Keven's notes
Here are some observations offered by Keven Willey, TDMN's editorial page editor:
One of the most searing parts of the book for me so far (I’m at Chapter Six going into the weekend) occurred in Chapter Four. I’m thinking of the wounded horses. Actually, the “screaming” horses. I’m not going to quote from this section because to do so is too painful, too graphic. And then when Detering insists that somebody shoot the horses to put them out of their misery – the part about the horse tripping over his own guts only to struggle to stand up again is just awful – Kat notes that bullets apparently can’t be wasted on the horses because “They must look after the men first.”
Oh my. This is rough. A few paragraphs later, where one horse is shot – apparently out of mercy – only prop himself back up on his forelegs…(etc.) is even worse. I can’t stand it.
Finally the mercy killings are complete. I can breathe again. Concludes Detering: “I tell you it is the vilest baseness to use horses in the war.”
This is another example of what we were discussing earlier in the week about the “spareness” or “understatedness” of Remarque’s writing. Of course it’s not horses that we’re really concerned about, or most concerned about. It’s people. But describing the screaming horses really drives it home even more emotionally than describing screaming people; it has something to do with the innocence of animals.
The whole passage is eerily allegorical.
*****
Later in the same chapter I am moved to tears by Remarque’s description of the “youngster” who is gruesomely wounded on the battlefield. The fact that the boy doesn’t want to be left alone while Paul and Kat fetch a stretcher is moving enough. But what really gets to me is their apparent decision to “put him out of his misery.”
It’s horrible and it’s beautiful all at the same time. It would be a mercy killing – something that is terribly controversial even in the most egregious circumstances. I find that I’m horrified by their initial consideration of it and surprised by what seems to be their joint decision to go through with it – a decision they back away from when they discover they’re no longer alone on the battlefield.
But at the same time, I’m almost relieved by the decision. That poor boy. If it’s as awful and as hopeless as it seems, wouldn’t it really be the right thing to do to put him out of his misery? Or would it? What an agonizing decision. I’m sure many on the battlefield have made similar decisions…. I can barely imagine how that would feel afterward.
Would it feel haunting or liberating?
******
A passage in Chapter Five made me think specifically of the young couple who were among a group of folks who met with the Editorial Board last week to talk about the need for fundraising to provide services to members of the National Guard and Reserve who come home from Iraq or Afghanistan with disabilities that prevent them from picking up where they left off with their lives.
(We wrote a profound editorial about this on today’s editorial page.)
Remarque’s characters are talking about how the war has changed their lives in every way. This passage sums it up better, I believe, than any other:
“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 believ in such things no longer, we believe in the war.”
Gripping. Sad. The staccato rhythm of the passages makes it all the more real, vivid, moving. Again, I’m reminded of Hemingway.
******
Also in Chapter Five is a passage that explains to me, in part, why I’ve heard that some men who discover that they’re homosexual make that discovery in the military.
Do you remember the scene where Paul and Kat are luxuriating in the taste of that wonderful fresh cooked goose? (I actually got hungry reading the description – and I even read it after dinner when my stomach was supposed to be full.)
After having been so hungry for so long, Paul describes the ecstasy that comes with the anticipation of such a coming feast.
“In a half sleep I watch Kat dip and raise the ladle. I love him, his shoulders, his angular, stooping figure – and at the same time I see behind him woods and stars and a clear voice utters words that bring me peace, to me, a soldier in big boots, belt and knapsack, taking the road that lies before him under high heaven, quickly forgetting and seldom sorrowful, forever pressing on under the wide night sky.”
The passage goes on, and it’s beautiful. I don’t believe anything comes of this passing sense on Paul’s part, and I don’t mean here to make more of it than intended. But it was moving, nonetheless. Somehow, I felt maybe I understood a little better….