Maestro Dialectical Journal Analysis

Paul learns the briefness of life in retrospect of all other things. He sees his closest comrades and best friends die beside him, leaving him with a feeling of urgency to live a life worth living, as it could end at any minute. Simply stated by Paul, “Life is short” (139). Paul and his living comrades aspire to, “make ourselves as comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted” (139). Paul realizes that every minute lived is one minute closer to his inevitable death, whether it be from fighting or disease or natural causes, as James Dean declared, “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”
The sexualization of women to persuade young men to enlist in
the armed forces is clearly displayed on full view in this objectification of the young attractive women at the theatre. This cardboard cutout is enough to make the men drool and think of the times before the army, ironically making them wish they could be back home, not out at the front as the poster’s original purpose entailed.
Paul and Leer entertain themselves momentarily by going to the house of some local French girls the soldiers met across the river bank. “Three women come strolling along the bank. They walk slowly and don’t look away, although we have no bathing suits” (144). Later that night the men cross the river cloaked by the darkness, and enter the house of the girls. It is nearly a distraction from the war, but enough to amuse them for the night, allowing their brains and minds to resettle and become rested from the constant fighting from the front.
Paul is called into the Orderly Room and the Company Commander grants Paul leave for “seventeen days--fourteen days leave and three days for travelling” (151).
Paul returns to his mother and sister’s house and immediately feels an ambience of nostalgia sweep over him, as he reviews the familiar town of his childhood that now seems so far gone. “Here we have often say--how long ago it is--we have passed over this bridge and breathed the cool acid smell of the stagnant water; we have leaned over the still water on this side of the lock, where the green creepers and weeds hang from the piles of the bridge” (156). However, soon after he steps of the train, he begins feeling an aura of distance between himself and his town. Paul’s uncomfortable strangeness is especially noticeable in his conversation with his mother. “‘Was it very bad out there, Paul?’ Mother, what should I answer to that! You would not understand, you could never realize it. An you shall never realize it” (161). This conversation and simple question displays Paul’s discomfort with the even his own mother, he does not know how to talk to someone who has not, themselves, participated in the war first hand.
Paul wishes his childhood books, “I want that quiet rapture again, I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth” (171). He is experiencing extreme nostalgia at this point, holding back nothing in regards to emotion and want for his old life back and thriving.
Before his entrance into the real world, “ there I was indifferent and often hopeless-I will never be able to be so again” (185). This self detestment leads the reader to understand that Paul has gained feeling and emotions for others, his mother and sister. Now he feels affection towards them and has an aura of hope. This, under normal circumstances would be looked towards as nothing but great, but for Paul, affection and hope are evils. The two lead to misconstrued ideas of the future and damage his animalistic abilities which are necessary to survive on the front.
Chapter 8:
The Russian prisoners are depicted as “meek, scolded, St. Bernard dogs” (189). The conditions in which the prisoners reside is sub human, they must find food in trash cans and eat, “turnip peelings, mouldy bread crusts and all kinds of muck” (190). They are mistreated, scammed and abused as though nothing but inanimate soulless mounds of flesh. Paul however is different in his approach to the prisoners. Paul is caring and more so sentimental than the other soldiers, by giving them cigarettes. Paul views the Russians as potential friends, “A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends” (194). Paul understands the stupidity of war and its regards to enemies purely due to political debacles by people in higher roles over the peasants.
These normal men with a just as complex and meaningful as all others is made the enemy, by simply a higher individual, “At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the world’s condemnation and severest penalty fall, becomes our highest aim” (194). Paul is explaining that these social equals are made into evils easily by a paper and signature of some world leader who has had a disagreement with another.
Chapter 9:
The discussion shared between the friends mirrors the thoughts Paul thought of while he was on leave at the Russian prison camp. The ideas of nationalism and pride, surrounded by the glooming idea that all men are friends until a person of greater power decides against it. “‘Mostly by one country badly offending another,’ answers Albert ‘A country? I don’t follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat’, ‘I don’t mean that at all. One people offends the other---’ ‘The Then I haven't any business here at all’ I don’t feel myself offended.’ Ach, man! He means the people as a whole, the State---.’State and home-country, there’s a big difference.’ Then what exactly is the war for?’ There must be some people to whom the war is useful’” (204-205). This conversation exemplifies the mindset of the soldiers as they discuss why any of them are at the front line, risking their lives for a cause they know nothing about. In brief the leaders of a country, the State, decide against whom the country and its citizens will fight, irrelevant to the needs of the citizens needs towards the war or possible outcome. This leads to ideas regarding the French. “And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor clerks. Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers” (205). Showing the soldier's understanding of war beginning to evolve into a more sophisticated and educated awareness about the true motives for not only their country but for their country's “enemies”.
Paul leaps to safety in a shell hole for protection from further explosions hitting all around.
Soon after he enters, another man stumbles into Paul’s bunker, a Frenchman. Paul has already thought over what to do if this should happen, “What will you do if someone jumps into your shell-hole?--Swiftly I pull out my little dagger, grasp it and bury it in my hand once again under the mud. If anyone jumps in here I will go for him. It hammers in my forehead; at once, stab him clean through the throat, so that he cannot call out; that’s the only way; he will be just as frightened as I am; when in terror we fall upon one another, then I must be first” (215). Soon later Paul’s imagined horror comes to life. A Frenchman falls into the shell-hole and Paul follows through with his prepared plan, stabbing the man, though failing to kill him. This personal and intimate confrontation with the enemy, and Paul’s first time killing a man with his own hands leads to Paul slowly lose mental stability. First, Paul begins to hear the gurgling of the dying man, this is a mirror to the earlier description of the dying horses. The sounds of death are worse than any other noise to enter the ears. Soon later the Frenchman dies, leaving Paul alone in a shell-hole with the outcome of his own actions dead in front of him. This realization bashes Paul’s mentality about death as he has now seen it not only personal but due to his reaction. Paul begins talking to the dead man, and rummages through the
dead man’s pockets, finding pictures of the Frenchman's wife and personal details. This only furthers Paul’s deranged mind. Finding these items leads Paul to understand that each and every soldier on the battlefield has an equally complex and important life as his own, each has loved ones who will cry when they do not return. This cognizance leaves Paul to be less selfish and more understanding of others, outside of his own life and relevance
Chapter 10: The soldiers create an idealized home, for the time in the town. They do this by, “The floor is first covered with mattresses which we haul in from the houses. Even a soldier’s behind likes to sit soft. Only in the middle of the floor is there any clear space. Then we furnish ourselves with blankets, and eiderdowns, luxurious soft affairs.There is plenty of everything to be had in the village. Albert and I find a mahogany bed which can be taken to pieces with a sky of blue silk” (232). The soldiers are creating a false sense of hope in order, “to take things lightly as we can, so we make the most of every opportunity, and non-sense stands stark and immediate beside horror. It cannot be otherwise, that is how we hearten ourselves” (232). They are creating a facade to mask the true desperation of their circumstance to keep sanity and mental strength paramount.
The soldiers are content and cheerful with the current circumstance in the town; however, soon after they have created their “paradise” they are ordered to evacuate a town. This begins their troubles and removal from their fantasy back to the front. “a shell has landed among our rear squad” (240). This occurrence throws the dreams into nightmares, Paul hears screaming and agony all around him. Paul and Albert are both hit and limp and stumble towards the nearest field hospital. There Paul is operated on, and put into splints and plaster.
Chapter 11)
In these pages (271-275), the war worsens and begins breaking through the soldiers facades they have stationed to protect their sanity and mental strength, Comrades are dying all round, Hope is beginning to be completely fictitious, the soldiers are now morphing into animals, with instincts to live and nothing else; no love, no fellowship only life. The severity and cruelness of the fighting is slashing into the soldier’s minds and will to live. They think of each meal as their last and are always prepared for death.
Detering depicts austerity through being homesick and mentally deranged. He is described as leaving to pick cherry limbs, and one day simply not returning from his journey. It is implied that Detering has made a run for the border to escape the fighting, as it has become too much for him.
Chapter 12)
Paul describes in the final pages, complete destruction of hope and a future.
The generation from the fighting will be vagabonds if they return home, “And men will not understand us-for the generation that grew up before us, though it has these years with us already to its old occupations, and the war will be forgotten-and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside” (294). The generation of young people that the war has consumed will, if alive, never be accepted by any who did not experience the war. Those soldiers who have wasted their years, no longer have hope of a future, as Paul describes, “Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me” (295). Paul’s end comes on a quiet October day in 1918. He went with peace and an expression of relief, to finally be free from the Hell he had found himself engulfed in. “He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though he was sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come”
(296).