Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
The Pressure of Patriotic Idealism
Many of the novel’s harshest critiques of nationalism
are reserved for the character of Kantorek, the teacher whose impassioned speeches
convinced Paul and his friends to join the army at the onset of
the war. Kantorek uses an idealistic, patriotic, and poetic rhetoric to
convey the concepts of national loyalty and glory. In his letter
to the young men, for instance, he calls them “Iron Youth,” implying that
they are hard, strong, and resilient, a description that fails to consider
the horror of the war, which traps the men in a constant state
of panic and despair. As Kantorek and his speeches are recalled throughout
the novel, Paul and his friends become increasingly disgusted by
them; their experience of war has made them increasingly cynical
about patriotism and nationalism. Even at the start of the novel, they
blame Kantorek for Joseph Behm’s untimely death, claiming that the
teacher failed to understand that no lofty ideal can possibly offer physical
or emotional protection or comfort in the heat of battle.
Carnage and Gore
The novel’s main weapon against patriotic idealism is
simply its unrelenting portrayal of the carnage and gore that the
war occasions. Every battle scene (roughly every other chapter)
features brutal violence and bloody descriptions of death and injury.
Hospital scenes portray men with grisly wounds that go untreated
because of insufficient medical supplies. Paul carries the wounded
Kat on his back to safety, only to discover that Kat’s head was
hit by a piece of shrapnel while Paul was carrying him. As part
of the overall exploration of disconnection from one’s feelings,
death is treated with impersonal efficiency: the cook wonders whether
regulations permit him to give the surviving soldiers the dead men’s
rations; when Kemmerich dies, he is hauled away with the tears still
wet on his face so that another soldier can have his bed. Amid this
horrific violence and numbness, the overblown phrases of nationalistic
rhetoric quickly lose their persuasive power and take on a loathsome
quality of hypocrisy and ignorance.
Animal Instinct
Remarque indicates throughout the novel that the only
way for a soldier to survive battle is to turn off his mind and
operate solely on instinct, becoming less like a human being and
more like an animal. Paul thinks of himself as a “human animal,”
and the other soldiers who survive multiple battles operate in the
same way. The experience of battle is quite animalistic in this
way, as the soldiers trust their senses over their thoughts
and sniff out safety wherever they can find it. This motif of animal
instinct contributes to the larger theme that war destroys the humanity
of the soldier, stripping away his ability to feel and, in this
case, making him act like a beast rather than a man.
