is humorous is that of Tjaden, "a skinny locksmith of Paul and his classmates' age": 

He sits down to eat as thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the family way. [This is a simile, a comparison of two unlike things using as.]

An additional simile is in the description of the "muffled rumble of the front" that they have not yet experienced. In their romantic minds, the youths interpret the rumble of canons "as very distant thunder, bumble-bees droning..." Remarque's narrator employs a rather colloquial simile ("rumble of canons as...thunder") that demonstrates Paul's simplicity.

Some of the poetic that dwells in Remarque surfaces in the figurative description of Stanislaus Katczinsky, the group's leader, who is

...shrewd, cunning, and hard-bitten, forty years of age, with a face of the soil, blue eyes, bent shoulders, and a remarkable nose for [figure of speech—having a "nose" for something is being able to sense and find it] dirty weather, good food, and soft jobs.

Ironyfinds its way into another section of the chapter when Paul describes a day in which there are small wooden box seats with handles over the latrines as "wonderfully good." Paul remarks that at home things were merely hygienic; here, without any comforts, having such seats is "beautiful."

Then, too, Paul notes, that teachers "carry their feelings ready in their waistcoat pockets, and trot them out by the hour."  This description uses figurative language.

In one paragraph of this chapter, Remarque satirizes the chauvinism that causes men to enlist in wars as Paul recalls the words of his old schoolmaster who glorified the war and the honorable act of enlisting in a patriotic cause. Only Joseph Behm, "a plump, homely fellow," objects to the chauvinistic propaganda. After Joseph is ostracized and he reflects now as a soldier, Paul caustically satirizes the foolishness of those swept away by their new patriotism:

...no one had the vaguest idea what we were in for. The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They (the adults) knew the war to be misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly....[but] were beside themselves with joy.

Katczinsky said that was a result of their upbringing. It made them stupid. And what Kat said, he had thought about.

The youths have become cynical of their mentors as they have associated these mentors with "a greater insight and a more humane wisdom"; however, now they realize their own generation was more worthy of trust. Now they are alone, and must make it through the war on their own.

Remarque's use of literary devices illuminates the realities of war as well as the delusions. With their youthful innocence and inexperience of the front, Paul and his friends still do not know what the war will bring them. So, they enjoy the moment and reflect upon the words of their old schoolmasters, seeking to make sense of that which will prove itself senseless as they question the mechanical militaristic tendencies of Germany.

To help you come up with your own answers about the literary devices that Erich Maria Remarque uses in the first chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front, let us review what the term “literary device” means. A literary device is a technique that a writer uses to create a particular effect that helps the reader to understand the meaning of the work. There are numerous kinds of literary devices, which you can read about right here at eNotes. Knowing the names and descriptions of literary devices will help you more readily recognize them as you read.

This novel is written in the first person and is narrated by young Paul Baumer, a soldier in the German army during World War I. Pay close attention to the tone, or attitude, of the writing. Tone is a literary device. Chapter 1 opens with a quiet scene in which the soldiers are receiving their meal. Because of the great losses recently suffered by the Second Company (out of 150 men, only 80 remain), more food than usual is available. The tone at the beginning of the opening chapter is one in which the narrator stays very much in the present, focusing on the unexpected bounty of food and only mentioning in passing the reason for it. The tone suggests a certain level of numbness to the atrocities of war, or the mental state of a person who is temporarily disconnected from the emotional intensity of an event as a psychological defense mechanism.

The narrator uses metaphors and similes to introduce his comrades. Recall that a metaphor creates a description by connecting two unlike things without the use of the words “as” or “like.” A simile is much like a metaphor, but creates a link with the use of the words “as” or “like.”

Paul describes the cook as having a “carroty head.” This is a metaphor that creates a vivid picture of a red-haired person. A fellow soldier named Tjaden “gets down to eat as thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the family way.” Here we have two similes that create both a clear description of the thin fellow and lend a bit of humor to a serious story.

A character named Bulcke, who is a soup-carrier, is “as fat as a hamster.” Yet another simile appears in the narrator’s recollection of the schoolmaster, Kantorek, “with the face of a shrew mouse,” who misguidedly idealizes the war and leads many young men to their doom.

One particularly powerful metaphorical image describes how the mother of Kemmerich, one of Paul’s comrades, reacts with great emotion when she brings her son to the recruiting station. As Paul recalls, she “simply dissolved into fat and water.”

By reviewing the chapter, you will find other great examples of literary devices on your own. Look especially at the narrator’s descriptions of the characters he introduces or recalls.

In his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque uses a wide variety of literary devices and figures of speech.  Consider, for example, the following paragraph, chosen at random:

The earth bursts before us. It rains clods. I feel a smack. My sleeve is torn away by a splinter. I shut my fist. No pain. Still that does not reassure me: wounds don't hurt till afterwards. I feel the arm all over. It is grazed but sound. Now a crack on the skull, I begin to lose consciousness. Like lightning the thought comes to me: Don't faint! I sink down in the black broth and immediately come up to the top again. A splinter slashes into my helmet, but has already travelled so far that it does not go through. I wipe the mud out of my eyes. A hole is torn up in front of me. Shells hardly ever land in the same hole twice, I'll get into it. With one lunge, I shoot as flat as a fish over the ground; there it whistles again, quickly I crouch together, claw for cover, feel something on the left, shove in beside it, it gives way, I groan, the earth leaps, the blast thunders in my ears, I creep under the yielding thing, cover myself with it, draw it over me, it is wood, cloth, cover, cover, miserable cover against the whizzing splinters.

Among the literary devices used here are the following:

ALLITERATION. Example: “The earth bursts before us.”

ASSONANCE. Example: “The earth bursts before us.”

METAPHOR. Example: “It rains clods” [comparing falling pieces of earth to rainfall].

FRAGMENT USED FOR EMPHASIS. Example: “No pain.”

BRIEF SENTENCES USED FOR EMPHASIS. Example: “No pain.”

ONOMATOPOEIA. Example: “Now a crack on the skull” [“crack” almost sounds like the action or noise it describes]

COMMA SPLICE USED TO IMITATE A BREAKDOWN OF ORDER. Example: “Now a crack on the skull, I begin to lose consciousness.”

SIMILE. Example: “Like lightning the thought comes to me.”

METAPHOR. Example: “I sink down in the black broth” [muddy water is compared to soup].

ALLITERATION. Example: “I shoot as flat as a fish.”

ASSONANCE. Example: “I shoot as flat as a fish” [note that the final “a” is not included because its sound is different from the sounds of the other “a’s.”

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Example:

there it whistles again, quickly I crouch together, claw for cover, feel something on the left, shove in beside it, it gives way, I groan, the earth leaps, the blast thunders in my ears, I creep under the yielding thing, cover myself with it, draw it over me, it is wood, cloth, cover, cover, miserable cover against the whizzing splinters.

Here the pace of the phrase and the lack of normal punctuation take us into the narrator’s mind. We experience events as rapidly and in as chaotic a way as he experiences them.

As this paragraph shows, talented writers employ many stylistic techniques in combination to achieve effective phrasing. Writers don’t necessarily choose each technique deliberately and consciously. Instead, such techniques probably most often occur to them without deliberate thought; they come to the writer as if the writer is inspired. Later, when revising, the writer may alter, add, or delete techniques, but, however effective writing happens, it often seems “inspired.”

The chapter begins with some humor, with Tjaden coming up with an ingenious way to kill the lice in the men's hair. After they pluck out the lice, instead of squeezing the tough insects to death, they just throw them into a hot pan where they explode upon impact. This starts the chapter off on a light note, giving the reader some relief from the relentlessly dark tone.

In fact, the whole chapter is suffused with humor as the young soldiers get back at Himmelstoss. Himmelstoss has become a figure of ridicule, drunk on his own self-importance and easily angered when no one else appears to share this high view of his position.

In many aspects, Himmelstoss becomes a symbol of how war can warp one's sense of identity. In the civilian world, he is an unimportant man many people look over. However, in the military, he has some authority he can use to push others around with—he is a bully with an inflated ego. Much like the young soldiers who have a hard time imagining what their lives will be once they no longer have the army or the war to define them, Himmelstoss will also be lost when wartime comes to an end.

Literary devices such as simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, and metonymy help create the fog of war in Chapters 8 and 9.

A literary device can be almost anything that is used to describe and add detail to a piece of writing.  For example, a literary device might include figurative language or sound devices.

Let’s consider some examples of figurative language.  Figurative language might include a comparison, such as the simile in Chapter 8.  A simile compares two things indirectly, using “like” or “as” to make the comparison.  Look how Paul compares the sand to something generated in a laboratory.

Looked at so closely one sees the fine sand is composed of millions of the tiniest pebbles, as clear as if they had been made in a laboratory. (Ch. 8)

Another simile is used a few lines later, when he describes the trees changing color and says that the shadow moves “like a ghost” and compares the Russian prisoners to Saint Bernard dogs.  These similes allow the reader to picture images very well.  This mental picture, called imagery, is what makes the writing come alive.

Another literary device is repetition.  Repetition is the process of repeating something for effect.  In this case, Remarque describes the Russian prisoners very effectively through the use of repeating the word “broad.”

It is strange to see these enemies of ours so close up. They have faces that make one think--honest peasant faces, broad foreheads, broad noses, broad mouths, broad hands, and thick hair. (Ch. 8)

Though Paul has emphasized how the prisoners have gone through the garbage like dogs, looking for whatever might be left there, this description humanizes them.  The reader knows that Paul does not understand the enemy, and struggles with coming face to face with them in this way.

Moving on to Chapter 9, in addition to similes, you can also find metaphors.  A metaphor is different from a simile because it does not make an indirect comparison.  It will not use “like” or “as,” but instead will say something is something else.  Look at the way Paul describes his great fear during Chapter 9 when he is under attack, with the metaphor of a wave.

But immediately the wave floods over me anew, a mingled sense of shame, of remorse, and yet at the same time of security. I raise myself up a little to take a look round. (Ch. 9)

This helps Paul describe his strong emotions, and helps the reader experience this too.  Other metaphors include using a metaphor as a verb, such as “snake my way forward” and “[minute] after minute trickles away” and “he has an invisible dagger with which he stabs me” (Ch. 9).

Finally, when you really want to describe something in the extreme, only metonymy will do.  Metonymy is a literary device when you replace something with a part of it, by referring to it by only part of it.  In this example, Paul refers to himself by his smallest part—a speck.

I am no longer a shuddering speck of existence, alone in the darkness;--I belong to them and they to me… (Ch. 9)

It is almost as if Paul is trying to hide by making himself small, referring to himself as only a speck of existence.  It is a powerful literary device because it reminds the reader how small and alone Paul is, and what a small part he plays in the war as a whole.

Another literary device that is used in these two chapters is onomatopoeia, which is a sound device. Onomatopoeia is the use of words that are spelled as they sound.  Words like “banging,” “creeping” and “clanging” are used, as well as “gurgling.”  These sound images create additional insight for the reader into what is going on in the story, and help the reader understand what Paul is going through.

All of these techniques make Paul’s experiences with war fresh and highlight his terror and vulnerability.  They remind the reader where he is suffering, and bring the horror and confusion of war to life.

Albert and I find a mahogany bed which can be taken to pieces with a sky of blue silk and a lace coverlet. We sweat like monkeys moving it in, but a man cannot let a thing like that slip, and it would certainly be shot to pieces in a day or two. (Chapter 10)

In this first quotation from Chapter 10, the author uses a simile when he describes him and his friends sweating "like monkeys." There is also a recurring motif of animalistic imagery throughout the text, which emphasizes the idea that war is dehumanizing. Earlier in the novel, in chapter 4, the narrator refers to the soldiers as "human animals." And in chapter 7, he says that the soldiers "turn into animals when (they) go up to the line."

On one side the supply dump has been ripped open. In spite of all the flying fragments, the drivers of the munition columns pour in like a swarm of bees and pounce on the bread. (Chapter 10)

In this second quotation from Chapter 10, the author uses alliteration of the phrase "flying fragments" to emphasize the image. The repetition of the letter "f" is also an example of onomatopoeia and echoes the sound of the fragments of shell flying through the air. There is also a simile when the drivers are compared to "a swarm of bees" heading towards the bread.

Every day and every hour, every shell and every death cuts into this thin support, and the years waste it rapidly. (Chapter 11)

In this quotation from Chapter 11, the author uses repetition of the word "every" to suggest how relentless the war is. There is no time of the day without shells and death, and the waste becomes more tragic each day.

Here the trees show gay and golden, the berries of the rowan stand red among the leaves, country roads run white out to the sky line, and the canteens hum like beehives with rumours of peace. (Chapter 12)

In this quotation from Chapter 12, the author uses symbolism to imply the death that still lingers, but also the hope for new life that exists amidst the death. The trees are autumnal. Their leaves have turned "golden." Autumn in literature often symbolizes decay and death. Furthermore, "the berries of the rowan stand red," which could symbolize the blood which has been shed during the war. However, the color white could symbolize the potential peace and innocence of a new, post-war era.

While there is a spareness to much of Eric Maria Remarque's style of writing, at times it is almost impressionistic; Remarque's narrative touch is direct and sensitive both.

CHAPTER 10

• The chapter begins ironically: "We have dropped in for a good job." How can any assignment be "good" in wartime?
• "This is an opportunity ...to stretch one's soul also" = metaphor
• "We have to take things as lightly as we can" = idioms
• "...and nonsense stands stark and immediate beside horror."= personification: abstract qualities such as "nonsense" and "horror" are given the animal/human power to "stand."
• A bed is found which has "a sky of blue silk" = metaphor, comparison of the blue silk to the sky. 
• "We sweat like monkeys" = simile
• As the suckling pigs are roasted "We all stand round them as before an altar"=simile
• "A couple of splinters whizz through the top of the kitchen window = onomatopeia
• "The explosions come so fast that the splinters strike again and again against the wall of the house...." = alliteration with the repetition of the consonant sound /s/ and assonance with the repetition of the vowel sound /a/. Also, "pan and pancakes" /p/, "wall of the window" /w/ [Alliteration serves to speed up phrases, sentences, thus imitative of the action of the narrative.
• "I run like a deer" = simile   "sweep round the floor" = metaphor as Paul compares himself to a broom
• "A hiss, a crash,...a rising screech" = onomatopeia
• "But the night is bad" = personification as night is given a behavioral quality.
• "Burning houses stand out like torches." = simile
• "Shells lumber across and crash down." = personification "lumber' like a stumbling person
• "In spite of all the flying fragments" = alliteration /f/
• "the drivers of the munition columns pour in like a swarm of bees = simile
• "...with his nose in the air" = idiom for thinking oneself better than others
• "...we sprawl back in them as in a theatre box"= simile
• "the earth heaves" = personification
• "...we should have run even if our feet had been shot off--we would have run on the stumps" - hyperbole (exaggeration)

CHAPTER 11

• The fifth paragraph through eighth paragraphs are a poetic reverie, an extended metaphor: "It is a great brotherhood, which adds something of the good-fellowship of the folk-song, of the feeling of solidarity of convicts, and of the desperate loyalty to one another of men condemned to death....morning.
• "invulnerable steel beasts squashing the dead and the wounded";"everything dances red and black before my eyes" -=personification
• ...the red poppies in the meadows round our billets, the smooth beetles on the blades of grass, the warm evenings in the cool, dim rooms, the black mysterious tree of the twilight, the stars and the flowing waters and long sleep = imagery
• "O Life, life, life!  .....No! No! Not now! Not now at the last moment...grey sky, grey fluid earth, grey dying" = repetition for effect
• "Do I walk? Have I feet still?" = rhetorical questions

It’s hard to identify one particular theme in Chapter Ten of Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front, as it covers a great deal of literary ground, extending from the unexpected joy of time on liberty with an abundance of food to the sudden terror of enemy shelling interrupting festivities to the thoroughly somber description of Albert’s wounds, subsequent amputation of his leg, and the darkening of his mood.  Albert is Paul’s closest friend, and the former’s declaration of his intent to kill himself rather than go through life a cripple has cast an even more somber tone on the proceedings than the horrific details of the war had already suggested.  If one had to identify a theme for Chapter Ten, then, it could be the toll war takes on the young men sent to fight it.  With respect to literary devices employed in this chapter, very good one involves Paul’s angry casting of a bottle into the hallway in protest against the incessant audible praying of the nuns, which interferes with the wounded soldiers’ sleep:

“I count up to five. Then I take hold of a bottle, aim, and heave it through the door into the corridor. It smashes into a thousand pieces. The praying stops. A swarm of sisters appear and reproach us in concert.”

As anecdotes qualify as literary devices, this story conveyed by the narrator is, in fact, an anecdote.  A far more powerful passage in this chapter, however, provides for a more useful identification of literary devices:

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me.”

With this passage, Remarque employs the literary device known as an allegory, in which the broader experience of the war is encapsulated in Paul’s observations about its impact on the individuals who suffer.

The theme of Chapter Eleven can be summed up as the narrator, Paul’s, philosophical observations on the meaning of death.  The war is going horribly for the German Army, and Paul’s unit serves as a microcosm for the greater catastrophe.  Casualties mount and those who aren’t wounded or killed from shrapnel and bullets are felled just the same by disease.  This chapter of Remarque’s novel is replete with examples of literary devices, easily identifiable from its outset.  Contemplating the situation, Paul notes that “war is a cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery.”  He then observes: “Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without.”  Remarque is using metaphors and allusions, in the case of the latter quote, an allusion in reverse.  Rather than ascribing human characteristics to inanimate objects, the author has applied living characteristics to the concept of war.  Another prominent use of a metaphor occurs when Paul describes the heat: “the heat sinks heavily into our shell-holes like a jelly fish, moist and oppressive . . .” Comparing the oppressive heat and humidity to a jellyfish most certainly constitutes use of that particular literary device.

Again, as occurs throughout the novel, Remarque’s narrator employs anecdotes, as when Paul describes Detering’s quest for cherries: “There is the mad story of Detering.”

Finally, the theme of Chapter Twelve – the denouement – is that, in war, there are no winners.  Paul has survived the long, drawn-out and indescribably brutal experience of the war.  His friends are mostly dead, and those who remain alive are alive in body only.  Their spirits are dead.  Paul, having time to contemplate his ordeal while recuperating from a chemical weapons attack, offers this conclusive thought:

“Here my thoughts stop and will not go any farther. All that meets me, all that floods over me are but feelings--greed of life, love of home, yearning for the blood, intoxication of deliverance. But no aims. Had we returned home in 1916, out of the suffering and the strength of our experiences we might have unleashed a storm. Now if we go back we will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope. We will not be able to find our way any more.”

One could find literary devices in Chapter Twelve similar to those mentioned above, and this paragraph certainly provides its share, such as amplification, but the irony inherent in the novel’s ending has to be cited:

“He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.”

Paul was just one more young man sent to his death by politicians thousands of miles away for whom war is a policy and casualties a cost of doing business.

On the first page of chapter 15, in the first paragraph, Remarque uses the simile, "war is a cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery." This simile suggests that the soldiers have become so used to war and the deaths caused by war that they now seem as common place and inevitable as these diseases.

In the second paragraph of the first page, the metaphor, "Our thoughts are clay . . . moulded with the changes of the days," implies that the minds of the soldiers have become like an inanimate substance, moulded no longer by thoughts and feelings from within, but only by the events of the war from without. In this sense, the war has dehumanized the soldiers.

In the sixth paragraph of the first page, Remarque uses metaphors again to describe how close to death the soldiers are. Their lives are described as being "on the borders of death." Later in the same paragraph Remarque writes that everything not strictly necessary to survival becomes "buried in gloomy sleep." This metaphor connotes an image of a grave, with the most part of each soldier's life buried beneath the earth, sleeping a sleep that is so much like death.

On page 4, in the penultimate paragraph, the author uses repetition to emphasize how desperate the soldiers are. He writes that "There are too many fresh English and American regiments . . . too much corned beef and white wheaten bread . . . Too many new guns. Too many aeroplanes." The repetition of the phrase "too many" suggests that the German soldiers are becoming overwhelmed.

On page 5, in the eighth paragraph, the author uses a device akin to personification to attribute animalistic characteristics to the opposition tanks. They are described as "roaring, smoke-belching armour-clads, invulnerable steal beasts." Describing the tanks as ferocious, insatiable, wild animals helps the reader to understand how frightened the Germans must have been, and how terrifying the onslaught of tanks must have seemed.

Also on page 5, and at the beginning of page 6, the author uses groups of three to emphasize how hopeless the situation is becoming for the German soldiers. For example, there are "shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks," and "Dysentery, influenza, typhus," and also "Trenches, hospitals, the common grave." This, as in these examples, has the same impact as repetition, namely to emphasize an idea or feeling. In these examples each word or phrase connotes death and suffering, and this serves simply to create a cumulative impact, with the connotation of each word or phrase compounding the connotations before it.

I found a few more literary devices in Chapter Eleven of this fantastic novel.

The second paragraph begins with the metaphor "Our thoughts are clay,..." and then goes on to explain, "...they are moulded with the changes of the days." This metaphor compares thoughts to soft, malleable clay, and shows that the characters' thoughts, ideas, and perceptions of the war and their lives were constantly changing, affected by the events of each day.

The fourth paragraph contains allusions: "...the good-fellowship of the folk-song, of the feeling of solidarity of convicts, and of the desperate loyalty to one another of men condemned to death...." These allusions refer to other situations that the reader is familiar with and so they don’t need further explanation. We know that a folk-song is cheerful and poignant, we know that convicts form bonds that they may not form if they were free, and we know that men condemned to death form very close bonds with one another as their planned deaths come closer and in the absence of supportive family and friends. These allusions give the reader more insight into the characters' feelings and relationships.

In the sixth paragraph there is a paradox: "...on the borders of death, life follows an amazingly simple course...." In this example, two opposites -- death and life -- are juxtaposed, or placed side by side. A paradox is a literary device that contrasts two opposites to draw attention to them as a theme of the work. Living vs. dying is certainly a major theme of this work, and in Chapter Eleven the narrator is describing the feeling of the characters who are so close to the possibility of dying every day during WWI. Juxtaposing the words 'death' and 'life' draws these two concepts close together for the reader as they are for the characters.

The end of the same paragraph contains another metaphor: "But then unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up." This metaphor compares the thought process to a fire. Sometimes a fire pops or flares unexpectedly, as do thoughts. This metaphor not only illustrates the uncontrollable nature of thought, but also shows that thoughts can be dangerous, like fire. In addition, as fire is hot and heat is often a symbol for passion, this metaphor shows that thoughts can be filled with passion or emotion.  

If you want to read more in-depth analysis of All Quiet on the Western Front on eNotes, click here. 

Remarque's passionately anti-war novel about the senseless slaughter of World War I and the young men who were its victims is punctuated with lyrical, poetic language, some of it almost Shakespearean in tone. Examples of metaphors, which are comparisons that don't use the words "like" or "as," follow: 

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.

"Abyss of sorrow" is a metaphor for the war, and is particularly apt, for the men spend much of their time in trenches, which are pits (comparable, symbolically, to abysses) in the ground.  

The narrator also uses metaphor when he likens the lives of the young men in the trenches to "little flames." He compares the war that threatens these flames (the soldiers) to a "storm," and we can visualize it as a mighty, windy, whirling rain downpour threatening to put out these vulnerable flames. This metaphor emphasizes the power of war in contrast to the vulnerability of the soldiers:

We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out . . .

The narrator also says:

Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days . . .

We can visualize their thoughts, an abstract concept, a ball of clay, a concrete object, but endlessly malleable.

As for similes, which are comparisons using "like" or "as," we learn that:

Kantorek had been our schoolmaster, a stern little man in a grey tailcoat, with a face like a shrew mouse.

A face like a shrew mouse gives us an image of Kantorek as the petty dictator he is, his small-mindedness compared to a small creature like a mouse.

Remarque has been called "a man who can bend language to his will," for while some of the narrative reads like a journal of the young soldier, Paul Baumer, there are also impressionistic passages with unbalanced, fragmented syntax. The use of figurative language in these passages is frequent.  After the men are in the heat of battle where  “To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier," the trucks pick up the men. Then, in Chapter Five, the men learn that their detested officer, Himmelstoss is returning, 

Haie gazes thoughfully at his great paws and winks at me.  The thrashing was the high water mark of his life. [metaphors]

One day the men decide to catch a goose. Paul grabs two; as the geese struggle, Paul describes the action,

In the dark these white patches are terrifying.  My arms have grown wings and I'm almost afraid of going up into the sky, as though I held a couple of captive balloons in my fists.  [metaphor and simile]

As they cook the geese, Paul poetically describes Kat and himself,

We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and the circle of death.  We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drips from our hands, in our hearts we are close to one another, and the hour is like the room:  flecked over with the lights and shadows of our feelings cast by a quiet fire. [metaphor, metaphor, simile, metaphor]

Further, Paul describes his friend's loss of his humanity as he is now "a little soldier" who has never possessed some sights:

A little soldier 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....Kat stands before me, his gigantic, stooping shadow falls upon me, like home.  [metaphor, simile]

The last line of Chapter Five contains a simile with alliteration:

The outlines of the huts are upon us in the dawn like a dark, deep sleep.

The soldiers are obviously under a great deal of strain when they are on the line. The following quote expresses the idea that in battle they are animals, but away from it they change entirely in order to cope. "Just as we turn into animals when we go up to the line, because that is the only thing which brings us through safely, so we turn into wags and loafers when we are resting. We can do nothing else, it is a sheer necessity." This gets at the idea the war changes people. They can't maintain their intensity when they have a chance to relax, and they can't relax or maintain their humanity when the have to fight.

An excellent place to look for style and metaphor information is right here on eNotes: the study guide for this work is comprehensive but lacks a specific quotation page.

This blog post has some interesting quotes.

Here is a powerful quote regarding the mindset of a soldier during wartime, comparing the ground to a nurturing and always forgiving mother-figure:

To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and security; she shelters him and gives him a new lease of ten seconds of life, receives him again and often for ever.

The most powerful language in the book, in my opinion, is reserved for comments on the effect the war had on Paul's generation:

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.

A wonderful example of a metaphor is Paul's comparison of the front to a whirlpool:

To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself.

I would suggest the opening and closing sensory images. The bitter irony they produce, despite the narrator's calm, quiet, distanced tone, is bitingly painful and thus perfectly representative of the spirit of the narrative;

We are satisfied and at peace. [...] I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more.

The power of these images,especially when juxtaposed, is confirmed in the Dedication of the novel:

This book is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

Here's a memorable passage from the book. In this case, the tone is not grim but happy.  The narrator and a friend have brought parts of a cooked goose to share with some comrades:

Kropp and Tjaden take us for magicians. Then they get busy with their teeth. Tjaden holds a wing in his mouth with both hands like a mouth-organ, and gnaws. He drinks the gravy from the pot and smacks his lips: "May I never forget you!" We go to our hut. Again there is the lofty sky with the stars and the oncoming dawn, and I pass beneath it, a soldier with big boots and a full belly, a little soldier in the early morning--but by my side, stooping and angular, goes Kat, my comrade.

This passage is quite sensuous, but not in the expected ways. It contains a very memorable simile in the reference to the mouth-organ. The verbs are vivid. Alliteration is effectively used, as is balanced phrasing ("with big boots and a full belly"). There is nice variation in sentence length (the very short "We go to our hut" is followed by an extremely lengthy sentence). All in all, this is a well-written passage in numerous ways.

For me, one of the most significant passages of this book which contains some very important words and phrases comes when the narrator begs forgiveness from the soldier he has just killed:

Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

Key to note is the use of the word "comrade," as the narrator claims a kinship with the enemy soldier that exposes the falsity and horror of war. Also note the repetition of the words "the same," and "poor devils" to help strengthen the idea presented by the narrator that there really is no difference between soldiers, which ever side you are on.

Great imagery and some humor:

Half and hour later every man had his mess-tin and we gathered at the cook-house which smelt greasy and nourishing.

A wonderful simile:

He sits down to eat as thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the family way.

Imagery:

...Stanislaus Katczinsky, the leader of our group, shrewd, cunning, and hard-bitten, forty years of age, with a face of the soil, blue eyes, bent shoulders, and a remarkable nose for dirty weather, good food, and soft jobs.

I would suggest visceral, gloomy, surreal, and symbolic.  There are a lot of passages that are very descriptive.  Since it is a book that is not afraid to describe the realities of war, there are going to many dark elements, but what has always struck me are the passages about trying to return home.