Important Quotations Explained
1. This
book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least
of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who
stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation
of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed
by the war.
This passage is the epigraph
to the novel, telling the reader what the book is intended to be
and mapping out some of its basic stylistic and thematic ground.
The statement that the book is not “an adventure” separates it from
most war novels in that it will dispense with elements of romance
and excitement in favor of a stark, unsentimental presentation.
The clarification that “death is not an adventure to those who stand
face to face with it” suggests that books that tell stories of war
as though they were exciting adventures do not do justice to the
actual experience of soldiers. Death may be an adventure to the
reader, sitting comfortably at home, but it is anything but that
to the soldier who is actually confronted with the possibility of
being blown to pieces at any moment. The epigraph also declares
that the book will be the story of an entire generation, one “destroyed
by the war” even if not actually killed off by it. The epigraph
thus opens the novel’s exploration of the effect of the war on those
who fought it; war is a transforming force that not only injures
and traumatizes but also annihilates selfhood.
There is friction, however, between the claim that the
book will attempt “simply” to depict this annihilation and the claim
that the book is not an accusation. All Quiet on the Western
Front certainly takes a strong critical position against
the war and against nationalist and ignorant figures like Kantorek
and Himmelstoss. Perhaps the meaning of the epigraph is that the
book will let events speak for themselves since they have not been
embellished for the sake of some political goal. Still, it is hard
to see the one-dimensional Kantorek as anything other than the object
of accusation. The friction between realism and antiwar fervor found
in the epigraph parallels an aesthetic tension in the novel, as
Remarque tries to reconcile his hatred of the war with a need to
create realistic characters who are more than mere punching bags.
2. For
us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides
to the world of maturity . . . to the future . . . 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.
. . . The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it
the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.
This quotation from Chapter One constitutes
Paul’s first and most direct exploration of how the older generation
betrays the younger generation by convincing them to sacrifice their
lives for the empty ideals of patriotism and honor. Paul says that
authority figures from the older generation—parents, leaders, teachers
such as Kantorek—should have been wise guides to the future and
that, as boys, the young soldiers all assumed that they would be.
But after the war began, the soldiers realized that the older generation
had failed them, and Paul reacts to this failure with anger and
disdain. He emphasizes that the older generation, which is constantly
ready to criticize and ostracize young men for signs of cowardice
or unpatriotic behavior but has not itself experienced the war,
has no understanding of what the fighting is actually like. The
younger generation must look to themselves to determine what is
true and right because the older generation has proved itself incapable
of teaching them.
3. At
the sound of the first droning of the shells we rush back, in one
part of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that
is awakened in us we are led and protected. It is not conscious;
it is far quicker, much more sure, less fallible, than consciousness.
. . . It is this other, this second sight in us, that has thrown
us to the ground and saved us, without our knowing how. . . . We
march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers—we reach the zone where
the front begins and become on the instant human animals.
With these words, Paul describes, in
Chapter Four, the psychological transformation that soldiers undergo
when heading into battle. Paul observes this phenomenon as he and
his comrades near the front on their mission to lay barbed wire.
They cease to become men (“moody or good-tempered soldiers”) and
instead become beasts (“human animals”). To survive, it is necessary
for the soldiers to sacrifice the thoughtful and analytical parts
of their minds and rely instead wholly on animal instinct. Paul
describes men who have been walking thoughtlessly along and suddenly
thrown themselves to the ground just in time to avoid a shell, without
having been consciously aware that a shell was approaching and without
having intended to leap to avoid it. Paul calls this instinct a
“second sight” and says that it is the only thing that enables soldiers
to survive a battle. In this way, Paul implies that battles are
animalistic and even subhuman, a large aspect of the devastation
that the war wreaks on a soldier’s humanity.
4. Just
as we turn into animals when we go up to the line . . . so we turn
into wags and loafers when we are resting. . . . We want to live
at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which,
though they may be ornamental enough in peacetime, would be out
of place here. Kemmerich is dead, Haie Westhus is dying . . . Martens
has no legs anymore, Meyer is dead, Max is dead, Beyer is dead, Hammerling
is dead . . . it is a damnable business, but what has it to do with
us now—we live.
In this grim passage from Chapter Seven,
Paul discusses the psychological process of how a soldier disconnects
himself from his feelings in order to survive the terror of the
war. After the bloody fighting, Paul and his friends are lying about
enjoying a moment of relaxation and leisure, and have pushed their
recent horrific experiences out of their minds. Paul says that terror
can be survived only if one avoids thinking about it; otherwise,
feelings of grief, fear, and despair would drive a man mad. Paul
even looks upon those feelings with contempt, calling them “ornamental
enough during peacetime” and implying that they are superfluous
luxuries rather than essential components of the human experience.
To help the reader understand the pressure that is always upon the
soldier, Paul presents his appalling list of recent casualties,
friends, and comrades who were either killed or badly injured in
recent fighting. There is even a grotesque poetry to the list with
the alliteration and rhyme of the names Martens, Meyer, Max, and
Beyer, demonstrating the stoic attitude that Paul claims is necessary
for survival.
5. Comrade,
I did not want to kill you. . . . But you were only an idea to me
before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its
appropriate response. . . . I thought of your hand-grenades, of
your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and
our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late.
Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that
your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same
fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade;
how could you be my enemy?
Paul utters these words in Chapter Nine
to the corpse of Gérard Duval, the French soldier whom he has just
killed. Paul realizes for the first time that, despite the dictates
of nationalism, Duval is fundamentally no different from him. As
Duval becomes a fully realized person in Paul’s mind, as he thinks
beyond the man’s weapons to “your wife and your face and our fellowship,”
Paul observes, as he does in Chapter Eight among the Russian prisoners,
that the war has forced men who are not enemies to fight each other.
The propaganda campaigns waged by the opposing governments have
convinced many men that their opponents are evil; as such, Paul
initially conceives of the French soldier as “an abstraction”—the
enemy. Once he understands Duval as a human being, the artificial
divisions between the two men become irrelevant. Paul’s sympathy
for Duval’s suffering is evident in his address of him as “comrade”
and his reference to himself and Duval as “we” and “us,” in opposition to
the “they”—those in power, who attempt to deny the essential sameness
of men such as Paul and Duval.