Dialectical Journal Chapter 9

Chapter 9: After returning from his leave, Paul sees that his friends are still alive. Relieved that they are still alive, he shares his food with them. His friends felt that Paul was lucky because he was away from the war to visit his family. His friends explain that while he was gone, they heard that they are all going to Russia. He also finds out from his friends that they are going to get inspected by the Kaiser before they go to Russia. Paul finds out that the Kaiser isn’t what he thought he would be, and is disappointed. Feeling like he needs to catch up with his friends and the war, he volunteers to help find and gather information about the enemy. However, when trying to go back, an attack started to happen, and he decided to hide in

Paul explains that his friend Haie is dead, but feels like he and his rest of his friends are lucky to be alive today. He also explains that he is also lucky because he doesn’t need to fight in the war. Paul decides to go to patrol with Kat, and explains, “in very short time, we have collected a dozen eggs and two pounds of fairly fresh butter.” (Remarque 233) Also, when on patrol, they hunted down two pigs, which they had slaughtered later on and eat them for 4 hours. During the 8 days of patrolling, they gathered up supplies before leaving, such as two armchairs, a four-poster bed, a cat, and a cage. They went to another village and helps the villagers evacuate. However during the evacuation, Kropp breaks his leg, and he knows that he will be getting his leg amputated. This reminds Paul of Kemmerich and feels like Kropp will have the same fate. Paul finds out that his arm is injured and he goes to the hospital with Kropp. Being injured, Paul and Kropp were being taken care of by the sergeant-major. They both make it to the hospital. The next moment, they find themselves with the hospital inspector. However somebody throws a bottle at the inspector during the inspection. The inspector asks who had thrown the bottle. Josef Hamacher explains that it was him, when it wasn’t him. Hamacher explains that he tries to protect everyone as he can do anything because everyone

He explains, “war is the cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery.” (Remarque 271) He explains that since it is the wintertime, there are more deaths because of the coldness and lack of heat. Paul starts to reflect on how everyone in the army is near death. He explains how short their life is during the war, how gloomy they are in the war, and their survival throughout the war. He starts to reflect on different moments throughout the night. The next day, Paul explains about Detering, and what happened to him. Detering tried to run away from war and wanted to go back home because he couldn’t take it anymore. However when running away, he was caught by the authorities and was put on trial. Paul explains that the authorities don’t know about Detering’s homesickness, they do not what to do about Detering. They never heard about Detering afterwards. After explaining what happened to Detering, he explains about Müller, who was shot during one of the battles. Paul explains Müller gave everything he had before his death, including the boots that Kemmerich gave Paul to give to Müller. Paul explains that he would give the boot to Tjaden when his time is up. Paul explains that the war has worsened, explaining that there are many different things that could happen to the German soldiers such as “Shell, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks – shattering corroding, death. Dysentery, influenza, typhus – scalding,