Returning Home

“We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered;– the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin.” (294)

In All Quiet on the Western Front, the above passage is stated after all of Paul’s friends have died and Paul is the only one of the classmates left.  He is thinking of the soldiers’ futures and how they will adapt to society when the war is over.

There are a few paths in which a soldier can take after a brutal and violent war.  Some soldiers adjust to society well, some not as well.  Some soldiers even suffer from shellshock or other mental illnesses.  Because “they can take nothing more,” by the end of the war, Paul is no longer concerned about the war, but with how his surviving comrades will live after the war is over.

The fear of what will happen after the war is somewhat distilled in Paul.  His fear of post-war life may be one of the reasons why, after he was shot, “his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.” There is a good chance that Paul will not adjust to society well.  If he dies in battle, he will be known in society as a hero, but if he lives and goes back, there is no telling what the rest of his life will be like.  Once he dies, there is final relief.

He even fears not only how he and his comrades will react to society, but also how society will react to them.  When Paul states, “And men will not understand us—for the generation that grew up before us…and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside.” He has no idea how society would respond to his actions, which are also unknown.

Paul does not know if he will suffer from shellshock forever after he returns home.  The thought of suffering from shellshock takes a toll not only on the person suffering from the illness, but also his loved ones.  Paul’s thoughts mentally disturb him.  Once he dies, his expression of relief is that of sympathy toward not only himself and his comrades, but for his family and society as well.

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Brotherly love

“Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother just like Kat and Albert.” (Remarque 223)

What makes a person your enemy other than where they were born, or what they are fighting for? Paul and Gérard Duval may have been friends had they both been born in Germany or in France but when fate brought them together on opposite sides of the battlefield only one was meant to survive and in this case it was Paul. As the German sees Duval’s family and reads his letters from home, he is able to see that the freshly dead man in the shell hole with him was a human being just like him that wanted to return to his home. In all wars, survival is of absolute importance, but when a soldier kills another man and becomes aware of what he has taken, killing transforms into an uglier more personal subject.

Paul had taken the man’s life out of survival instinct. This violent nature that is embedded in men’s souls is the reason why we continue to survive through wars that occurred after All Quiet on the Western Front was written. In modern warfare, soldiers are able to fight each other with ranged weapons and hopefully they will not have to engage in hand to hand combat as Paul had due to the distance between the two sides. It would be best, when taking a life in war, to only know the enemy as a faceless being that has offended your homeland. Paul, unfortunately, was able to see war and death on a much more personal scale. After stabbing the Frenchman in an attempt to kill, he later found out that the man was alive so he attempted to heal him, but his attempts were futile and the man died.

While mourning, Paul says, “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 (Remarque 223).” War is a chaotic time, and the soldiers sometimes seem to forget that they are fighting against other people just like them. Paul had the opportunity to perceive his enemy closer than his German comrades. It is hard for the reader to see Paul’s analysis of the event as a blessing or a curse because he knows what he is fighting against, and when he kills another man, someone’s son, father, brother, cousin, or friend had just been unjustly “torn” from them as Flint the author of “Lament” would have described.

Even though countless families and lives have been destroyed, humanity continues to wage wars. Fortunately, most soldiers are separated by cultural barriers that prevent any common ground besides humanity. Paul regretted killing Duval because he knew so much about his life and how similar they were, but had it been a different situation he may have simply moved on. Paul believed that he could have been comrades with the Frenchman had they been fighting for the same cause. An appropriate quote on this subject was given by Francois Fenelon who said, “All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.”

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“Another Brick in the Wall”

“For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress-to the future.  We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but 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.  They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness.  The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke into pieces.” (12-13)

 

            In every society the culture and ideas of that society are passed down to the younger generations.  Teachers in schools and everything the youths are involved in changes or structures how the youths will think later in life.  The society does this either subconsciously or not subconsciously.  The training and schooling of the youths is very important to a society because the youths are what will continue their legacy when they are gone and take their country father into the future causing it to be a pretty important task to teach the younger generations lessons.

            The quote above from All Quiet on the Western Front is an example of how countries or societies will influence their youth.   The quote shows that the youths in this particular case are only at war because they were influenced by their society and teachers.  In a larger view this could mean that all youths or people really go to war for their country or do things for their country because from birth they have been influenced by there societies.  The idea of societies influence has been widely spread by Pink Floyd in the song “Another Brick in the Wall”, which means that everything a society does just adds another brick to the wall separating you from who you really could be.  Teachers play a big role because they are the ones that actually do the teaching.  The idea then would mean that all war is caused by the influence an older generation had on a younger one and that all wars are fought by people, who have been influenced by there societies to do so.  In both of these cases the people may have not made the decisions they have made if they were not influenced by their societies.   War can be caused by societies influence on its people.

            The quote is important to the book because it is what causes the young group of men to join the war.  Mr. Kentorek was their teacher and had influenced them to join the war but once they get there they realize everything they had learned didn’t matter anymore and that it was all was false to what they thought.  The quote allows there to actually be a story because if the teachers and the society of the boys hadn’t influenced them they would never have gone to war.  But their wall was shattered the minute they got to the war.  Societies influence on the characters of the book led to them ultimately joining the war.

            The quote explains societies influence on its youth.  It shows how the book was able to take place as well as gives a good example of why wars may be fought.

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