All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

and death is working its way through him, moving outwards from the centre, it is already in his eyes.

Haunting

We hadn’t had a chance to put down any roots. The war swept us away. For the others, for the older men, the war is an interruption, and they can think beyond the end of it.

Never thought of that before

The skeleton is working its way to the surface. His eyes are sinking already. In a few hours it will all be over.

Harrowing

groans, and there is rattling in his throat.

Death rattle

And if you offer a man a bit of power, the same thing happens; he’ll grab it.

This!!!

The bad thing is that they’ve all got far too much power:

True

He must have been able to hear me and he looks at me with an expression of absolute terror. His body doesn’t move, but in his eyes there is such an incredible desire to get away that I can imagine for a moment that they might summon up enough strength to drag his body with

Terrors of war

I look for my knife and find it again. But as soon as I start to cut the shirt open his eyes open wide again and that scream is in them once more, and the look of panic, so that I have to close them,

Terrors

My state of mind is getting worse all the time, and I can’t control my thoughts.

Result of war

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so still and quiet along the entire front line that the army despatches restricted themselves to the single sentence: that there was nothing new to report on the western front. He had sunk forwards and was lying on the ground as if asleep. When they turned him over, you could see that he could not have suffered long – his face wore an expression that was so composed that it looked as if he were almost happy that it had turned out that way.

:(