l, who is as caught up in the patriotism of the moment as anyone else when he first joins the army. He is 19 years of age and has never been away from home for any distance or any length of time before. The way the story is told emphasizes the degree of change that is to come over these young men, for the story does not take place chronologically but instead begins on the battlefield as the young men are reflecting on the real meaning of the war and on what it has done to them. They get a letter from Kantorek and become angry--it was Kantorek, their teacher, who encouraged them to go to war, and now they are suffering from the loss of their friends, from the amputation of the leg of Franz, and from the horrors to which they have been subjected since they entered the fight. We therefore meet these young men after they have been disillusioned, and thus there is irony as we see them from an earlier time and know that all their patriotic fervor will come to naught and that the esteem with which they hold their teacher will evaporate in the heat of battle. We see their reality before we see their illusion which makes exposure to that illusion all the more poignant at the time:
Once it was different. When we went to the district commandant to enlist, we were a class of twenty young men, many of whom proudly shaved for the first time before going to the barracks. We had no definite plans for our future (Remarque 21).
By the time Paul tells this story, they have no belief in a future at all.
The novel thus shows the effect of war on a normal individual and how that person's psychological make-up will undergo a change. The character of Paul is such a normal individual, more innocent than many, but eager to be alive and to accomplish something in this world. In civilian life, Paul is a dutiful student, respectful of his elders, eager to uphold German traditions. Once he has been exposed to the truth of
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