Task 1

This chapter was mostly described about the life before joining the army and early days of being a soldier. The memory for Paul Baumer was clear at the beginning. During the school days, people treated the poems and other compositions as preciousness. But as they leaving homes and becoming soldiers, those memories would be torn apart by the cruel life in war.

The life in the army is quite different from normal life. Battle could change what people think and how people judge things, especially the sense of worth. The war showed no sympathy to the people enrolled in it. Those young soldiers, they were close friends, helping each other, standing back to back. But as the battle started, with the strict and cruel training in army, their minds were twisted. It was totally a rebuild for those young soldiers since they were just students before. The slogans from their teachers felt so weak here. People in the army considered the physical benefit much more than mental. The Corporal Himmelstoss from No.9 platoon was a typical example of who got twisted by the war. He treated his soldiers as animals as I see. He was extremely mean to Baumer and Kropp. The corporal often asked Baumer doing unreasonable things. But these two young soldiers they just did not yield to him. They fought as hard as they could finally they owned the respect from him.

Though those soldiers had fought together and came up with deep relationships, life was still worthless. When Franz was wounded and lying on the bed, only Baumer came to his side and tried to comfort him. Muller cared about Franz’s boots much more than his life. The doctors were so cruel to those injured soldiers. Death was so easy for them to talk about. Franz was hopefully at the beginning but as time passed, he realized that he would probably die. Franz lost the hope and gave away his precious boots to Muller finally. Baumer was sorrowful and upset when he lost Franz but when he turned the boots to Mulle, Muller was very happy and gave Baumer some small prizes in return.