Remarque has been called "a man who can bend language to
his will," for while some of the narrative reads like a journal of the young soldier,
Paul Baumer, there are also impressionistic passages with unbalanced, fragmented syntax.
The use of figurative language in these passages is frequent. After the men are in the
heat of battle where “To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier," the
trucks pick up the men. Then, in Chapter Five, the men learn that their detested
officer, Himmelstoss is returning,
Haie gazes thoughfully at his great
paws and winks at me. The thrashing was the high water
mark of his
life. [metaphors]
One day the
men decide to catch a goose. Paul grabs two; as the geese struggle, Paul describes the
action,
In the
dark these white patches are terrifying. My arms have
grown wings and I'm almost afraid of going up into the sky, as though I
held a couple of captive balloons in my fists. [metaphor and
simile]
As they cook the
geese, Paul poetically describes Kat and himself,
We are two men, two minute sparks
of life; outside is the night and the circle of
death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drips
from our hands, in our hearts we are close to one another, and the hour is
like the room: flecked over with the lights and shadows of
our feelings cast by a quiet fire. [metaphor, metaphor, simile,
metaphor]
Further, Paul
describes his friend's loss of his humanity as he is now "a little soldier" who has
never possessed some sights:
A little soldier and a clear voice, and if
anyone were to caress him he would hardly understand, this soldier with the big boots
and the shut heart, who marches because he is wearing big
boots, and has forgotten all else but marching....Kat stands before me, his
gigantic, stooping shadow falls upon me, like home.
[metaphor, simile]
The last line of Chapter
Five contains a simile with
alliteration:
The outlines of
the huts are upon us in the dawn like a dark, deep
sleep.
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