In this modern age, war and dying for one’s country is often glorified through many different types of media. On the contrary, in All Quiet on the Western Front, the exact opposite happens. In this book, Erich Maria Remarque reveals how war is actually just people living in fear with one thing in their mind: survival. This story follows a young soldier named Paul Baumer who decided to join the German army during the first world war. Because of the war, Paul learns that there is no possible way to positively describe the war. The novel contains many motifs, and one of the more prominent ones were Franz Kemmerich’s boots. These boots represent how easily the soldiers’ lives are dispensed, the practicalness of the war, and death. To begin with,
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Through the course of the book, there are three people who perish due to the boots. The first time the owner of the boots dies is when Kemmerich has to get his leg cut off. Paul notices that, “under the skin the life no longer pulses, it has already pressed out the boundaries of the body. Death is working through from within. It already has command in the eyes”(14). This is the first occasion when these boots have claimed a life. Before he dies, Kemmerich tells Paul, “‘You can take my lace-up boots with you for Muller’” (28). Muller had already begun his road to death once he receives the boots from Paul. One day, all of a sudden, “someone shot him [Muller] point-blank in the stomach with a Verey light … before he died he handed over his pocket-book to me, and bequeathed me his boots--the same that he once inherited from Kemmerich” (279). As expected, Paul dies at the end of the book, “in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front” (296). These boots survived longer than three lives during the war, and in the bigger picture, it essentially reveals the countless deaths caused by the war. They symbolize death through the incidents that happen to the people who wear them. The boots bring death wherever they end up; one might even go as far as saying they kill whoever wears
Through the course of the book, there are three people who perish due to the boots. The first time the owner of the boots dies is when Kemmerich has to get his leg cut off. Paul notices that, “under the skin the life no longer pulses, it has already pressed out the boundaries of the body. Death is working through from within. It already has command in the eyes”(14). This is the first occasion when these boots have claimed a life. Before he dies, Kemmerich tells Paul, “‘You can take my lace-up boots with you for Muller’” (28). Muller had already begun his road to death once he receives the boots from Paul. One day, all of a sudden, “someone shot him [Muller] point-blank in the stomach with a Verey light … before he died he handed over his pocket-book to me, and bequeathed me his boots--the same that he once inherited from Kemmerich” (279). As expected, Paul dies at the end of the book, “in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front” (296). These boots survived longer than three lives during the war, and in the bigger picture, it essentially reveals the countless deaths caused by the war. They symbolize death through the incidents that happen to the people who wear them. The boots bring death wherever they end up; one might even go as far as saying they kill whoever wears