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All Quiet on the Western Front Reading Questions
Chapter 1:
1. Where are the men “at rest”?
pp 1-3: 5 miles behind the front
2. Why is there such an abundance of rations?
80 men injured or killed
3. Why do the men feel hostile toward Ginger?
He refuses to split the extra rations between Paul and his fellow surviving soldiers.
4. What is unusual about the latrine facilities?
No doors/20 men sit side by side/no privacy
5. What has changed about these men?
No longer care about privacy/just glad they have somewhere to go instead of the woods/forest
6. Who is Kantorek?
Paul’s teacher who encouraged him and his fellow classmates to join the army/glorified/romanticized the war.
7. Why does Muller wish Kantorek were there?
Sarcasm, so “he” could experience what they have experienced/real war
8. What different attitudes about war were held by the “poor and simple” and those “better off”?
p 11
9. What is the double horror of Behm’s death?
Behm was shot in the eye/they left him for dead/later they see him trying to crawl back to safety from “no man’s land” just before he is shot in the head and killed.
10. What is Muller’s plan for Kemmerich’s boots? Do you think this is cruel?
Take them for himself. Kemmerich is not dead yet. Yes and no. Emotion vs. Reason
11. Why is Kantorek wrong in referring to these young men as “Iron Youth”?
They are anything but made of iron. They are no longer “young.”
12. Why is Paul bitter in his feelings toward Kantorek?
Chapter 2:
1. What did Paul often do in the evenings before the war? Write and read poetry
2. How do Paul and the other young men differ from the older soldiers? Do not have lives to go back to.
3. What did the men learn as new recruits? They learned that everything they learned in school is irrelevant 4. What were they forced to do in training camp? Drill, drill, and drill. In the rain and snow.
5. Describe Corporal Himmelstoss. postman in civilian life, known as “the Terror of Klosterberg,”
6. How did the men finally get Himmelstoss to leave them alone? Beat him senseless.
7. What attributes did the men gain from the training? via their experience with Himmelstoss, they are hardened and ready for war.
8. What is the doctor’s and orderly’s attitude toward Kemmerich’s death? Indifferent
Chapter 3:
1. Why is it ironic that Paul and his comrades refer to themselves as "stone-age veterans" when they compare themselves to the new recruits? Paul and his comrades have only served in the war a short time themselves; however, the war affects them so much it has robbed them of their youth.
2. Describe Katczinsky. What is his special talent? See pp. 37-40. He is quite a skilled and resourceful scavenger. pp. 40 and 41.
3. What is Kat's philosophy of war? What is Kropp's philosophy of war?
Kat: if the powers that be treated everyone equally, the war would end much more quickly. Kropp: Should be treated as a sports festival wherein the warring countries have their leaders fight one another instead of involving a multitude of their countrymen (“the wrong people”).
4. *Why does the author expand and discuss these philosophies? “The people who make declarations of war are never the people who have to do the dirty work of fighting it. Kat's ironic statement, refers to this reality. He is in essence saying that if the people who started wars - the politicians and world leaders - were forced to experience the hardships the front-line men endure (‘the same grub and the same pay’), they would think twice before committing themselves and their countries to this absurdity. Kropp expands on this idea, proposing that "a declaration of 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 ridiculousness of modern warfare is only too clear to the fighting men. All agree that an arrangement such as that suggested by Kropp would be "much simpler and more just than (the present) arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting.’”
* "All Quiet on the Western Front Group." enotes.com (2009): n. pag. Web. 29 Sep 2009.
5. What is Kropp’s philosophy concerning power given to insignificant men? Kropp: When insignificant people gain power they abuse it; they become mere shadows of their former themselves. Kat: “ ‘It goes to the head of them all, you see. And the more insignificant the man has been in civil life the worse it takes him’” (44-45).
p. 55-56 “his only friend, brother, mother … stifles his cries of terror …
War: “like a cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery” (271).
Lives and thoughts: like “clay, they are molded with the changes of the days; when they are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead”(271).
Brotherhood: “something of a good fellowship of the folk-song, of the feeling of solidarity of convicts, and pf the desperate loyalty to another of men condemned to death …”(272).
Life : “ limited to what is necessary…preservation of existence”(272).
Flame: “poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes go out” 275).