All Quiet on the Western Front Essays: Can’t Go Home Again :: All Quiet on the Western Front Essays

Cant Go Home Again altogether Quiet on the Western Front   During his leave, perhaps Baumers about striking realization of the vacuity of words in his former decree occurs when he is alone in his grizzly room in his parents house. by and by being unsuccessful in whole toneing a part of his old society by speaking with his mother and his father and his fathers friends, Baumer attempts to reaffiliate with his past by once once more becoming a resident of the place. Here, among his mementos, the pictures and postcards on the wall, the familiar and comfortable brown leather sofa, Baumer waits for something that will digest him to feel a part of his pre-enlistment realness. It is his old schoolbooks that symbolize that older, more contemplative, less(prenominal) military world and which Baumer hopes will bring him hindquarters to his younger impartial ways. I want that restfully rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel whe n I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the colored backs of the books, shall fill me again, persist the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait (Remarque, wholly Quiet VII. 151).   But Baumer continues to wait and the sign does not come the quiet rapture does not occur. The room itself, and the pre-enlistment world it represents, become alien to him. "A sudden feeling of foreignness suddenly rises in me. I cannot mold my way back" (Remarque, All Quiet VII. 152). Baumer understands that he is irredeemably lost to the primitive, military, non-academic world of the war. Ultimately, the books are worthless because the words in them are meaningless. "Words, Words, Wordsthey do not reach me. Slowly I place the books back in the shelves. Nevermore" (Remarque, All Quiet VI I. 153). In his experiences with traditional society, Baumer perverts language, that which separates the human from the beast, to the vizor where it has no meaning. Baumer shows his rejection of that traditional society by refusing to, or being uneffective to, use the standards of its language. Contrasted with Baumers experiences during his visit home are his dealings with his dude trench soldiers.