All Quiet on the Western Front

At the outset of Chapter 2, we learn that at one time Paul was an aspiring writer. He shifts the narrative into the recollection of a play and some poetry that are tucked away in a drawer in his parent’s home. The significance of Paul being a writer is two-fold: First, it shows us how the ambitions of Paul’s youth have been utterly destroyed by his coming to the front. It is almost incomprehensible for Paul to look into the past and see that the young man who dabbled in writing poems was the same person who has been thrust into the war and turned into a killing machine. Second, it alerts the reader of a broader movement in literature away from Romanticism and toward Realism. Much like Paul himself, the tie between the two has been severed and a new era of literature has begun, one that must become more in-line with reality no matter how ugly it is.

As Paul chronicles his military training, he mentions that at the beginning, “We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character” (13). In a sense, he is talking about the innocence of youth. During the process of his training, this innocence is broken down and replaced by something much more hardened, which is a practical, matter-of-fact outlook of his life in the present. Paul mentions that “We have lost all sense of other considerations because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us” (12). Effectively, the training has stripped him of ideals, aspirations, and other abstractions, to be replaced with only the concrete details of his existence.

As Paul shifts the narrative again back to the immediate moment, he is confronted by the dying of Kemmerich, his boyhood friend. While both men seem to grasp that Kemmerich is going to die, Paul does not admit it to his friend. Instead, he tries to provide hope and motivation to stay alive. As the scene unfolds, more wounded arrive, and the doctors who were at one time trying to treat Kemmerich have given up hope. As soon as he finally does pass away, he is immediately and without ceremony removed from the ward so that space is opened for the new wounded. The scene serves as a stark reminder to Paul that the business of war is impersonal, cold, detached, and unconcerned with ideals. Paul learns the lesson here that his survival is dependent on a kind of dehumanized detachment.