Study Guide

All Quiet on the Western Front Summer reading study guide Instructions: Please type or write your answers to the following questions in one or more complete sentences. 1. In the opening scene, why does Paul’s company have extra food to eat? Why is Franz Kemmerich dying? How are Müller’s feelings about Kemmerich’s dying different from Paul’s feelings? 2. How does the schoolmaster Kantorek refer to his former students? Why do Paul and Kropp scoff at the term Kantorek uses? How do the young men feel about Corporal Himmelstoss? Why? 3. What mission at the front is Paul’s group sent to perform? What do the men rely on to survive? 4. What scene provides a contrast to the tension and horror that the men experience at the front? 5. What does Kropp mean when he says of himself and his classmates, “The war has ruined us for everything”? 6. Why are Paul and his company moving back to the front? How does the battle progress over the two weeks the company spends at the front? 7. When Paul tells Kemmerich’s mother about her son’s death, why is he surprised at her grief? 8. At the training camp, what sights seem to soothe Paul’s mind? What thoughts does Paul have as he observes the Russian prisoners of war? 9. Were you surprised that the three young French women were willing to spend the evening with Paul, Kropp, and Leer? Why or why not? 10. How does Paul’s classmate Mittelstaedt taunt and humiliate Kantorek? Do you think this treatment of Kantorek is justified? Explain. 11. Why doesn’t Paul flee from his foxhole after he stabs the French soldier? How does the incident affect Paul? How do you interpret his comment afterward: “After all, war is war”?

12. What happens at the hospital after Paul and Kropp are each wounded in the leg? What does Paul see and think as he walks through the rooms of the hospital? 13. After Paul returns to the front, what happens to his comrades? What does Paul learn about the progress of the war? 14. What incidents in Chapter 11 show that the men’s