A Vertext of Chapters 2-3�of All Quiet on the Western Front
Chapter 2 page 19
It is strange to think that at home in the drawer of my writing table there lies the beginning of a play called “Saul” and a bundle of poems… that has become so unreal to me I cannot comprehend it any more. Our early life is cut off from the moment we came here. [italics mine]
Chapter 2 page 19-20
All the older men are linked up with their previous life. They have wives, children, occupations, and interests, they have a background which is so strong that the war cannot obliterate it….And of this nothing remains.
Chapter 2 page 19-20
All the older men are linked up with their previous life. They have wives, children, occupations, and interests, they have a background which is so strong that the war cannot obliterate it….And of this nothing remains.
“How goes it, Franz? Asks Kropp.
Kemmerich’s head sinks.
“Not so bad…but I have such a damned pain in my foot.” pg. 14
Men In A War
Men In a war If they've lost a limb�Still feel that limb As they did Before
Men In a war If they've lost a limb Still feel that limb�As they did Before He lay on a cot He was drenched in a sweat�He was mute and staring But feeling the thing He had not
I know how it is When something is gone A piece of your eyesight�or maybe your vision A corner of sense Goes blank on the screen�A piece of the scan Gets filled in by hand You know that it was�And now it is not So you just make do with Whatever you've got.
If your nerve is cut If you're kept on the stretch You can't feel your will�You can't find your gut And she lay on her back She made sure she was hid�She was mute and staring Not feeling the thing That she did
I know how it is�When something is gone�
A piece of your eyesight�or maybe your vision
A corner of sense�Goes blank on the screen�A piece of the scan�Gets filled in by hand
You know that it was�And now it is not�So you just make do with�Whatever you've got
Men�In a war�If they've lost a limb�Still feel that limb�As they did�Before
Men�In a war�If they've lost a limb�Still feel that limb�As they did�Before
Chapter 2 page 20
We young men of twenty, however, have only our parents… - that is not much, for at our age the influence of parents is at its weakest
“We belong to them but they never belong to us. And when they reach twenty they are exactly what we were at their age. We too had a father and mother, but there were so many other things as well...girls, cigarettes, illusions, new ties...and the Country, of course, whose call we would have answered—when we were twenty—even if father and mother had said no. ”
“War” Luigi Pirandello
Chapter 2 page 20
Though Muller would be delighted to have Kemmerich’s boots, he is really quite as sympathetic as another who could not bear to think of such a thing for grief. He merely see things clearly. Were Kemmerich able to make any use of the boots, then Muller would rather go bare-foot over barbed wire than scheme how to get a hold of them.
Chapter 2 page 21
We have lost all sense of other considerations because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us. And good boots are scarce.
Chapter 2 page 21
[back before] We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character…We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer.”
Chapter 2 page 22
we were to be trained for heroism as though we were circus ponies.
Chapter 2 page 25
In spite of ourselves we tripped and emptied the bucket [of manure] over his legs. He raved, but the limit had been reached…he growled: “You’ll drink this! – but that was the end of his authority.”
Chapter 2 page 26
We became hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough—and that was good; for these attributes were just what we lacked. Had we gone into the trenches without this period of training most of us would certainly have gone mad. Only thus were we prepared for what awaited us.
Chapter 2 page 26-27
But by far the most important result was that it awakened in us a strong, practical sense of esprit de corps, which in the field developed into the finest thing that arose out of the war -- comradeship
Chapter 2 page 29
[Looking at the dying Franz] But when we go bathing and strip, suddenly we have slender legs again and slight shoulders. We are no longer soldiers but little more than boys; no one would believe that we could carry packs…The whole world ought to pass by this bed and say: “That is Franz Kemmerich, nineteen and a half years old, he doesn’t want to die. Let him not die!”
From the Celtic Stanzas of the Graves
Gwalchmai is in Parydon ground,
His grave reproaches all mankind
Chapter 2 page 30
Paul speaking to Franz: “Perhaps you will go to the convalescent home at Klosterberg…Then you can look out from the wondow across the fields to the two trees on the horizon. It is the loveliest time of the year now, when the corn ripens; at evening the fields in the sunlight look like tmother-of pearl. And the lane of poplars by the Klosterbach…”
Chapter 2 page 33
The earth is streaming with forces which pour into me through the soles of my feet. The night crackles electrically, the front thunders like a concert of drums. My limbs move supplely, I feel my joints strong, I breathe the air deeply. The night lives, I live. I feel a hunger, greater than comes from the belly alone. Müller stands in front of the hut waiting for me. I give him the boots. We go in and he tries them on. They fit well. He roots among his supplies and offers me a fine piece of saveloy. With it goes hot tea and rum.
And yet right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if I'm gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all. I can see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Curt Lemon, and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights. I’m young and happy. I'll never die.
The Things They Carried
They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die. “Indian Camp” Ernest Hemingway
Chapter 3 page 35
Reinforcments have arrived..The vacancies have been filled and the sacks of straw in the huts are already booked…Kropp nudges me: “Seen the infants?”
Chapter 3 page 37
[on one of Kat’s many discoveries] They go off to explore. Half an hour later they are back gain with arms full of straw. Kat has found a horse-box with straw in it.
Chapter 3 page 41
Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration or 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….the wrong people do the fighting.
Chapter 3 page 41
Give ‘em all the same grub and all the same pay
And the war would be over and done in a day.
Chapter 3 page 42
The rooms are cool and one looks toward them longingly…[continuing to reminisce about their platoon huts] What would we not give to be able to return to it! Father back than that our thoughts dare not go.”
Chapter 3 page 42
Those early morning hours of instruction – “What are the parts of the 98 rifle?
From “Naming of Parts” by Henry Reed
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica*
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.
Chapter 3 page 43
The men talk about how they practiced changing for the train station at Lohne by climbing under the beds and then:
We practiced this for hours on end.
Meanwhile the German aeroplane has been shot down. Like a comet it bursts into a streamer of smoke and falls headlong. Kropp has the lost the bottle of beer.”
Chapter 3 page 43
“Surely Himmelstoss was a very different fellow as a postman,” say I…”Then how does it come that he’s such a bully as a drill sergeant?”
Chapter 3 page 43
“For instance, if you train a dog to eat potatoes and then afterwards put a piece of meat in front of him, he’ll snap at it, it’s his nature…”
“Men,” said he [James] “must, in some things,
have deviated from their original innocence; for
they were not born wolves, and yet they worry one
another like those beasts of prey. God never gave
them twenty–four pounders nor bayonets, and
yet they have made cannon and bayonets to
destroy one another. Candide
Chapter 3 page 49
[Haie] stretched out his right arm preparatory to giving him a box on the ear [and] he looked as if he were going to reach down for a star”
“A man’s reach must be further than
their grasp, or what then is a heaven
for? Robert Browning
Chapter 3 page 49
His [Himmelstoss’s] striped postman’s backside gleamed in the moonlight.
Chapter 3 page 49
“Revenge is black pudding.”
Black pudding: Black pudding, also known as blood pudding, is a distinct regional type of blood sausage originating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is made from pork blood, with pork fat or beef suet, and a cereal, usually oatmeal, oat groats or barley groats.
Chapter 3 page 49
“Revenge is black pudding.”
Tim from The Things They Carried after getting revenge on Jorgenson (the medic): “I was down there with him, inside him. I was part of the night. I was the land itself—everything, everywhere—the fireflies and paddies, the moon, the midnight rustlings, the cool phosphorescent shimmer of evil— I was atrocity—I was jungle fire, jungle drums—I was the blind stare in the eyes of all those poor, dead, dumb f**k ex-pals of mine—all the pale young corpses, Lee Strunk and Kiowa and Curt Lemon—I was the beast on their lips—I was Nam—the horror, the war.
Himmelstoss ought to have been pleased; his saying that we should each educate one another had borne fruit for himself. We had become successful students of his method. (49)