It is a misnomer to call soldiers of 18, 19, and 20 young men. The term locates them in the period of their lives in which they begin to be on their own, against the quotidien difficulties and more meaningful responsibilites of life as an adult. But what All Quiet on the Western Front portrays is not people who are finding their footing, making missteps and learning from them. Instead, we follow children as they rewire their brains and bodies for a purpose completely incompatible with the precious trivialites of modern life.
I might come back and put down some more thoughts about this book at a later date, but for now, I will just document a few passages that stuck out to me, either because they moved me or communicated something really interesting. (There are, of course, a lot more worthwhile excerpts than just these in the book!)
From page 95:
The noises without increase in volume, pass into my dream and yet linger in my memory. In a half sleep I watch Kat dip and raise the ladle. I love him, his shoulders, his angular, stooping figure--and at the same time I see behind him woods and stars, and a clear voice utters words that bring me peace, to me, a soldier in big boots, belt, and knapsack, taking the road that lies before him under the high heaven, quickly forgetting and seldom sorrowful, for ever pressing on under the wide night sky.
A little solider and a clear voice, and if anyone were to caress him he would hardly understand, this soldier with the big boots and the shut heart, who marches because he is wearing big boots, and has forgotten all else but marching. Beyond the sky-line is a country with flowers, lying so still that he would like to weep. There are sights there that he has not forgotten, because he never possessed them--perplexing, yet lost to him. Are not his twenty summers there?
Is not my face wet, and where am I? Kat stands before me, his gigantic, stooping shadow falls upon me, like home. He speaks gently, he smiles and goes back to the fire.
From page 149, during a tryst with a French girl:
How various is a face; but an hour ago it was strange and now it is touched with a tenderness that comes, not from it, but from out of the night, the world and the blood, all these things seem to shine in it together. The objects in the room are touched by it and transformed, they become isolated, and I feel almost awed at the sight of my clear skin when the light of the lamp falls upon it and the cool, brown hand passes over it.
From page 87:
"The war has ruined us for everything."