All Quiet on the Western Front

“The unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.”

This is a straightforward criticism, albeit something of a generalization as well. Paul’s assertion is a cynical view meant to draw distinctions between the innocence of the poor men at the front and the guilt of those waging the war from the safety of their government offices.

“The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.”

The line between the haves and have-nots is delineated. Baumer identifies with the poor folk who are the ones actually fighting the war. His sensibilities align with these people rather than the ones waging the war in the abstract sense. 

“We young men of twenty, however, have only our parents, and some, perhaps, a girl—that is not much, for at our age the influence of parents is at its weakest and girls have not yet got a hold over us.”

The metaphor of the No Man’s Land is evident here. Paul is commenting how the men who are sent off to the front are in that poorly defined space between childhood and full adulthood. They are not quite either. Hence, they are malleable and can be conditioned into the killing machines they become.

“We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a wasteland.”

The wasteland is a metaphor which highlights the emotional state of the men more than anything else. Natural human feelings, especially benevolent ones, are almost entirely annihilated in the men and all that remains is psychological and physical trauma.

“If you train a dog to eat potatoes and then afterwards put a piece of meat in front of him, he’ll snap at it, it’s his nature. And if you give a man a little bit of authority he behaves just the same way, he snaps at it too.”

At the center of this comment is the nature of aggression. Men, like animals, if they are prompted appropriately, will resort to their animal nature.

“These branches might seem gay and cheerful were not cannon embowered there.” 

Sights are deceptive, and the passage challenges traditional approaches to how we look at things. Paul frequently paints highly visual portraits of the setting, which are at once beautiful but become ominous once the action unfolds.

“It is this other, this second sight in us, that has thrown us to the ground and saved us, without our knowing how. If it were not so, there would not be one man alive from Flanders to the Vosges.”

Paul refers to the survival instinct here that helps the men feel their way around the combat zone. Their sense perception is what keeps them alive, at least to some extent.

“Mist and the smoke of guns lie breast-high over the fields. The moon is shining. Along the road troops file. Their helmets gleam softly in the moonlight. The heads and the rifles stand out above the white mist, nodding heads, rocking barrels. Farther on the mist ends. Here the heads become figures; coats, trousers, and boots appear out of the mist as from a milky pool. They become a column. The column marches on, straight ahead, the figures resolve themselves into a block, individuals are no longer recognizable, the dark wedge presses onward, fantastically topped by the heads and the weapons floating on the milky pool. A column—not men at all.”

Remarque offers a highly imagistic description of the setting, reminiscent of Hemingway or Pound. The repetition of words like “moon,” “milky pool,” and “column” emphasize the calm and orderly description of something that will actually become violent and chaotic. Remarque often describes war as moments of calm and chaos abutting each other.

“Like a big, soft jellyfish it floats into our shell-hole and lolls there obscenely.” 

The chemical gas is animated when it is compared to the jellyfish. It has a sinister appearance, and it takes on a life of its own in this description. Paul’s description reveals that the cloud is beautiful like a jellyfish, but it also bears a “sting.”

“The youngster will hardly survive the carrying, and at the most he will only last a few days. What he has gone through so far is nothing to what he’s in for till he dies. Now he is numb and feels nothing. In an hour he will become one screaming bundle of intolerable pain. Every day that he can live will be a howling torture. And to whom does it matter whether he has them or not.” 

The fact that the young man is mortally wounded is the least of his worries. The tone of the passage suggests a bitterness at the injustice of a miserable, agonizing death.

“At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood—nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn’t get jammed, as it does in the ribs.” 

Paul questions the purpose of an education that has led him to the frontlines of WWI. Nothing he learned in school could have ever prepared him for what he experiences, and this speaks to the unfitness of youths in war. Remarque’s message seems to be throughout that no one belongs in war except those who wage it—not young, poor men; not horses; not the enemy soldiers.

“We agree that it’s the same for everyone; not only for us here, but everywhere, for everyone who is of our age; to some more, and to others less. It is the common fate of our generation.”

The comment immediately recalls Gertrude Stein identifying the people living in the aftermath of WWI as “The Lost Generation.” Baumer recognizes the annihilation of morality throughout the novel and sees the doom awaiting civilization following such a horrific war.

“We sit opposite one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby coats, cooking a goose in the middle of the night. We don’t talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have.”

Once again, this is an example of the soldier’s ability to communicate without words. It also demonstrates the intimacy that develops between the men at the front.

“We do not fight; we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down.”

Paul is generally reluctant to assign blame to his enemy at any point in the novel. This is an example. The enemy here and elsewhere is not the French or English; it is death itself.

“We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill.”

The fighting is so intense and so devastating that the men are reduced to some primal state. They are not thinking men; they are animated by a force they do not understand. This quote foreshadows Paul’s later assertion that he will not live, even if he survives, and then his eventual death.

“Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades—words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.”

The irony of this passage is that the words presented are much more than that; they are images that signify the means of killing. The horror of the world, in this case, is a loaded phrase that could allude to war, or the inhumanity that is required to carry out such a war.

“We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know.”

The distinction between people of different social classes is once again prominent in this comment. Also, Paul alludes to how spoken language is not always the most reliable form of communication, especially between people of the same background and circumstances.

“But now I see that I have been crushed without knowing it. I find I do not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world.”

Paul’s return home is a cold realization. He almost immediately understands that he is a changed man; that the world he used to inhabit is no longer one that is for him because of what he has witnessed at the front.

“If only they would not look at one so—What great misery can be in two such small spots, no bigger than a man’s thumb—in their eyes.”

Paul speaks of the Russian prisoners here. He recognizes in them the universal language of suffering, and where the unmistakable truth of that suffering resides. This moment develops the theme “The Hypocrisy of War.”

“Just think of those pamphlets the prisoners have on them, where it says that we eat Belgian children. The fellows who write those lies ought to go out and hang themselves. They are real culprits.”

Paul refers to the use of propaganda as a means by which those who would send others’ sons to war must whip up support. In this case, the Russian prisoners have the pamphlets, and these demonstrate that fear of an unknown enemy can be turned into motivation to fight.

“Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind.”

Paul comes face-to-face with the enemy in the shell hole. He immediately expresses remorse for stabbing the man, and his rationalization that the man was only an abstraction before indicates how trench warfare is a highly impersonal method of warfare dependent on dehumanization.

“Through the years our business has been killing; it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?”

These are existential questions Paul raises. If there is an “afterwards,” the survivors are forced to live with the consequences of their actions. In light of all that has taken place at the front, these are daunting and perhaps unanswerable questions.

“Here, on the borders of death, life follows an amazingly simple course, it is limited to what is most necessary, all else lies buried in gloomy sleep.”

The men do not have the luxury to allow their thoughts to slip into abstractions. Death is not something remote; it is immediate, and because of its presence, the men can only live their lives from one moment to the next.