Quote 61
He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in war. (5.121)
Growing up is very much about striving and dreaming and thinking about the future. Is it that the soldiers no longer "want to take the world by storm," or is it that they have no choice but to believe only in war? What does Paul mean to fly from oneself? What would happen if the soldiers did not fly from themselves?
Quote 62
We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial – I believe we are lost. (6.105)
This last line makes us think of the Lost Generation, or the name given to those who came of age during World War I. Earnest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein were writers who helped give voice to this generation.
Quote 63
I imagined leave would be different from this. Indeed, it was different a year ago. It is I of course that have changed in the interval. There lies a gulf between that time and today. At that time I still knew nothing about the war, we had been only in quiet sectors. But now I see that I have been crushed without knowing it. I find I do not belong here any more, it is a foreign world. (7.173)
How would Paul define "home?" What aspects of his home are the most difficult for him to face?