第 11 页

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.

-

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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?

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CHAPTER_10

CHAPTER 10

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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.

-

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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.

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CHAPTER_11

CHAPTER 11

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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

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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.

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