In advancing this argument, this chapter again looks at
the role of political power in initiating military conflict and
concludes that the powerful people who decide to wage war are the
common soldier’s real enemies. Paul reflects that he and the Russian
prisoners are supposed to be enemies simply because other people
more powerful than he and the prisoners decreed it so, not because
of anything intrinsic to Paul, the Russians, or their relationship.
Someone else decided that they had to shoot, kill, and torture one
another, denying one another’s humanity and finally destroying their
own.
Before he takes this thought too far, Paul quickly flees
it, driven again by the necessity of keeping himself detached from
the full force of his feelings. He knows that if he thinks too deeply
about the causes of participation in the war, his thoughts will
only make the senselessness of everything that he has experienced
all too apparent. The idea of acknowledging that the war is meaningless
threatens Paul’s last reserve of hope. He decides to save his thoughts
for a later time because he cannot afford the psychological damage
that they would cause him now.
Paul’s interaction with his father and sister in this
chapter further illustrates that his experience in the war has alienated
him from his past. Paul remains unable to resume his previous relationship
with his family because the war has damaged his innocence and given him
a new mindset that his family cannot possibly understand. In these
scenes, Remarque essentially retreads the thematic material that
he covers during Paul’s visit home earlier in the novel. But he also
demonstrates that the trauma Paul has suffered during the war has
made it impossible for him to confront his feelings of loss, fear, and
grief about his mother’s illness; his worry for his mother is counterbalanced
by the necessity of keeping his feelings at bay. At the same time,
Remarque continues to emphasize Paul’s essential goodness, showing
his feelings of compassion in his decision to give the potato cakes
to the prisoners and in his realization that the cakes should mean
something to him since the effort that his ailing mother put into
making them constituted a sacrifice.
