How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
But on the last day an astonishing number of English field guns opened up on us with high-explosive, drumming ceaselessly on our position, so that we suffered heavily and came back only eighty strong. (1.4)
About 10 million soldiers died over the course of World War I, the most expensive war the world had yet known. Check out Shmoop History: "World War I" for more information.
Quote #2
Katczinsky is right when he says it would not be such a bad war if only one could get a little more sleep. In the line we have next to none, and fourteen days is a long time at one stretch. (1.5)
How do these soldiers keep sane and how do they maintain their energy without sleep and with very little food? Do you agree with Kat that the war wouldn't be so bad if the soldiers were able to sleep more?
Quote #3
The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions, and they give an intimate flavor to expressions of his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignation. (1.42)
Our narrator speaks so politely about fart jokes! We almost have to read this part three times in order to understand what he's talking about. Why do you think soldiers are "on friendlier terms" with their intestines?
Quote #4
Because he could not see, and was mad with pain, he failed to keep under cover, and so was shot down before anyone could go and fetch him. (1.60)
Why is it significant that Joseph Behm (the class clown and rabble-rouser who almost didn't follow the trend and join the army) is among the first to fall?
Quote #5
My thoughts become confused. This atmosphere of carbolic and gangrene clogs the lungs, it is a thick gruel, it suffocates. (2.37)
War attacks all of the senses; it's in the air the soldiers breathe, in the sounds of suffering they hear, in the rough dirt and splinters they feel in the trenches. So much of the novel has to do with sensory experiences – both the good and the bad. Here, Paul is visiting a hospital, and the smell of it overwhelms him. However, much later on, he and his comrades enjoy delicious roasted pig and freshly brewed coffee. Paul descriptions hinge on moments in which the senses are stirred.
Quote #6
Hospital-orderlies go to and fro with bottles and pails. One of them comes up, casts a glance at Kemmerich and goes away again. You can see he is waiting, apparently he wants the bed. (2.40)
We don't know about you, but the doctors and hospital attendants in this novel don't seem all that nice and friendly to us. This moment makes us realize just how easy it might be to feel like less of a human during this war. Even when a man is far from the trenches, even when he is on death's door, he is still treated more as a number than as a human.
Quote #7
Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting. (3.42)
Kropp makes us wonder what exactly war is and how it has changed over time. His description of what he believes war should be like reminds us of a Gladiator-like set-up – you know, the citizens watch as brave, Hulk-like people battle it out with tigers and lions. As silly as Kropp's idea is, he makes us think about the idea of fighting for one's country. Could there ever be such a thing as a contained war fought between decision-makers only? At this moment (and in many moments like it), it seems like the author's potential bias against the idea of war surfaces.
Quote #8
"Let a man be whatever you like in peace-time, what occupation is there in which he can behave like that without getting a crack on the nose? He can only do that in the army. It goes to the heads of them all, you see. And the more insignificant a man has been in civil life the worse it takes him." (3.55)
Kat suggests that the context of war lets men get away with behavior that would otherwise get them in major trouble. The hunger for power drives people to do crazy things. As much as we dislike Himmelstoss, we are kind of shocked by the way in which the soldiers beat him up. It seems a bit excessive to us.
Quote #9
"Then what exactly is the war for?" asks Tjaden.
Kat shrugs his shoulders. "There must be some people to whom the war is useful."
"Well, I'm not one of them," grins Tjaden.
"Not you, nor anybody else here." (9.51-54)
Who is World War I benefiting? It is interesting that the soldiers never hear (or at least our narrator never tells us that they hear) any inspiring or motivating speeches from superior officers about why they should fight. When we think about battles and about dying for one's country, we think about Braveheart or Henry's speeches to his men in Shakespeare's Henry V – you know, when the king tells his men "once more into the breech, dear friends, once more" (3.1). But we just don't hear anything inspiring in the world of this novel. Did the Kaiser (the German emperor), Wilhelm II, deliver any speeches or write anything that would answer Tjaden's question?
Quote #10
A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought when such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is. (10.209)
Note how the author does not just focus on German suffering, but that of the enemy and the enemy's enemies. He looks at the enormity of suffering and war-wrought waste across the world and over the centuries. Hospitals in our mind are places where people go to get better, but this hospital (and other hospitals of the war) only seem to make its patients feel worse about the state of things. Our narrator finds no relief in the hospital.