A matter of the heart
I think I'm noticing how Remarque's novel is shaping our conversation, which is as it should be. We seem to have left behind considerations of what Paul's rather rigid German-master calls in ch. 7 "the whole," by which he means to belittle Paul's inability to measure the overall scope and purpose of the war. We're attempting instead to gauge war's impact on the individual heart, and I'm glad to have Rod's remarks on the reluctance of WWII veterans to "valorize" their experiences.
For me, this perspective of war as a matter of the heart reaches a distilled moment in ch. 9 after Paul returns to the Front from leave and gets stranded in No-man's Land in a shellhole during an attack by the French. Shortly before the climax of this chapter, Paul speaks again of his closeness to his comrades, more intense now than before he went on leave and discovered just how distant and inaccessible that non-Front life has become for them: "I belong to them and they to me; we all share the same fear and the same life, we are nearer than lovers, in a simpler, a harder way." Separation from them, he realizes, has been more traumatic than separation from the attachments of a normal, peaceful life--family, friends, the customs of peacetime.
His separation from his comrades, however, reaches a peak of intensity when he not only cannot find his way out of the shellhole but mortally wounds a French soldier who has plunged into the hole with him. What gives this extended passage it particular power? Perhaps it is that whereas he could impersonally kill before, now he must share a dying man's moments, a man he himself has killed. This is more intense than his feelings of compassion for the Russian prisoners; here he can't escape the most intimate consequences of war--taking from another human being his most precious possession, his life. Thus Paul comforts the man, the enemy, in his dying; but more--he cannot resist knowing his identity, giving him individual identity beyond his official designation as enemy: "I have killed the printer, Gerard Duval." And now that he knows whom he has killed, the dead man's entire life unfolds before him: wife, children, friends, life's work, and so on.
I'm wondering how this incredibly personal episode works within the sweep of the novel. Are Paul's reactions to what he's done unusual, extreme? Given what happens once he makes it safely back to his lines, is Paul's concern superficial, somewhat like our own resolution to live life differently if we're allowed to survive a crisis? Especially striking is Paul's pledge to Gerard Duval: "I promise you, comrade. It shall never happen again." What is "it"?
This is the same chapter where earlier there is the long conversation among the comrades about the war. At one point Tjaden asks the central question: "Then what exactly is the war for?" I wonder if Remarque is moving toward some sort of climactic insight, or if there really is no answer to Tjaden's question.