Worse Than Death

"Wearily I stand up and look out the window. Then I take one of the books, intending to read, and turn over the leaves. But I put it away and take out another. There are passages in it the have been marked. I look, turn over the pages, take up fresh books. Already they are piled up beside me. Speedily more join the heap, paper, magazines, letters. I stand there dumb. As before a judge. Dejected. Words, Words, Words - they do not reach me. Slowly I place the books back in the shelves. Nevermore. Quietly, I go out of the room." (pg. 173)

A major theme of All Quiet On The Western Front is war's ability to destroy not only lives but what life is left of the ones who survive. War kills and maims but it also does something much more sinister. In the excerpt above, Paul comes home on leave and realizes what his experience on the front has really done to him. He loved reading before he became a soldier and now he tries to rekindle that pre-war interest and yet finds an emptiness. The front has changed the way he sees the world. Paul finds that he cannot go back to the life he had and that tears him up inside. His family and community seems different and there is a quality of disorientation when he returns to his old life. The darkest aspect of war is that it is waged by older generations and fought by the younger ones. The reason why Paul feels like the life he had is gone is because it is the only one he knew as he was so young. It is a horrific cruelty of war and its advocates to send the youth to fight and die, but it is even worse to watch them come back with invisible scars and not be able to find where their lives went.

The following link describes the contrast of emotional damage in younger veterans to older ones.

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20060206/war-rough-young-soldiers