In chapter 9 Paul has ruptured to the front, and finds Kat, Müller, Tjaden, and Kropp are still alive and are ok. Paul and his friends think that if thirty people would have said “no” the war wouldn’t have happened and they would have been there. Paul also volunteers to go into No Man’s Land to gather info about the enemy. Paul gets lost on his way back and finds shelter in a shell hole, after a while a soldier go into the same hole and Paul is forced to kill him. It was to bright outside for Paul to make his way back to camp so is has to stay there until night with the dead body. After a little time goes by Paul realizes that the French soldier wasn’t dead, Paul then tries to heal the soldier by bandaging his wounds. It takes the soldier several
Tintin falls asleep for a short amount of time and wakes up to find the lifeboat on fire and Haddock drunk. When Tintin tries to extinguish the fire, Haddock gets angry and pushes Tintin, capsizing the boat. Suddenly, a seaplane attacks them with machine guns. Tintin takes a shot at the plane with a handgun which miraculously stops the engine and the pilots are forced to land on the water. As the pilots are fixing the plane Tintin and Haddock sneak up on them, hijack the plane after it is fixed, tie them up, and set course for Spain.
In chapter six it starts out with the men discussing a possible offensive against them, meanwhile all of them are in the trenches which are in horrible shape, which are filed with huge rats. The soldiers are all tired and worn down and their leader ,Kat, shows it in his face as well. One night after an earth bomb shakes their trench area a young recruit that seems uneasy and yells at Paul then walks out of the trenches, this showed the toll war does on a man. The same day the men are attacked by the French and attacked bad, Paul described it and says “ We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves from annihilation”.
The German government: Instable and “You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well” ( Remarque 40 ) . This quotation from the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque stands in representation for the symbol of questioning the decisions of a government. This book shows how a government may not be making decisions regarding war that are in the best interests of the people. The German government was in a time of struggle and despair during the times of World War I (1912-1918). The instability and false trustworthiness of the German government in the time period of 1910-1930 fed the feelings and themes from the book All Quiet on the Western Front.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarqueis a book about a German soldier Paul Bäumer and some of his friends from school who joined the army voluntarily after their teacher talked about joining the war. The group of nineteen year olds started the war with a great sense of nationalism and enthusiasm, but after experiencing ten weeks of hard training from Corporal Himmelstoss and the brutality of life on the front. Paul and his friends realize that the reasons of for which they enlisted are simply meaningless after some time on the front. Also, Paul and his friend realize that war is not as glorious or honorable as it is made out to be, and constantly lived in strain both mental and physical.
1. What have you read this week? How has the plot progressed? Write a 6-8 sentence summary of the novel so far. Robin and his crew continue to go town to town helping town memeber who have lost everything or children who have sustained injury.
On the way to the front, they are constantly being bombarded and are running out of food and water supplies. Haie Westhus, Paul’s friend, dies from getting hit in the back on the battlefield. After this trench warfare, there were only 32 people left. They give Paul 17 days of leave. He visits his mother, and finds out she has cancer.
Then the ministers and generals of the two countries can have it out among themselves (Remarque, pg.41)”. This shows that Paul and the soldiers were not ready to be involved in a battle and at the moment scared to fight a war that doesn't involve them. Their understanding and look of the war changed for Paul and his friends. They could no longer be happy after seeing the horrors of war. “We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their splintered stumps into the next shell hole; a lance corporal crawls a mile and a half on his hands dragging his smashed knee after him; another goes to the dressing station and over his clasped hands bulge his intestines; we see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces we find one man who has held the artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in order not to bleed to death (Remarque, pg.134)”.
In chapter two of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Remarque, Paul realizes the threat and destruction of war towards the young soldiers. Paul thought about his dreams prior to fighting in the war and realizes that his dreams were destroyed even before he had a chance to follow them. He also recalls his first experiences of army life as a young recruit, where him and his classmates Kropp, Muller and Kemmerich trained under the command of Corporal Himmelstoss. They were forced to do humiliating chorse and endure harsh punishments daily. Even though the soldiers hated Coroporal Himmelstoss, they believed that he trained them to be pitiless and tough which were essential qualities to survive in the trenches.
Muller wants kemmerithicks boots because they have lost normal things in life. All the common commodities are gone with this generation they've lost family themselves at war and the ability to have good boots they are the generation of losing. Another thing that the book touched on was how when the guys lost their humanity and became savages and heartless it actually helped them out in the war this shows how the war took the humanity from the guys who went to war. Paul and his compadres are considered the lost generation because straight out of high school they were enlisted in the war or drafted.
In the last chapter of the book one of Paul’s comrades dies. “He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All Quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he couldn’t have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.” (pg 296).
He lies and tells her his death was quick and painless. On his last night home, Paul’s mother sits by his bedside. She is in great pain with her illness. He wishes he never came home. Paul’s leave ends and he attends the training camp.
This was unexpected from the audience along with Paul himself. By including this plot twist in the novel, it shows that a single soldier does not know what is next for them. From the beginning of the novel, in introduces characters and by the end, they are all dead. This is a perfect representation that in war, one is not able to plan out what is ahead of them. The soldiers march into warfare blind because it is unexpected what their next move is.
The ruthless killing brings a toll on the people who will remember that the enemies are men just like them, as Paul does when he instantly regrets his actions, saying that he would not kill him if he could redo the situation. Thus Paul sees value in being a coward, as he thinks it would be more courageous not to kill him than to go by the standards he learns. The German soldiers train as if they were animals acting upon their instincts to do so, which bears similarity to the human nature of war. Paul is at the stage where he lacks any hope for the war and does not see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is in the winter and at the time when Paul is so accustomed to the war that it is just another day for him.
This of course is before the harsh training and going through the horrors of war. They start to learn the harsh reality of war soon enough. After about the second week of fighting. Paul and his peers return from the front. However, less of them are even alive to return.
Paul has learned a whole new level of survival. He's taught himself to survival intense shelling, and survive in a dirty and unequipped trench. All the men in his trench are his new family. At the end of the book Paul explains how death doesn't take him by surprise anymore. When Kropp and Paul both become injured severely, Paul gets let out early.