I can't help but write about it.
TW graphic descriptions of injuries and wounds, (wartime) death, suicide or suicide attempts, severe trauma, amputations, hospital imagery, (war-related) violence, PTSD.
Book context: Paul Bäumer is wounded and is in the Catholic Hospital.
Real-life context: Erich Maria Remarque was wounded by shell shrapnel in his left leg, right arm and neck on 31 July 1917, and after being medically evacuated from the field was repatriated to an army hospital in Duisburg, where he recovered from his wounds. After that, in October 1918, he was recalled to military service, but after the end of WWI, he put an end to his military career.
"On the next floor below are the abdominal and spine cases, head wounds and double amputations. On the right side of the wing are the jaw wounds, gas cases, nose, ear, and neck wounds. On the left the blind and the lung wounds, pelvis wounds, wounds in the joints, wounds in the testicles, wounds in the intestines. Here a man realizes for the first time in how many places a man can get hit.
Two fellows die of tetanus. Their skin turns pale, their limbs stiffen, at last only their eyes live—stubbornly. Many of the wounded have their shattered limbs hanging free in the air from a gallows; underneath the wound a basin is placed into which the pus drips. Every two or three hours the vessel is emptied. Other men lie in stretching bandages with heavy weights hanging from the end of the bed. I see intestine wounds that are constantly full of excreta. The surgeon's clerk shows me X-ray photographs of completely smashed hip-bones, knees, and shoulders.
A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.
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. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing;—it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?"
A piece from the tenth chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front.
Everything that was written about hospitals (Dying Room, for instance) and lazarettes was something Remarque actually witnessed. Young boys trying to kill themselves after becoming blind (it was written in the chapter ten that nurses tried not to give a knife to a blind soldier, however, he tried to kill himself with a fork) or after losing one leg (remember Albert's words?), people dying of tetanus, beds becoming empty, intestine wounds...
I believe that Paul Bäumer as a character was, in fact, Erich Maria Remarque's alter ego. Paul became the voice. Not only Remarque's, but the his entire generation's (which is, according to the theory of generations, Lost Generation). Paul speaks of died because of WWI boys, who had no life after school and were taken to a battlefield, tells about poor families like his, who were constantly worried about their sons and had no idea of what the front really was (chapter seven), explains why the war happened (chapter one: "The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas people who were better off were beside themselves with joy, though they should have been much better able to judge what the consequences would be," and chapter nine: ""Then what exactly is the war for?"asks Tjaden. / Kat shrugs his shoulders. "There must be some people to whom the war is useful."") and which consequences it has. And I tremble with rage when I see people who genuinely believe this book is "too depressing" or "senseless" (my classmate really said that, and I know she's not the only one with this opinion). Or, what's worse, I saw a screen of a negative review in which AQOTWF was called a "libertard mindset propaganda" (well, it was actually written regarding the 2022 film, but still).
Paul, like many, many killed boys in reality, had hobbies (chapter seven: "Above me on the wall hangs the glass case with the coloured butterflies that once I collected"), favorite food (chapter seven: ""there is just your favourite dish, potato-cakes, and even whortle-berries to go with them too.""), friends... Yesterday it was all here, today it's destroyed by war. By a senseless war which is only profitable for rich.
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