Something we talked about quite a bit about in class today was the soldiers’ loss of individuality, on any and every side. The drilling of the boys in training, the soldiers blending in and together with the mist across the front, the image of the soldiers indistinguishable from the cannon. We know that this hardness that they have developed is what keeps them from going mad in the trenches, but I wonder if that hardness is really as deep as it seems (at least for our central soldiers–to call them characters does not feel sufficient). Several instances of Paul thus far have shown me that his individuality might be lost in a sense, but his humanity is not gone. The boys retaliate against Himmelstoss in a startlingly aggressive way, but they are retaliating against his mistreatment of their fellow comrades. Paul describes how, when all of the soldiers are undressed from their uniforms, they are frail boys together. Paul extends compassion to the young, brutally injured solider in a way that is so different from what I, maybe we, would have expected from “men at war,” so to say.

These accounts of humanity, compassion, and vulnerability are the most challenging for me to read because they feel so honest. Paul’s contemplations of innocence and youth (and/or the soldiers’ lack thereof) feel the heaviest to me.