British             
sailor.) At one time all recruits were given manuals in which they          
were to enter name, date, etc. The model used the fictitious name           
Thomas Atkins.                                                              
-                                                                           
  GERMAN NAMES: PRONUNCIATION                                               
-                                                                           
  Feel free to pronounce the names in this novel as they appear. You        
will have a problem being more precise, since English consonant and         
vowel sounds are not identical with those in German. For instance, the      
German sound for the ch spelling in the middle of a word is our k or h      
after a guttural sound we do not have in English. At the end of a           
word, ch is more like our sh. Also, the two dots over a vowel               
(called an umlaut) indicate a vowel sound we do not have in English.        
"Baumer," for example, would be pronounced BOW-mer, but "Baumer,"           
(with an umlaut over the a) is pronounced BOY-mer. Therefore these are      
approximate pronunciations of some of the less obvious names.               
-                                                                           
      Baumer                     BOY-mer                                    
      Behm                       BAYM                                       
      Boettcher                  BERT-cher                                  
      Detering                   DET-er-ing                                 
      Franz Kemmerich            frahnz KIM-er-ish                          
      Franz Wachter              frahnz VEK-ter                             
      Haie Westhus               hi VEST-hews                               
      Hamacher                   HAHM-ock-er                                
      Himmelstoss                HIM-mel-shtos                              
      Katczinsky                 ku-CHIN-ski                                
      Mittelstaedt               MIT-el-shteht                              
      Muller                     MEW-ler                                    
      Oellrich                   ERL-rish                                   
      Tjaden                     CHAW-den                                   
                                                                            
THE_CRITICS                                                                 
                             THE CRITICS                    (RALLCRIT)      
-                                                                           
  Many critics have hailed Remarque for writing All Quiet on the            
Western Front so objectively, without a trace of nationalism,               
political ill will, or even personal feelings. Even when a character's      
inner world is revealed, it always seems to be that person's inner          
life- not the author's. In 1929, as noted in this guidebook in The          
Author and His Times, the Nazis attacked the book not on literary           
but on political grounds, and a few reviewers accused Remarque of           
sensationalism. In America, magazine and newspaper reviews immediately      
hailed Remarque as the new Stephen Crane and his novel as an updated        
Red Badge of Courage.                                                       
  Academic critics, however, have paid little attention to All              
Quiet. German critics were displeased at Remarque's departure from the      
intellectualism of traditional German fiction, and European and             
American critics were put off by its being a bestseller- how could          
anything so popular possibly be worthwhile?                                 
-                                                                           
  Remarque succeeded in transcending his own personal situation; he         
touched on a nerve of his time, reflecting the experiences of a             
whole generation of young men on whom the war had left an indelible         
mark.                                                                       
                                 -Christine R. Barker and R. W. Last,       
                                          Erich Maria Remarque, 1979.       
-                                                                           
  Im Westen nichts Neues is close to him [Remarque]. It appears to          
be permeated with sincerity and true compassion. Its tremendous             
success can hardly be explained otherwise.                                  
           -Wilhelm J. Schwarz, War and the Mind of Germany, I, 1975.       
-                                                                           
  ...this book is an accusation of the older generation who let             
loose this terrible catastrophe, this monstrous war. It is an               
accusation of the generation that preached that service to the state        
was the highest aim in life.                                                
           -Wilhelm J. Schwarz, War and the Mind of Germany, I, 1975.       
-                                                                           
  Anyone who was sufficiently in the thick of it for a long period, on      
one side or the other, might have written this grim, monotonous             
record, if he had the gift, which the author has, of remembering            
clearly, and setting down his memories truly, in naked and violent          
words.                                                                      
                                    -"All Quiet on the Western Front"       
                  [book review], New Statesman, vol. 25, no. 5, 1929;       
               quoted in Barker and Last, Erich Maria Remarque, 1979.       
-                                                                           
  This particular scene [the Kantorek incident], told with the              
malicious glee of an adolescent, is typical of the immature and             
sophomoric attitude of the heroes.                                          
                                    -W.K. Pfeiler, quoted in Schwarz,       
                                War and the Mind of Germany, I, 1975.       
-                                                                           
  Remarque is proposing the view that human existence can no longer be      
regarded as having any ultimate meaning. Baumer and his comrades            
cannot make sense of the world at large for the simple reason that          
it is no longer possible to do so, not just for this group of ordinary      
soldiers, but for a substantial proportion of his entire generation.        
Remarque refuses to lull his reader into a false sense of security,         
into thinking that God is in his heaven and all is right with the           
world.                                                                      
                                 -Christine R. Barker and R. W. Last,       
                                          Erich Maria Remarque, 1979.       
-                                                                           
  [Lewis Milestone's 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front] was one      
of the few serious attempts at a realistic approach to the World            
War.... The drama was kept within the bounds of its theme: a                
critical recapitulation of the slaughter of innocents.... Many              
instances were eloquent and moving indictments of the emotional and         
physical destructiveness of war: the sequence of the dead boy's             
cherished boots being taken over by his comrade, and the celebrated         
closing scene of the hand of the young soldier reaching out from the        
trenches for a butterfly only to fall limp on being shot."                  
-                                                                           
                        -Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film.       
                                                                            
ADVISORY_BOARD                                                              
                            ADVISORY BOARD                  (RALLADVB)      
-                                                                           
  We wish to thank the following educators who helped us focus our          
Book Notes series to meet student needs and critiqued our                   
manuscripts to provide quality materials.                                   
-                                                                           
  Murray Bromberg, Principal                                                
  Wang High School of Queens, Holliswood, New York                          
-                                                                           
  Sandra Dunn, English Teacher                                              
  Hempstead High School, Hempstead, New York                                
-                                                                           
  Lawrence J. Epstein, Associate Professor of English                       
  Suffolk County Community College, Selden, New York                        
-                                                                           
  Leonard Gardner, Lecturer, English Department                             
  State University of New York at Stony Brook                               
-                                                                           
  Beverly A. Haley, Member, Advisory Committee                              
  National Council of Teachers of English Student Guide Series              
  Fort Morgan, Colorado                                                     
-                                                                           
  Elaine C. Johnson, English Teacher                                        
  Tamalpais Union High School District                                      
  Mill Valley, California                                                   
-                                                                           
  Marvin J. LaHood, Professor of English                                    
  State University of New York College at Buffalo                           
-                                                                           
  Robert Lecker, Associate Professor of English                             
  McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada                               
-                                                                           
  David E. Manly, Professor of Educational Studies                          
  State University of New York College at Geneseo                           
-                                                                           
  Bruce Miller, Associate Professor of Education                            
  State University of New York at Buffalo                                   
-                                                                           
  Frank O'Hare, Professor of English                                        
  Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio                                     
-                                                                           
  Faith Z. Schullstrom, Member of Executive Committee                       
  National Council of Teachers of English                                   
  Director of Curriculum and Instruction                                    
  Guilderland Central School District, New York                             
-                                                                           
  Mattie C. Williams, Director, Bureau of Language Arts                     
  Chicago Public Schools, Chicago, Illinois                                 
-                                                                           
-                                                                           
                    THE END OF BARRON'S BOOK NOTES                          
        ERICH MARIA REMARQUE'S ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT               
                                                                            
                                                                            
                               BIBLIOGRAPHY                 (RALLBIBL)      
                                                                            
ALL_QUIET                                                                   
                           FURTHER READING                                  
-                                                                           
                            CRITICAL WORKS                                  
-                                                                           
  During the second half of his life, German-born Erich Maria Remarque      
was an American citizen who spent much of his time in Switzerland. His      
books were more popular with the public than with critics. Also, he         
wrote in German and his books were then translated into English. As         
a result, much less literary criticism- in English- exists on               
Remarque's books than those of other major American authors. There          
is no biography of Remarque for the general reader.                         
-                                                                           
  Barker, Christine R., and R.W. Last. Erich Maria Remarque. New York:      
Barnes & Noble, 1979.                                                       
  This scholarly book, which uses sources in German and in English,         
examines Remarque's life and novels in detail.                              
-                                                                           
  Jacobs, Lewis. The Rise of the American Film. New York: Teachers          
College, Columbia University Press, 1968.                                   
  Lewis Milestone's 1930 production of All Quiet on the Western             
Front is treated as a landmark in early films with sound.                   
-                                                                           
  Schwarz, Wilhelm J. War and the Mind of Germany. I. Frankfurt,            
West Germany: Peter Lang, 1975.                                             
  An essay in the book compares Remarque's war novel with the work          
of other German novelists.                                                  
-                                                                           
                         AUTHOR'S OTHER WORKS                               
-                                                                           
  SEMIAUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVELS                                               
-                                                                           
  The Road Back, 1931 (Der Weg zuruck, 1931).                               
  It is a time of shortages, profiteering, riots, and extremist             
politics. Men returning from the front no longer fit- with family,          
at a teacher's college, in jobs, even in bars or dance-halls. They          
feel betrayed by their Fatherland.                                          
-                                                                           
  The Black Obelisk, 1957 (Der schwarze Obelisk, 1956).                     
  Political unrest, unemployment, and galloping inflation are facts of      
life in Germany in 1923. Ludwig Bodmer, a 25-year-old World War I           
veteran, works for a tombstone firm, tutors, and plays organ on             
Sundays at an insane asylum. He wanders between the Poets' Club and         
a local brothel and between a circus girl and a beautiful asylum            
inmate, finally leaving for a newspaper job in Berlin and hoping to         
find a purpose in life.                                                     
-                                                                           
  Three Comrades, 1937 (Drei Kameraden, 1937).                              
  Times are hard and political factions becoming violent in Germany in      
1928, but Gottfried Lenz, Otto Koster, and Robert Lohkamp have each         
other. Car racing and repair, roses from cloister bushes, Robby's           
piano playing, constant drinking- and death- are interwoven in the          
story of their friendship and Robby's love of Patricia Hollmann.            
-                                                                           
  Heaven Has No Favorites, 1961 (Der Himmel kennt keine Gunstlinge,         
1961).                                                                      
  Lillian, eager for experiences denied her for three years in a            
sanatorium, and Clerfayt, a racing driver, make the most of their           
threatened time together one spring and summer in Paris, Sicily,            
Venice, and the Riviera. Set after World War II, but the time seems         
earlier.                                                                    
-                                                                           
  THE EMIGRANT NOVELS                                                       
-                                                                           
  These novels, set from about 1937 to the mid 1940s, usually               
feature a non-Jewish German deprived of citizenship for political           
reasons. He associates with other refugees, some Jewish, some from a        
variety of European countries, all of them avoiding European police         
since they have no legal papers. The plots continue the themes of           
All Quiet on the Western Front- brotherhood versus man's inhumanity to      
man- but the dialogues are tiresome debates on life, love, and              
politics.                                                                   
-                                                                           
  Flotsam, 1941 (Liebe deinen Nachsten, 1953).                              
  The lives of several German refugees crisscross in 1937 Austria,          
Switzerland, and France- in cafes, hotels, customs offices, jails.          
Young Ludwig Kern and Ruth Holland survive separation, illness,             
poverty, and detention, to hold at last visas and tickets to Mexico.        
-                                                                           
  Arch of Triumph, 1945 (Arc de Triomphe, 1946).                            
  German refugee Dr. Ravic and small-time actress Joan Madou meet in        
Paris in 1938. His illegal status and obsession with revenge on a           
German torturer, and her faithlessness, make their love affair a            
stormy one.                                                                 
-                                                                           
  The Night in Lisbon, 1964 (Die Nacht von Lissabon, 1964).                 
  Josef Schwarz tells of going back into Nazi Germany for his wife,         
Helen, and with her surviving detention and pursuit by French and           
German authorities. But she commits suicide on the brink of sailing         
for New York rather than let her cancer mar their new life. Schwarz         
gives his passport and tickets to a fellow refugee.                         
-                                                                           
  Shadows in Paradise, 1972 (Schatten im Paradies, 1971).                   
  Robert Ross, art expert and former journalist, arrives in New York        
on the passport of a dead man. He works illegally in the worlds of New      
York art and Hollywood films during World War II. He loses his love,        
the model Natasha, by returning to Germany after the war for revenge        
(unsuccessful) on a crematorium official.                                   
-                                                                           
  WORLD WAR II NOVELS                                                       
-                                                                           
  Remarque did not himself serve in World War II, and the novels            
lack the feeling of involvement conveyed by All Quiet on the Western        
Front. Like All Quiet they do, however, continue the themes of man's        
inhumanity to man and the value of comradeship.                             
-                                                                           
  Spark of Life, 1952 (Der Funke Leben, 1952).                              
  In a German concentration camp during the last weeks of World War         
II, Allied victories rekindle the spark of life in Skeleton 509. His        
underground movement, including the Jewish lovers Joseph Bucher and         
Ruth Holland, thwarts many SS atrocities. Shortly before the Americans      
arrive, Skeleton 509 shoots an SS man and is killed himself, but            
Joseph and Ruth survive.                                                    
-                                                                           
  A Time to Love and a Time to Die, 1954 (Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu         
sterben, 1954).                                                             
  Toward the end of World War II Ernst Graeber, a young German on           
the Russian Front, goes home on leave only to find his neighborhood         
destroyed by bombs. In searching for his parents, he is sickened by         
his growing knowledge of concentration camps and denunciations. He          
meets and marries Elisabeth Kruse, a former schoolmate. Back at the         
front he saves four Russian prisoners, but is himself shot by one of        
them as they flee.                                                          
-                                                                           
-                                                                           
         THE END OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR BARRON'S BOOK NOTES                
        ERICH MARIA REMARQUE'S ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT               
                                                                            
                                      1600                                  
                                                                            
                             WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S                          
                                 AS YOU LIKE IT                             
                                                                            
                   by Robert Owens Scott, Associate Producer                
                   Playhouse Repertory Company, New York City               
                                                                            
                               SERIES COORDINATOR                           
                                Murray Bromberg, Principal,                 
                Wang High School of Queens, Holliswood, New York            
      Past President, High School Principals Association of New York City   
                                                                            
                                ACKNOWLEDGMENTS                             
      Our thanks to Milton Katz and Julius Liebb for their contribution to  
                             the Book Notes series.                         
     Loreto Todd, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Leeds, England, 
           prepared the chapter on Elizabethan English in this book.        
            (C) Copyright 1985 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc.         
   Electronically Enhanced Text (C) Copyright 1993, World Library, Inc.     
                                                                            
CONTENTS                                                                    
                               CONTENTS                                     
                        SECTION............................ SEARCH ON       
                                                                            
      THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES............................. SASYAUTH        
                                                                            
      THE PLAY                                                              
      The Plot............................................. SASYPLOT        
      The Characters....................................... SASYCHAR        
      Other Elements                                                        
           Setting......................................... SASYSETT        
           Themes.......................................... SASYTHEM        
           Style........................................... SASYSTYL        
           Elizabethan English............................. SASYELIZ        
           Form and Structure.............................. SASYFORM        
           Sources......................................... SASYSOUR        
           The Globe Theatre............................... SASYGLOB        
      THE PLAY............................................. SASYPLAY        
                                                                            
      A STEP BEYOND                                                         
      Tests and Answers.................................... SASYTEST        
      Term Paper Ideas and other Topics for Writing........ SASYTERM        
      The Critics.......................................... SASYCRIT        
                                                                            
      Advisory Board....................................... SASYADVB        
                                                                            
      Bibliography......................................... SASYBIBL        
                                                                            
AUTHOR_AND_HIS_TIMES                                                        
                       THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES             (SASYAUTH)      
-                                                                           
  Like most of the major characters in As You Like It, William              
Shakespeare experienced life in both the country and the city. His          
birthplace- Stratford, on the Avon River- was a bustling country town.      
---------------------------------------------------------
Electronically Enhanced Text (C) Copyright 1991 - 1993 World Library, Inc.
