In All Quiet on the Western Front, I think the author really emphasizes that war is not at all the life that the soldiers were born for. He starts the novel out, as we discussed, in a domestic environment. This shows that this camp is their reality; what they have adapted and what they live for. The others become family figures to Paul, such as Kat role playing as a father. When they go into the line of fire, I look at it as their career that they have built in their life in the military. The new recruits are almost described as naive and shy children who have yet to learn the ways of life: the military life. It is as though they were just born when they signed up. Paul even describes most of the soldiers, including himself, as only boys even though they are seen as men. Inside, they are little boys in a man's body, which is symbolically noted when he takes off his uniform that makes him look bigger than the small boy he really is. This life, or reality, is different from their lives they created at home.
When Paul is at home, he is in a familiar but foreign place because he is in another reality and he has trouble separating from his military life. At home, he received schooling for a career that would require such information. However, in Paul's military life, he knows that the school gave him useless information. At home, they look at the war from a big picture. On the front, Paul has been looking at the added up details, and the others from his home cannot comprehend it because it is not a reality they know of.
When Paul leaves from home, though, he has trouble separating from the life he tried to get back into. Therefore, he is caught up in a limbo where he trying to combine the two realities he knows of: he tries to look at the big picture but still pays attention to the detail of who is the enemy and who is the ally. Paul has lived two different lives, but his life in the military is not accepted at home and his life at home is useless and stressful in his military life.
Mentions of Alternate Realities:
I also wanted to add that Paul thinks of the poster girl when he is with the brunette as an example of creating an alternate reality for the purpose of being successful at the moment. Also, when Paul is with the dying Frenchman, he creates the life he thinks the Frenchman has outside of the war so that he thinks of the man as a stranger with a "normal" life rather than an enemy who he is trained to kill.
Websites:
This website has some critical essays on the major themes of the novel. I am only referring to the first essay, The Lost Generation, which hits on the idea of there being two separate lives that the characters prepared for.
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/All-Quiet-on-the-Western-Front-Critical-Essays-Major-Themes-of-All-Quiet-on-the-Western-Front-Major-Themes-of-All-Quiet-on-the-Western-Front.id-6,pageNum-26.html
This other website is a description of how returning soldiers behave.
http://www.4militaryfamilies.com/articles/returningfromthewarzone.htm
I can certainly agree with you when you say that Paul had struggles with his realities. Having been in such a different environment than what he was used to for all his life had a really big impact on Paul's perspective. His military experience sort of warped his mind; this is a normal theme for most veterans. The happenings that Paul endured ultimately caused his imagination to run wild in a few instances, such as the moment in which he sort of created a life for the French soldier in his mind. I believe that being in the war environment confused Paul. After his involvements in battle, he struggled in deciding what kind of person he was. He began to question his identity and he therefore lost sight of reality. Paul's experience caused him to be disoriented, and therefore his return home became sort of a shock to him. He got out of the groove of fighting and found himself back in circumstances that had once been normal to him. When this happened, he honestly felt like it was wrong. Paul felt as though this was no longer his life. The war turned him into a soldier and he realized it then. He was no longer a young man, a high school graduate....not a son or a brother, but merely a soldier. Reality was something different now.
ReplyDelete