Trench Journal- Literary Analysis (Ch 11)

It is Spring.

Everyone on the front has gotten used to death by this point.

Detering goes off to pick some cherry blossoms and flees the war but is caught by the military police.

Many men have abandoned the trenches and have started to fight in the shell holes.

Berger saves Paul and other when they become surrounded by British troops but is killed when he goes off to put a dog out of its misery.

Muller is injured and dies and gives Kemmerich's boots to Paul.

Morale is down because supplies are running low and it seems like the war will never end.

Both Bertink and Leer are killed by shells.

Months pass and it becomes Summer.

The Germans are losing the war.

Kat is shot in the leg and Paul carries him to a dressing station.

When he arrives Kat is dead, a splinter caught him in his temple.

Paul seems disconnected from reality when he sees that Kat is dead.



Paul is filled with grief that all his friends have died, it has reached a point where he doesn't even feel anything anymore.



"If one wants to appraise it, it is at once heroic and banal"(Remarque 272).

Banal-devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite



"A week after we heard that he had been caught by the field gendarmes"(Remarque 277).

Gendarmes-a soldier, esp. in France, serving in an army group acting as armed police with authority over civilians.



War causes countries to make extravagant promises to one another in the hopes of forming an alliance to further their cause. This cartoon shows the Kaiser holding a note saying, "Join with Germany and you get a bit of the United States." This refers to the Zimmerman note, an element which pushed America into the war. Germany proposed a promise with Mexico in hopes that they would accept and support Germany in the war in return for part of the United States. Germany had no way of guaranteeing this or even a way to approach this plan. It only made this proposal to try to gain military support during the war.


I learned that war tears that which you love from you and can leave a person a practically empty shell.