The Triumphant Defeat of Paul Baumer

NOTE: The following essay was written as an assignment for the American Experience course at The University of Texas at Austin for the Spring 1974 semester. In reviewing the paper, I had first thought I would probably need to revise it to reflect a more optimistic view. However, given recent world events, I have decided to make no changes. I have described the nature of the American Experience course in my notes for "The Dream" another essay I wrote for this course. Rather than repeat those notes here, I would refer readers to that item for that information.





Tragedy implies failure, and as ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT by Erich Maria Remarque is a story of failure, it is, in that sense, a tragic novel. In most works of literature, the death of the work's major character is the focal point of the tragedic element. Such is not true of Remarque's novel, even though its major character, Paul Baumer, is in fact killed. In Remarque's story, the element of tragedy is to be found not in death, but in the continued existence of the society and the world in which Paul Baumer had lived and died. For it was that society and that world that had failed Paul Baumer and the others of his generation; he had not failed them.

As a German schoolboy, Paul had been taught, by Kantorek the schoolmaster, cultural values and those things that were to prepare him for an adult role in German society. Then war had come, and Paul was forced to view life from the more limited perspective of a soldier. But it was from this limited perspective forced upon him that Paul first saw the artificiality and meaninglessness of the world Kantorek had given him. Of course, Kantorek alone could not be blamed. In his position as schoolmaster, he simply served as the officially sanctioned agent of cultural transmission from one generation to another. Paul notes, in speaking of the world inherited from the older generation, "The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces." (1) Again, in comparing the older generation to those members of his own generation who had experienced combat, Paul says, "... but also we distinguished the false from the true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through." (p. 12).

What Paul had discovered was that the world which had been handed down to his generation and in which all his education had prepared him to live, was a world constructed entirely of symbols. In such a world, no element of reality was allowed to intrude into one's consciousness unless that reality had been appropriately labeled. Always there must be a word between the person and the reality with which he was forced to deal. One can handle words -- words can reduce the complex to the simple, and can reduce reality to a symbol. Paul speaks of this phenomenon in reference to the German civilians with whom he talks while home on leave:

They understand of course, they
agree, but only with words, only
with words, yes, that is it --
they feel it, but always with only
half of themselves, the rest of
their being is taken up with other
things, they are so divided in
themselves that none feels it with
his whole essence . . . (p. 105).

Symbols make life more comfortable, but they also debase its significance and meaning. Symbols are like stage props, and just as insubstantial. And Paul Baumer, having seen in life the reality of death shatter all those symbols that had supported his world, could never again return to a world of such artificial proportions, though he wished and tried desperately to do so. This is especially evident when he attempts the return to the world of his youth through the books that were a major part of that world and concludes, "Words, Words, Words -- they do not reach me." (p. 107).

Words structure war, and Paul on a number of occasions discusses the symbolic nature of war. In describing the action of a particular battle, Paul refers to the soldiers as "automatons." (p. 72). He sees them functioning not as men, but as unfeeling objects. Speaking of the Russian prisoners, Paul says "A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends." (p. 119). And in this same passage, he describes the process that converts these men into symbols, and makes it possible to identify them not as men, but as enemies. "At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the world's condemnation and severest penalty fell, becomes our highest aim." (p. 119). By relating a discussion that takes place among the soldiers of his company, Paul reveals that the men cannot understand why they are fighting when they seek the realities behind the symbols that have been provided to them as explanations for the war, things like state and home-country. (pp. 124 - 126). And Paul himself, when confronted with the man he had killed, says "But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction that I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me." (p. 136).

Paul speaks often of the necessity for a soldier to confine himself to functioning at an instinctual level if he wishes to survive. This is best exemplified in the passage that reads:

In the outward form of our life we
are hardly distinguishable from
Bushmen; but whereas the latter can
be so always, because they are so
truly, and at best may develop
further by exertion of their
spiritual forces, with us it is the
reverse; -- our inner forces are
not exerted toward regeneration, but
toward degeneration. The Bushmen
are primitive and naturally so, but
we are primitive in an artificial
sense, and by virtue of the utmost
effort. (p. 163).

Thought that threatens to lift one above the level of instinctuality, above the level of simple response to the level of symbols, must be controlled at all costs if one wishes to survive in a world in which such things constitute order. And, on several occasions, Paul becomes aware that his thought processes are seeking to go beyond symbols, to understand the reality behind those artificial structures, and he abruptly forces himself to stop thinking of such things. But he promises himself that he will revive these thoughts after the war. In particular, when he began to perceive the Russian prisoners as beings no different from himself, he says, "...I will not lose these thoughts ..." (p. 119). And it is ultimately Paul's failure to suppress thought that defeats him, for in death he has seen a reality that cannot be hidden by symbols and has become aware of a humanity, a potential greatness to life, that is common to all men, but lies hidden beneath those symbols we use to order life. Paul can never again be part of a world like that, with its superficiality and its degradation of humanity, but there is no other world than that.

Had Paul survived the war and spent the remainder of his life trying to adapt himself once more to the symbolism that would now structure civilization, the novel, insofar as it is the story of Paul Baumer, could be said to be tragic. But death came to Paul Baumer, and with death came victory. Having seen the facades that were presented to him as those things that give life meaning for the artificial, insubstantial things they were, and having begun to understand a reality that was universal and not hindered by symbols, death was the only intellectually honest decision Paul could have reached. It is not important in what manner or by whom he was killed, but it was absolutely necessary that he die, for only in that way could he achieve victory in defeat. The world of symbols that Paul left behind would continue as before, and that is the tragedy of the novel. For new words, new symbols, would arise to structure order in the world, and would continue to grow ever more numerous, so that man would always be provided with a comfortable barrier between himself and reality. So long as man is not forced to look beyond the symbols, so long can such a world survive. And that appears to be a very long time indeed.

(1) Erich Maria Remarque, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Greenwich, Conn: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1928), p. 12. Hereafter page numbers are given and refer to this edition when Remarque is quoted.