Quote 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.
