All Quiet on the Western Front Lesson Plan

Discuss the following lines from Chapter 4: "The graveyard is a mass of wreckage. Coffins and corpses lie strewn about. They have been killed once again; but each of them that was flung up saved one of us."

As one of the most graphically horrible scenes in the novel, it is worth meditating upon all that is implied in this passage. You might direct students to consider in particular Paul's claim that the dead "have been killed once again." The description of this strange and grisly incident of double-death goes a long way in illustrating the unfathomable hell of war, but also indicates its extreme impact on the soldiers' mentality. For readers, this scene seems like...