albeit with reminders of war and impending danger looming in the background of thepastoral setting:

These are wonderfully care-free hours. Over us is the blue sky. On the horizon float the bright yellow, sunlit observation-balloons, and the many little white clouds of the anti-aircraft shells. . . . We hear the muffled rumble of the front only as a very distant thunder, bumble-bees droning by quite drown it.

One of Paul's companions mentions having received a letter from their old schoolmaster, Kantorek, sending the narrator into a reverie about how the once-trusted teacher stirred the boys into a patriotic frenzy over the value of military service. Once the boys saw the front lines firsthand, the romantic ideal painted by their naive teacher stood in stark contrast. Ironically, the one schoolmate who had reservations and was not initially swayed by Kantorek's impassioned rhetoric was the first to die (with many more to follow as the book progresses). However, Paul resists anger or the assignation of guilt:

Naturally we couldn't blame Kantorek for this. Where would the world be if one brought every man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best—in a way that cost them nothing.

In Chapter 1 of All Quiet on the Western Front, the author writes about how Paul and his friends were pushed to enlist in the German Army. He says,

"'During drill-time Kantorek gave us long lectures until the whole of our class went, under his shepherding, to the District Commandant and volunteered. I can see him now, as he used to glare at us through his spectacles and say in a moving voice: 'Won't you join up, Comrades?'"

Teachers, who were the boys' authority figures, were instrumental in convincing them to join up. The pressure to join was prolonged and unrelenting, and Mr. Kantorek in particular used passion and emotion to sway the impressionable young men.

"...no one could very well stand out, because at that time even one's parents were ready with the word 'coward.'"

Remarque makes some important points in this quote. The first is the propensity for boys of Paul's age to do their utmost not to seem different; the fear of not fitting in seems to be almost universal for adolescents. To be looked at as being a coward at this age is even worse. It is significant that even the boys' parents joined in the pressure to get their sons to enlist.

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

This quote expresses one of the central themes in the book. The boys really did have no idea what the consequences would be when they enlisted. The nation was swept up in war-fever and an atmosphere of unthinking patriotism. In their zeal, the patriots overlooked the horrible reality of what war is really like, so overcome were they with enthusiasm for Germany's cause (Chapter 1).

In Chapter 2, the author describes his experiences in boot camp. He talks about how the cold reality of what the boys are about to be forced to undertake contrasts with the lofty impressions of war that had been given to them to this point. He says,

"With our young awakened eyes we saw that the classical conception of the Fatherland held by our teachers resolved itself here into a renunciation of personality such as one would not ask of the meanest servants...We had fancied our task would be different, only to find we were to be trained for heroism as though we were circus-ponies."

The intense, dehumanizing grind of drills and salutes in the military is nothing like what the boys expected. In a foreshadowing of what is to come, the glory of heroism is reduced to dull, basic training that conditions them to react like trained animals.

"We became hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough - and that was good; for these attributes were just what we lacked. Had we gone into the trencehs without this period of training most of us would certainly have gone mad."

For the common soldier, the ability to think is not a desired attribute. The soldiers are trained to shed their softer, more human inclinations towards sympathy and sensitivity, as it will be close to impossible to survive in the trenches with these qualities.

"...our early life is cut off from the moment we came here."

"All the older men are linked up with their previous life. They have wives, children, occupations, and interests, they have a background which is so strong that the war cannot obliterate it. We young men of twenty, however, have only our parents, and some, perhaps, a girl...Beyond this our life did not extend."

"And of this nothing remains...We had as yet taken no root. The war swept us away."

In these quotes, the author explains why the war was able to destroy the lives of an entire generation. The young men of Paul's age are taken when they are most impressionable, before they have had a chance to start their lives. They are made into fighting machines, and even if they survive, there will be no place for them to fit in when they return to normal living (Chapter 2).

In Chapter 3, the boys are sent to the field, and begin to learn more about war, authority, and power within the ranks. Kropp, who is "a thinker," has a theory about how wars should be conducted.

"He proposes 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. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting."

Kropp's scenario, while seemingly ludicrous, actually conveys a truth which is disturbing. Wars, in theory, are ridiculous, and one wonders why indeed the conflicts which result in wars could not be resolved in this manner, thus eliminating the obscene waste of lives that modern warfare entails.

The men discuss authority within the ranks of the military, and how power ultimately corrupts. Paul ruminates,

"The army is based on that; one man must always have power over the other. The mischief is merely that each one has much too much power."

"Let a man be whatever you like in peacetime, what occupation is there in which he can behave like that without getting a crack on the nose? He can only do that in the army. It goes to the heads of them all, you see. And the more insignificant a man has been in civil life the worse it takes him."

When the soldiers wreak revenge on their sadistic superior Himmelstoss, Paul notes the result of the unrestricted system of power in the army; essentially, monsters breed more monsters. He says,

"Himmelstoss ought to have been pleased; his saying that we should each educate one another had borned fruit for himself. We had become successful students of his method" (Chapter 3).

In Chapter 4, the soldiers move to the front. Paul encapsulates the the horror of the situation in the terse statement,

"...we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals."

In the atmosphere of total destruction, only the earth still offers succor;

"Earth! - Earth! - Earth! Earth with thy folds, and hollows, and holes, into which a man may fling himself and crouch down. In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, thou grantest us the great resisting surge of new-won life. Our being, almost utterly carried away by the fury of the storm, streams back through our hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones, bury ouselves in thee, and through the long minutes in a mute agony of hope bite into thee with our lips!"

In this passage which is almost a prayer, the author invokes images of motherhood, and a force all-powerful, like a god. The earth alone has the power to save and console in the soldiers' extremity; ironically, it provides a resting place in death as well.

The closeness between the earth and the living and dead is further explored in the grisly scene of the graveyard battle. The soldiers use the unearthed coffins of the dead in a desperate attempt to survive a ferocious bombardment. The line between the living and the dead becomes blurred, as Paul and the others take shelter in and among the coffins -

"I merely crawl still farther under the coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it."

"Coffins and corpses lie strewn about. They have been killed once again; but each of them that was flung up saved one of us."

"Two of our dead lie in the upturned graves. We merely throw the earth in on them" (Chapter 4).

The significance of the quote is that it shows Paul's desperation and fear in the face of the enemy soldiers, as well as the changes in men during the war.

When the enemy drops shells on Paul and the other soldiers, he hides under a coffin. It's merely a convenient place for the character to take cover, but it's also a metaphor for the soldiers in battle and how war changes them. Throughout the novel, Paul and the others hide in the ground like buried bodies. War changes something in them so fundamentally that it's like a part of themselves have died.

However, they aren't dead. They're still alive. This is never more clear than when Paul hides under death itself—a coffin—so that he can avoid truly meeting death. He's willing to go right up to the edge of death to try to live for another day. Of course, he's not completely spared that day. Once it's safe to emerge, he sees that a young soldier is on the brink of death and grievously wounded.

By the end of the book, Paul is dead. He couldn't escape death forever. The last lines of the book tell the reader that, in death, his face seemed calm, "as though almost glad the end had come."

In the book All Quiet of the Western Front, the author uses  the young Paul Baumer as his narrator, looking at the end of World War I as a German volunteer soldier.  Remarque's view of the war is that it effectively destroyed a generation of young people whether they were soldiers or not.  The significance of this quote is that  the war was extremely brutal and alternated between episodes of horror in combat and the ordinary.  This quote emphasizes the horror of war.  To protect himself in the shelling, Paul says that he will crawl even further under the coffin even if Death itself is inside because the coffin will protect him. Just imagine being desperate enough to hide under Death!  Soldiers looked for shelter even in  depressions in the earth or under dead bodies of other soldiers just to escape with their lives.

In Chapter 5, Paul and his comrades discuss aspects of life from the perspective of the western front. Things here are very different from how they were during their training. The avenues of authority are turned upside down; the recruits are not easily cowed now that they have lived so closely with death and unimaginable horror. Himmelstoss, the officer who had previously wielded authority without respect, finds himself to be powerless. The punishments for insubordination have little effect on the men, who live daily with the worst life has to offer. Tjaden says,

"Five days clink are five days rest,"

and when threatened with the ultimate punishment of being sent to the "Fortress," he retorts,

"Well, for the time being the war will be over so far as I am concerned."

The boys recall the things they learned in school not so very long ago, and marvel at the irrelevance of it all. Paul says,

"At school nobody ever taught us...that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs."

The soldiers worry about what will happen when they return home, reiterating the central theme of the book. Kropp says,

"When I think about it...when I hear the word 'peace-time,' it goes to my head: and if it really came, I think I would do some unimaginable thing - something, you know, that it's worth having lain here in the muck for. But I can't even imagine anything...I don't see anything al all..."

Paul adds desolately,

"We agree that it's the same for...everyone who is of our age...It is the common fate of our generation."

Albert sums the situation up, saying,

"The war has ruined us for everything" (Chapter 5).

The opening of chapter five in All Quiet on the Western Front reveals the daily difficulties that soldiers on the front had to encounter.  It represents yet one more aspect of life for which Paul and his fellow soldiers were not prepared:

Killing each separate louse is a tedious business when a man has hundreds. The little beasts are hard and the everlasting cracking with one's fingernails very soon becomes wearisome. So Tjaden has rigged up the lid of a boot-polish tin with a piece of wire over the lighted stump of a candle. The lice are simply thrown into this little pan. Crack! and they're done for.

Earlier in the narrative, Paul talked about how the young soldiers were told that they had to serve out of patriotic duty.  However, such words rang hollow when the recruits were put on the front line.  This is communicated in realities such as battling lice.  The young men must fight everyone and everything as part of their time on the front. Opposing soldiers, animals, and even lice posed a challenge.  The way Tjaden comes up with a way to kill lice is reflective of the struggle that young soldiers faced in war, something that never leaves Paul's thinking.

One reality that was never communicated to the soldiers was how much they would miss home.  Young people signed up for the war under the belief that it would be quick.  They were filled with visions of returning home as conquering heroes.  As chapter five unfolds, it is clear that missing home is taking a toll on the young soldiers:

Haie looks at him sadly and is silent. His thoughts still linger over the clear evenings in autumn, the Sundays in the heather, the village bells, the afternoons and evenings with the servant girls, the fried bacon and barley, the care-free hours in the ale-house-- He can't part with all these dreams so abruptly; he merely growls: "What silly questions you do ask."

Haie's memories of the life he once lived brings out an added dimension to war's pain.  The quote captures an ache that soldiers felt.  As Paul details, the war will forever change the soldiers who fought in it.  They will either die on the battlefield or return unable to adjust to their world.  As Haie's "thoughts still linger" on his past, it becomes clear that he will never be "care-free."  This is why he growls and cuts off his recollections.  He knows that he will never be able to find the happiness that was once there.  He will never be able to soothe the ache of yearning for how things used to be.

Paul and the other soldiers realize that their experiences on the front do not compare to what they were told in school.  They received a theoretical instruction that failed to account for the war's brutal reality:

We remember mighty little of all that rubbish. Anyway, it has never been the slightest use to us. At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood--nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs.

Paul speaks honestly about how "mighty little of all that rubbish" resonates with the soldiers who are at the front. The war has taught the men that what was told to them in institutions such as school has little connection to war's reality.  It never prepared them for what they were to face.  This only adds to their disillusionment.  It shows how the war inflicted emotional and physical wounds.

Caught in a bloody and seemingly unending offensive after waiting in anticipation and boredom for many days, Paul describes the state of being that characterizes the fighting man in battle conditions.

"We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down - now...we can see his face...now...we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves...and be revenged."

Words cannot really express what it is like being in battle. Paul says,

"Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades - words, words, but they hold the horror of the world."

The theme of the displacement of an entire generation is addressed again in this chapter; there will be no going back for Paul and his friends. He reflects,

"To-day we would pass through the scenes of our youth like travellers. We are burnt up by hard facts; like tradesmen we understand distinctions, and like butchers, necessities. We are no longer untroubled - we are indifferent. We might exist there; but should we really live there? We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial - I believe we are lost" (Chapter 6).

A great deal of what Remarque was writing about was the battle of the men on the front, particularly Paul's battle amidst the destruction, the horror and the inhumanity of the war.  In this regard, moments like this serve to describe the way that humanity is lost to the great machinery and horror of war.

In the midst of the massive attack, the individual no longer is concerned with morality, with whose side they are on, with anything other than staying alive.  And since staying alive requires killing anything that approaches them, anyone that approaches them becomes something to be destroyed and hated and feared.  It wouldn't matter if their best friend or their brother appeared in the midst of this maelstrom, they would do their best to destroy them with whatever means they had at their disposal.

Here's ONE example as a model:

In Chapter 4, the men watch the horses ride out carrying ammunition and supplies to the front.  Paul comments on how magnificent the horses appear.  Later, the men hear an unearthly screaming, and they realize that the screams are not from the soldiers, but from the horses.  The front line is being attacked, and the horses have gotten caught in the crossfire.  Paul and his company see some horses hobbling around on broken legs and others running with their intestines ripped from their bellies.  Detering says, "It is of the vilest baseness to use horses in the war."  Detering, who has a love for nature, is reminded by the horses of his farm and his longing to return home.  Further, Detering's comment suggests that the horses are innocent creatures who have nothing to do with the war between men; the horses should not have to die horrible deaths in a war that they have not created.  On a figurative level, the horses are a symbol of the innocent men who similarly lose their lives fighting a war of which they know and understand little.  The horses represent the loss of innocence that comes with the war.