All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

Katczinsky is right when he says it would not be such a bad war if only one could get a little more sleep.

“What a bean-feast! That’s all for us! Each man gets—wait a bit—yes, practically two issues.”

Lord how dismal

To-day is wonderfully good. The mail has come, and almost every man has a few letters and papers.

Since then we have learned better than to be shy about such trifling immodesties. In time things far worse than that came easy to us.

Our families and our teachers will be shocked when we go home, but here it is the universal language. Enforced publicity has in our eyes restored the character of complete innocence to all these things.

It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.

“Won’t you join up, Comrades?”

It's always the older generation or patriotic people that have never seen war that insist it is an homorable and brave thing to be a part of instead of recognizong the trauma and pointlessness of it.

But he did allow himself to be persuaded, otherwise he would have been ostracized. And perhaps more of us thought as he did, but no one could very well stand out, because at that time even one’s parents were ready with the word “coward”; no one had the vaguest idea what we were in for. 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.

Naturally we couldn’t blame Kantorek for this. Where would the world be if one brought every man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best—in a way that cost them nothing.

For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress—to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.

While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards—they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

In his face there are already the strained lines that we know so well, we have seen them now hundreds of times. They are not so much lines as marks.

He it is still and yet it is not he any longer.

“Done for,” said Müller emphatically.

What probably seemed like a mercy at the time was actually a ploy to kill him earlier for his things :(

All the older men are linked up with their previous life. They have wives, children, occupations, and interests, they have a background which is so strong that the war cannot obliterate it. 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. Besides this there was little else—some enthusiasm, a few hobbies, and our school. Beyond this our life did not extend. And of this nothing remains.

At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent, we recognized that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill.

Soldiers

Identifying himself as a soldier first, part of a group, not an individual person

Had we gone into the trenches without this period of training most of us would certainly have gone mad.

And yet they still did

We are no longer soldiers but little more than boys; no one would believe that we could carry packs. It is a strange moment when we stand naked; then we become civilians, and almost feel ourselves to be so.

The whole world ought to pass by this bed and say: “That is Franz Kemmerich, nineteen and a half years old, he doesn’t want to die. Let him not die!”

he has two loaves of bread under his arm and a bloodstained sandbag full of horse-flesh in his hand.

Christ figure

“You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well,” he says.

“Every little bean must be heard as well as seen.”

Lmao

Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting.

out here you have a faint resemblance to home;

Müller is in a good mood for once; he is wearing his new boots.

Wendigoon mentioning this showing how young these guys actually were. He just liked his friend's boots :/

To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapable into itself.

Earth!—Earth!—Earth! Earth with thy folds, and hollows, and holes, into which a man may fling himself and crouch down. In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, thou grantest us the great resisting surge of new-won life. Our being, almost utterly carried away by the fury of the storm, streams back through our hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones, bury ourselves in thee, and through the long minutes in a mute agony of hope bite into thee with our lips!

Last autumn the wild geese flew day after day across the path of the shells.

Besides us lies a fair-headed recruit in utter terror. He has buried his face in his hands, his helmet has fallen off. I fish hold of it and try to put it back on his head. He looks up, pushes the helmet off and like a child creeps under my arm, his head close to my breast. The little shoulders heave.

I merely crawl still farther under the coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it.