Act 1 Scene I Benvolio: Enters and try to end the fight (thinker > balanced) between: Sampson + Gregory (Capulet) & Abraham + Balthazar (Montague) Tybalt (Cap) : enters and provokes a further conflict (choleric > blood exess) Maturity: the ideal man is one that is a temperate man > balanced, no extremes SP’s audience would recognize the flaws in his characters Juxtraposition: two words placed together to show similarity or difference Paradox: an aparent contradiction that is essentially true. Nothing is as it seems > love all at once can be both pleasure and pain. Immature view of love > selfish Romeo’s focus is on sex > Is this love? Romeo feels he will never look at another woman. “Out with the old, in with the new.” Scene II Capulet is having a party. He invites Paris to the party to see that Juliet is best, Juliet must also consent to marry Paris. Servant is sent to find guests. Romeo and Benvolio will go to the party to find another woman. Lady Capulet > Metaphor: Marriage like a book Paris is the uncovered book. Juliet will be the cover. Marriage will unify the two. 2 become 1. Scene III Lady Capulet tries to convince Juliet to consider Paris for marriage. Scene IV Mercutio: Dreams are pointless. There is no truth to them: fanatsy! Mercutio & Romeo > over a dream Romeo: foreshadows the end of the play. Predicts events that will up to death. Will begin tonight. > Set up the element of tragedy. The hero must understand that he is in danger but continues on anyway. > Romeo has a dream that he will start a chain reaction of events at the party. Scene V Capulet: Tybalt is hot tempered > “This fault will cause you harm” > foreshadows Tybalt: patience and anger are conflicting emotions within him, and he is having difficulty controlling them. Juliet: The person I chose to love is mine enemy, I wish I knew sooner. Bad association of this love. Act II Scene I Mercutio and Benvolio make fun of Romeo Scene II Romeo goes under Juliet’s balcony. He talks to her and they woe each other. Romeo runs off to Friar Laurence’s cell. Juliet’s metaphors: “So loving-jealous of his liberty.” > Paradox = immature love (dominance) “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” > last moment together + leave quickly! + paradox “Dear hap.” – good fortune > fate > Romeo is leaving things up to fate (chance) Juliet feels that things are happening too quickly > things that happen quickly do not last > she wants to move more slowly Through the interruptions we see the immaturity “Flattering sweet to be true.” > irony They are both caught up in emotion and are saying things they may not mean. > this statement is true Scene III > Romeo sees F.L. to ask him if the Friar will marry Romeo and Juliet > Theme of immaturity – Romeo in Love?? > Others know of R + J love > Foreshadows the end. Good / Evil! > Love is very immature Friar Laurence: Balance of man: > Everything including man has both good and evil > When evil is most powerful it dies > “Wisely and slow.” > balance! > fools rush in! > “You mustn’t move too quickly! Scene IV Tybalt wrote a letter to Romeo challenging him! The Nurse goes back to tell Juliet stuff Scene V Juliet: Love is supposed to move quickly. The Nurse is old + slow, while the young are much faster. > This is very positive. > Message: Elizabethan audience would believe that often moving slowly is the much wiser choice. > Sign of her immaturity + impatience > “Hie to high fortune.” > > shows her impatience and rushing into things > Fate: depending on fate Scene VI Friar Laurence: Often when things happen too quickly they end quickly. Love moderately > slowly is better! R+J in Friar L. cell get married. Act II Summary 1. Fate > by hap > leaves everything to chance 2. Paradox of Emotion > “parting is such sweet sorrow.” 3. Immaturity (love) > Romeo and Juliet rush into marriage > Friar Laurence shows that moving slowly is better! Act III Scene I Tybalt comes along and Mercutio starts trash talkin him. Tybalt wants Romeo’s blood, but Mercutio wants to fight. Romeo tries to stop it but Mercutio gets stabbed. Tybalt comes back and Romeo busts a cap and murda! Mercutio: is showing his biggest flaw > he talks too much without thinking. > He be dead! Tybalt: He is a hot head > quick to fight They be dead because they were out of balance > not mature > Romeo now feels he is fortune’s fool! Scene II Nurse tells Juliet that Romeo killed Tybalt and he is exiled. Paradox: “Learn me how to lose a winning match.” Speech > immaturity > possession (Bird metaphor!) Foreshadows the end of the play! “If he is dead she will poison herself” Scene III F.L. and Romeo talk. They set up the plan about Mantua. Romeo is concerned only with himself > shows no care for how this will affect Juliet > selfish! F. Laurence > cannot recognize the person Romeo is. He looks like a man, but behaves like both a man and a woman. >> Romeo is controlled by the paradox of his emotions. > Stating that Romeo is not being a wise man! Scene IV Parsi and Capulet arrange their wedding for Thursday.Yikes! Scene V Romeo and Juliet talk in Juliet’s chamba. Romeo leaves after a kiss. Act IV Scene I Juliet and the Friar devise the fake death scheme. Scene II Juliet repents disobedience. Wedding is moved to Wednesday. Scene III Juliet drinks potion. Scene IV Maturity > Capulets are behaving poorly > crying / suicide! F. Laurence: Shows self to be the wise man + Explains to them that this event should also be happy and not just sad! Act IV Summary – Paris runs into Juliet at F. Laurence’s cell – Paris wishes to have F.L. marry he and Juliet – Juliet doesn’t want to marry Paris but would rather die – F.L. tells Juliet to kill herself using his potion that will only give her symptoms of death. – Juliet is discovered dead by her family and the wedding is changed to a funeral. Act V Scene I Balthazar tells Romeo that Juliet is dead. He buys a potion and heads off to Verona. Scene II F. L. speaks to F. John and learns that the letter never got to Romeo. Ouch! Gets a crowbar to go rescue Juliet. Scene III Whole death scene. Not much to it. Recent, easy to rememba. Romeo takes potion, dies, Juliet wakes up, stabs self with daggger. Damn you Friar Laurence! Character Map Capulet (Head of household) Tybalt (hothead / nephew) Sampson + Gregory (servants) Juliet (daughter) + Nurse Montague (head of household) Benvolio (nephew: cool + calm) + Romeo (son) + Mercutio (friend + talks too much!) ^^ ^^ Balthazar (servant to Romeo)All Quiet on the Western Front
Chapter Questions Chapter 1 1. On the front, it was fairly quiet, so the quartermaster had requisitioned the usual quantity of rations and provided for the full company of 150 men. Unfortunately on the last day before coming back, the English killed half the men, so they were only eighty strong. So the rations of 150 men were divided up for eighty. 2. Heinrich’s refusal to feed the men the rations says that he still has sympathy for all the men that have died on the front. Since he hasn’t been to the front and seen the horrible scenes of death, he has not become desensitized as Baumer and his crew is. He thinks it’s wrong to give out the dead men’s rations. Quite comparable to if one of our classmates died and we were all happy because we got their pizza. More food for us, and wow, we didn’t even have to pay! This situation is quite similar to that of Kemmerich’s boots. Instead of feeling sorry for him because he’s their friend, all they want is his good boots, or in this case, rations and smokes. 3. At this time in the book, Paul thinks that the war is 100 times worse than what all the Kantoreks have told him. He believes that its not glorious at all, and it totally shattered his previous expectations when the first bomb dropped. 4. Kantorek was the crew’s schoolmaster. Kantorek gave them long lectures during drill-time until their whole class went and volunteered for the war, under his shepherding. That was Kantorek’s biggest influence on them, making them join the army. 5. Behm is one of the first men to die. He got hit in the eye during an attack, and they left him lying for dead. They couldn’t bring him back, because they had to return helter skelter. Because he was half-blind, was mad with pain, he couldn’t keep under cover and was shot down. 6. A. Because they should have mediators, guides of world maturity, yet they acted in a way that cost them nothing. B. Because Iron Youth means that they are youth. They are but twenty years old “but young? Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk.” 7. Kemmerich had his leg amputated, because he got hit in the thigh with a piece of shrapnel. Chapter 2 1. A) For the older men, the war is but an interruption in their lives. They have wives, children, occupations and interests. They have a solid, concrete background that no even the war can obliterate. The war seems peculiar to the younger men because they don’t have an adult life built as of yet. They have parents, and maybe a girlfriend. But the war has separated and dislocated them from their past, and has totally taken away their future. B) He doesn’t completely agree with Kantorek’s statement by saying, “We know that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a wasteland. All the same, we are not often sad.” Baumer is saying that although he acknowledges that they have become a wasteland, dislocated from their lives, they are not often sad about it. This quote shows how the men have been dehumanized, that they have lost all human emotion. Also, not really relevant, is that if they become sad, then it will cause further problems on the front such as going crazy or getting killed. 2. In wanting Kemmerich’s boots, it is revealed that Muller’s character is very realistic, and he sees the practicality in a situation, and will think very clear-mindedly. Perhaps he is insensitive, but you can’t expect much from a dehumanized soldier, who can’t show any remorse or he will be killed. These quotes back up my point that Muller is merely sensible, and not mean, cruel, or petty. “He merely sees things clearly.” “We have lost all other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us. And good boots are scarce.” “…he is really quite sympathetic.” 3. The nature of the soldier before the war, is that he only has vague ideas of what life should be etc. When they start their training after enlisting, they quickly learn what is important and what’s just for show. Paul remarks that the soldiers have a fine nose for distinctions. During the war, the soldiers become dehumanized and no longer express any emotion. 4. Himmelstoss abuses his authority to a great extent. He had a special dislike of Kropp, Tjaden, Westhus, and Paul. He has made Paul remake his bet 14 times in one morning, knead boots for 20 hours until they were soft as butter, scrub out the corporal’s Mess with a tooth-brush, clear the barrack-square with a dustpan and hand-broom. For six weeks, Himmelstoss made Paul do guard every Sunday. With a full pack and rifle, for 4 hours, he made Paul do the “Prepare to advance…” drill. Add to this numerous other horrible punishments, thy developed a great hate for Himmelstoss. The religious quote basically means to me “What comes around, go around, times a hundred.” So if you do something bad to another human being, it’ll happen to you, a hundred times worse. In Himmelstoss’s case, he mistreats the men, and later get the !#@* beaten out of him. This is also an example of karma. 5. They developed esprit du corps out of necessity. If they hadn’t, they would have gone mad in the trenches. They did not break down during the numerous and frequent drills, and this is what led to esprit du corps. Esprit du corps is so important because I developed into the finest thing that arose out of the war. Comradeship is one of the most important things to have out in the trenches. It mainly lifts the men’s spirits, and they fight better and harder. Also, if you’re fighting next to someone, and you don’t have comradeship, then you won’t try to save his life, or sacrifice yours. 6. After he dies, Paul gathers up his stuff. He starts outside. The mood becomes very spiritual and intense. “The night crackles electrically.” Paul is distant and runs towards the hut. All of sudden, very quickly, the mood changes back to normal, as if nothing had happened. Paul has a very odd reaction to death in my opinion. Chapter 3 1. Kat has the peculiar ability to find food, supplies, what ever they need at the moment no matter where they are or what time of day it is. “Kat is the smartest I know. By trade he is a cobbler, I believe, but that hasn’t anything to do with it; he understands all trades.” Kat has the six sense to trade for anything he needs, especially food. Ex. “Ginger was glad I took it. I gave him three pieces of parachute-silk for it.” 2. The men spend hours saluting instead of training for the front. This is the reason the German’s are loosing the war in Kat’s opinion. A salute has no use at the front, whereas guns and survival instinct do. This quote reveals the leadership of the army is viewed as the enemy to the men. The men have little respect for the officers, and generals, yet they salute them. A salute is supposed to be a sign of respect, but in reality the men do not respect the officers like Himmelstoss. 3. Kat’s rhyme seems to me to promote the ideals of communism. Give everyone the same food and the same money, and everyone will be happy. This is a large contrast to Kropp’s opinion. Kropp proposes that the war should have tickets and be a festival like a bullfight. In the arena, like a wrestling match the generals and ministers of the two countries would duke it out. Whoever wins the match, that country would win the war. He thinks that in a war the wrong people are doing the fighting. These two views are different because Kat thinks that the government system is at fault, whereas Kropp thinks that the wrong people are doing the fighting. 4. Kat says that if you train a dog to eat potatoes and then afterwards put a piece of meat in front of him, he’ll snap at it. And if you give a man a little bit of authority he behaves the same way. Kat is comparing the life of eating potatoes to Himmelstoss’s life. Himmelstoss was a postmaster (potatoes) and had no authority (meat) whatsoever. So when you put a bit of authority (meat) in front of him, he’ll snap at it and abuse it. 5. The second chapter deals mostly with the soldiers. It describes the nature of the soldier, young and old. It describes some of their experiences so far, and their reactions to those events. The third chapter is more about the captains and generals. It describes Himmelstoss, and the soldiers talk about how they detest the leadership of the army. 6. Himmelstoss would have been pleased because the soldiers had learned from his saying that they should “educate one another.” Unfortunately, they had become successful students of Himmelstoss’s method, and it had backfired on him. His teaching had lead them to beat up Himmelstoss. Chapter 4 1. The activity in the previous chapter was very minimal. The men basically sat around and talked about how much they hated the authority of the army. They also talked about a couple of issues concerning the war, and they recalled the time they beat up Himmelstoss. This is a great contrast to that of the fourth chapter, in which the men have to go up to the front on wiring fatigue. This is when they must hide in the graveyard to avoid the bombardment. The fourth chapter yields much more “battle” action, with gruesome scenes, than the previous. 2. Muller starts the journey in a good mood, since he is wearing Kemmerich’s boots. The crew is in a light mood at this point. “We joke with them and they answer back.” As they near the front, the men are not afraid, but some of the new recruits are agitated. “It is not fear. Men who have been up as often as we have become thick-skinned.” All the men are attentive and listening for the shelling and the other sounds of the war. Kat foresees a bombardment, and he is restless. The men’s faces, according to Baumer, are not paler nor flushed, or tense nor flabby, they are unchanged from normal. At the moment the first shell hits, there is a tense waiting in the men’s veins, hands, and eyes. A watching, a heightened alertness, a strange sharpening of the senses. “The body with one bound is full of readiness.” Paul summarizes this when he says, “Every time it is the same. We start out for the front plain soldiers, either cheerful or gloomy: then come the first gun-emplacements and every word of speech has a new ring.” 3. The Earth is the soldier’s only friend, his brother, his mother. He presses himself down into the Earth to protect himself from shell fire. He shelters his cries in the Earth’s silence and security. She shelters him, and receives him again and often forever. This is the meaning the Earth has to the men. 4. The men are able to protect themselves from the bombardment by awakening in themselves a thousand-year-old animal instinct. By the instinct they are led and protected. It is not conscious, but far quicker, and less fallible than consciousness. If it were not for the men’s animal instinct, not a man would be alive from Flanders to the Vosges. This animal instinct also goes towards the theme of dehumanization. 5. It is ironic because it is a graveyard. They shelter themselves with dead bodies, tombstones and caskets. After people get killed, the other soldiers just throw dirt back over them. It’s also ironic because they’re dead any way mentally and physically, so how fitting that they take shelter in a graveyard. 6. Because you’d think that Detering would care more about using people in the war instead of using animals. He seems to care more for the horses than the well being of others around him and himself. This is an ironic statement. Chapter 5 1. When Himmelstoss arrives, the men do nothing but lay there as he approaches. They do not stand at attention and click their heels, nor do they salute him. Himmelstoss focuses his attention towards Kropp, but Kropp merely blows him off. Then Tjaden really steps into him verbally. Himmelstoss storms off saying that he’ll get Tjaden court-martialed. This is an example of how the men show comradeship. They all disregard Himmelstoss together and back each other up. They bond together to get rid of Himmelstoss. A war really unites people by giving them a common enemy; someone that everyone can hate. 2. The idea that Albert is expressing is that the war has ruined everything that the men once knew. It has destroyed their past, and their future. It has taken from them their ornamental emotions and replaced it with animal instinct. They are no longer youth. They don’t have any ambitions towards life, they are only fleeing. Fleeing from themselves and from life itself. They were eighteen and had just begun to love life, when the war shot that all to bits. The first bomb shattered their whole life, never to be able to turn back. The war has cut them off from activity, from striving, and from progress. The men no longer believe in these things, only in the war. All the young soldiers feel there is no future for them. They cannot imagine having jobs or a family. 3. In the battle for survival, Baumer is trying to get and kill the geese, but the bull-dog is trying to stop this from happening. Similar to the war, Baumer represents himself, the geese represent the opposing French soldiers, and the bull-dog represents the generals and the authority figures in the war. Chapter 6 1. Th preparation for the offensive is a hundred brand new coffins are made. They are intended for the men. This is ironic because we’d expect that they’d prepare by getting their guns ready and getting food and supplies. Instead they expect that the men die, and already have coffins built for them. Pretty harsh. 2. The trench rats live in horrible conditions now, mostly because the trenches have deteriorated significantly. They must constantly fight for food. They gnaw at the men’s bread. The men kill many of the rats, but still some survive fleeing with a small morsel of bread. 3. Paul reasons that either he is killed by the Frenchmen, or he kills the Frenchmen. The quote “We have become wild beasts” refers to Baumer’s state of mind during the war. The war has dehumanized him and awakened in him a thousand-year-old animal instinct. 4. The first scene is that of one of the new recruits. “The first recruit seems actually to have gone insane. He butts his head against the wall like a goat. We must try tonight to take him to the rear.” This is an example of a scene of “insanity”. The second shows the carnage of the war. “His body collapses, his hands remain suspended as though he were praying. Then his body drops clean away and only his hand with the stumps of his arms, shot off, now hang in the wire.” 5. Because he is a figure of authority in the war, therefore he hasn’t experienced the front as the older, more experienced men have. Essentially he is a new recruit. He has all the same qualities and vulnerabilities as a new recruit. He hasn’t yet become dehumanized, nor developed his animal instinct. He cowers in his hole because he thinks he still has a chance to live, unlike the other men who know they’re dead anyway, or have just become dehumanized. Chapter 7 1. After been in the trenches, Himmelstoss no longer has the ‘bounce’ that he had before. He now realizes that if he is to survive at the front, he better be on good terms with the men. He shows his willingness of friendship when tells them that he is replacing the sergeant-cook who went on leave. As proof, he gives the men two pounds of sugar and half a pound of butter. He also sees to it that the men are detailed the next two or three days to the cook-house for potato and turnip peeling. 2. They turn into animals when they go up to the front line because that is the only thing that will bring them through safely. So when they go back, they must turn into wags and loafers out of sheer necessity. The men want to live at any cost, so they cannot burden themselves with ornamental feelings away from the front. 3. A territorial basically does nothing. It sounds honorable, when really it’s just getting leave to go back home. Chapter 8 1. The Russian soldiers live in even worse conditions than the men at the front do. In order to survive, they must pick through the garbage cans where Paul is stationed. The prisoners are all very feeble, because they only get enough food to keep them from starving. The men have dysentery, and furtively display the bloodstained tails of their shirts. They beg to the Germans for food, but sometimes all they get is a kick for their troubles. Although they mostly just get ignored by the Germans. The soldiers must trade for all they have. They trade their boots and their clothing. A pair of boots is worth two or three loaves of bread, or a loaf of bread and a small, tough ham sausage. The Russian soldiers have little to no food, and are ravaged by disease; they live in awful conditions. 2. A. In this quote, Baumer is talking about how the Russian prisoners are more brotherly than the German soldiers. They share what little food they have, and help each other to survive. Paul thinks that maybe it is because they feel themselves to be more unfortunate than the German soldiers. B. Paul is talking about how the Russians are not there enemy at all. That he cannot distinguish between his brothers Kat and Kropp, and a Russian soldier. They are no more of an enemy than a non-commissioned officer to a soldier, or a schoolmaster to a pupil. Chapter 11 1. The Menace of Death has caused the men to limit themselves to only the things that are necessities, in order to avoid getting killed. Had the men not resorted to anything but their primitiveness, they would have long since gone mad, have deserted, or have fallen. Just like a polar expedition, every expression of life, emotions, feelings, must serve only to keep the individuals alive, and absolutely focussed on that. All else is banished because it wastes energy unnecessarily. That is the only way to save themselves. All other expressions lie in a winter’s sleep, life is simply one continual watch against the Menace of Death. The Menace of Death has the effect of dehumanization on the men, because it reduces them to merely their animal instincts. They no longer have any emotion, and kill without sympathy or compassion. 2. On the way back from the front line, at a turning of the road near the men’s billets, stood a cherry tree before the men. It had no leaves, but was one mass of blossom. In the evening, Detering disappeared, and came back with a couple of branches of cherry blossom in his hand. Naturally, he got made fun of. At night, he started to pack up. He left the night after for Germany. He was of course caught by the military police. Detering was court-martialed and they never heard from him again. 3. A. It symbolizes the beginning of the end because big bad Germany is like Berger, who is six feet tall and unstoppable. When he goes mad, and no one tries to stop him, it symbolizes the beginning of the end. He goes out meaning to shoot the dog, but he is shot, and then the man trying to bring him back is shot. B. Because he was with the men for two years without being wounded. In the end, something had to happen to him and it did. 4. Life is so vulnerable to the men now because there is so many ways that they can die. Not only can they get shot in a battle, but they can also die from gas clouds, and many diseases. There are so many possibilities. 5. A. The soldiers know they are beaten, but continue to fight and to die for there country. They know that the end is near, yet they continue to fight. This shows a great deal of pride. “We are not beaten, for as soldiers we are better and more experienced; we are simply crushed and driven back by overwhelming superior forces.” B. It shows that they are very strong, determined men who have a great deal of patriotism for their country. It is significant because it shows that they are also dehumanized because they can remain proud under such conditions. 6. “Do you remember Kat, how we commandeered the goose? And how you brought me out of the barrage when I was still a young recruit and was wounded for the first time.” Also, at the end of the novel when Kat takes some shell fragments in his shin. Paul helps him to the dressing station, even though he is dead (Paul doesn’t know it though). This shows true friendship. Exam Notes Plot Overview: All Quiet on the Western Front is narrated by Paul Bäumer, a young man of nineteen who fights in the German army on the French front in World War I. Paul and several of his friends from school joined the army voluntarily after listening to the stirring patriotic speeches of their teacher, Kantorek. But after experiencing ten weeks of brutal training at the hands of the petty, cruel Corporal Himmelstoss and the unimaginable brutality of life on the front, Paul and his friends have realized that the ideals of nationalism and patriotism for which they enlisted are simply empty clichés. They no longer believe that war is glorious or honorable, and they live in constant physical terror. When Paul's company receives a short reprieve after two weeks of fighting, only eighty men of the original 150-man company return from the front. The cook doesn't want to give the survivors the rations that were meant for the dead men but eventually agrees to do so; the men thus enjoy a large meal. Paul and his friends visit Kemmerich, a former classmate who has recently had a leg amputated after contracting gangrene. Kemmerich is slowly dying, and Müller, another former classmate, wants Kemmerich's boots for himself. Paul doesn't consider Müller insensitive; like the other soldiers, Müller simply realizes pragmatically that Kemmerich no longer needs his boots. Surviving the agony of war, Paul observes, forces one to learn to disconnect oneself from emotions like grief, sympathy, and fear. Not long after this encounter, Paul returns to Kemmerich's bedside just as the young man dies. At Kemmerich's request, Paul takes his boots to Müller. A group of new recruits comes to reinforce the company, and Paul's friend Kat manages to produce a beef and bean stew that impresses them. Kat says that if all the men in an army, including the officers, were paid the same wage and given the same food, wars would be over immediately. Kropp, another of Paul's former classmates, says that there should be no armies; he argues that a nation's leaders should instead fight out their disagreements with clubs. They discuss the fact that petty, insignificant people become powerful and arrogant during war, and Tjaden, a member of the Paul's company, announces that the cruel Corporal Himmelstoss has come to fight at the front. At night, the men go on a harrowing mission to lay barbed wire at the front. Pounded by artillery, they hide in a graveyard, where the force of the shelling causes the buried corpses to emerge from their graves, as groups of living men fall dead around them. After this gruesome event, the surviving soldiers return to their camp, where they kill lice and think about what they will do at the end of the war. Some of the men have tentative plans, but all of them seem to feel that the war will never end. Paul fears that if the war did end, he wouldn't know what to do with himself. Himmelstoss arrives at the front; when the men see him, Tjaden insults him. The men's lieutenant gives them light punishment but also lectures Himmelstoss about the futility of saluting at the front. Paul and Kat find a house with a goose and roast the goose for supper, enjoying a rare good meal. The company is caught in a bloody battle with a charging group of Allied infantrymen. Men are blown apart, limbs are severed from torsos, and giant rats pick at the dead and the wounded. Paul feels that he must become an animal in battle, trusting only his instincts to keep him alive. After the battle, only thirty-two of eighty men are still alive. The men are given a short reprieve at a field depot. Paul and some of his friends go for a swim, which ends in a rendezvous with a group of French girls. Paul desperately wishes to recapture his innocence with a girl, but he feels that it is impossible to do so. Paul receives seventeen days of leave and goes home to see his family. He feels awkward and oppressed in his hometown, unable to discuss his traumatic experiences with anyone. He learns that his mother is dying of cancer and that Kantorek has been conscripted as a soldier, from which he derives a certain cold satisfaction. He visits Kemmerich's mother and tells her, untruthfully, that her son's death was instant and painless. At the end of his leave, Paul spends some time at a training camp near a group of Russian prisoners-of-war. Paul feels that the Russians are people just like him, not subhuman enemies, and wonders how war can make enemies of people who have no grudge against one another. Paul is sent back to his company and is reunited with his friends. The kaiser, the German emperor, pays a visit to the front, and the men are disappointed to see that he is merely a short man with a weak voice. In battle, Paul is separated from his company and forced to hide in a shell hole. A French soldier jumps into the shell hole with him, and Paul instinctively stabs him. As the man dies a slow, painful death, Paul is overcome with remorse for having hurt him. He feels again that this enemy soldier is no enemy at all but rather a victim of war just like himself. Paul looks through the soldier's things and finds that his name was Gérard Duval and learns that Duval had a wife and child at home. When he returns to his company, Paul recounts the incident to his friends, who try to console him. Paul and his friends are given an easy assignment: for three weeks, they are to guard a supply depot away from the fighting. When the next battle takes place, Paul and Kropp are wounded and forced to bribe a sergeant-major with cigars in order to be placed on the hospital train together. At the hospital, Paul undergoes surgery. Kropp's leg is amputated, and he becomes extremely depressed. After his surgery, Paul has a short leave at home before he returns to his company. As the German army begins to give in to the unrelenting pressure of the Allied forces, Paul's friends are killed in combat one by one. Detering, one of Paul's close friends, attempts to desert but is caught and court-martialed. Kat is killed when a piece of shrapnel slices his head open while Paul is carrying him to safety. By the fall of 1918, Paul is the only one of his circle of friends who is still alive. Soldiers everywhere whisper that the Germans will soon surrender and that peace will come. Paul is poisoned in a gas attack and given a short leave. He reflects that, when the war ends, he will be ruined for peacetime; all he knows is the war. In October 1918, on a day with very little fighting, Paul is killed. The army report for that day reads simply: "All quiet on the Western Front." Paul's corpse wears a calm expression, as though relieved that the end has come at last. Main Characters: Paul Baumer: Narrator and protagonist. Remarque uses him to voice his opinions about war. Paul has an inner conflict between his emotions and the way the war forces him to act and feel. His memories show he changed. Before the war he loved his family and wrote poetry. Now he suppresses his emotions to survive. As a result he can’t mourn, talk about the front, or feel comfortable at home. He succumbs to his animal instincts, but at times his emotion comes to the surface like Kat’s death. Paul is significant to represent the lost generation of people. He contemplates the future for the men as a whole. The war destroys Paul long before it kills him. Kat: Represents the older generation for whom the war was just an interruption in their lives. Kat has a family back home so he can think of his future. He advances the plot by finding the food etc. Kat is the communist who says give everyone the same grub and the war would be over. Secondary Characters: Kantorek: Though he is not central to the novel's plot, Kantorek is nevertheless an extremely important figure as a focus of Remarque's bitter critique of the ideals of patriotism and nationalism that drove nations into the catastrophe of World War I. Kantorek, the teacher who filled his students' heads with passionate rhetoric about duty and glory, serves as a sort of punching bag as Remarque argues against those ideals. Though a modern context is essential to the indictment of Kantorek's patriotism and nationalism, Kantorek's physical description groups him with premodern evil characters. The fierce and pompous Kantorek is a small man described as "energetic and uncompromising," Napoleon also springs to mind as a historical model forntorek. The inclusion of a seemingly anachronistic literary type— the scheming or dangerous diminutive man—may seem out of place in a modern novel. Yet this quality of Kantorek arguably reflects the espousal of dated ideas by an older generation of leaders who betray their followers with manipulations, ignorance, and lies. "While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing," Paul writes in Chapter One, "we already knew that death-throes are stronger." As schoolboys, Paul and his friends believed that Kantorek was an enlightened man whose authority derived from his wisdom; as soldiers, they quickly learn to see through Kantorek's rhetoric and grow to despise him, especially after the death of Joseph Behm. That Kantorek is eventually drafted and makes a terrible soldier reflects the uselessness of the ideals that he touts. Himmelstoss: Like Kantorek, Himmelstoss does not figure heavily in the novel's plot, but his thematic importance makes him significant to the book as a whole. One of the themes of All Quiet on the Western Front is that war brings out a savagery and hunger for power that lie latent in many people, even if they are normally respectable, nonviolent citizens. Himmelstoss is just such a figure: an unthreatening postman before the war, he evolves into the "terror of Klosterberg," the most feared disciplinarian in the training camps. Himmelstoss is extremely cruel to his recruits, forcing them to obey ridiculous and dangerous orders simply because he enjoys bullying them. Himmelstoss forces his men to stand outside with no gloves on during a hard frost, risking frostbite that could lead to the amputation of a finger or the loss of a hand. His idea of a cure for Tjaden's bed-wetting—making him share a bunk with Kindervater, another bed wetter—is vicious, especially since the bed-wetting results from a medical condition and is not under Tjaden's control. At this stage of the novel, Himmelstoss represents the meanest, pettiest, most loathsome aspects of humanity that war draws out. But when he is sent to fight at the front, Himmelstoss experiences the same terror and trauma as the other soldiers, and he quickly tries to make amends for his past behavior. In this way, Remarque exhibits the frightening and awesome power of the trenches, which transform even a mad disciplinarian into a terrorized soldier desperate for human companionship. Themes: Political: Kats communist ideals, Kantorek’s beaming nationalism for the young generation. Communism: Kat! The Horror of War: The gruesome battles etc. De-humanization: all emotions are taken away or suppressed Animal instinct: they rely on their instincts. Dislocation: Dislocated from their emotions and their previous lives Betrayal: Kantorek betrays the men. The younger generation is betrayed by the older. Transformation: They transform into animals at the front. Injustice: They had to fight the older men’s war. Settings: Paul away from the front: At home feels alienated, or with Russian prisoners when he realizes his enemy is the officers and the generals. Paul at the front: Graveyard scene, bloody battle after that with rats.
