This alienation is detrimental to his ability to see the beauty and worth in his past life. The biggest thing the reader can take away from Paul’s leave is that home is no longer home. He feels like an alien in his home town... “I find I do not belong here any more, it is a foreign world” (168). Paul’s original future is not the war, it is his teachers and parents’ encouragement that causes him to join in the first place. The war obliterates Paul’s future and any chance at a normal life. “When I see them here, in their rooms, in their offices, about their occupation, I can feel an irresistible attraction in it, I would like to be here too, and forget the war; but it also repels me, it is so narrow, how can that fill a man’s life…” (169). Life
