All Quiet On The Western Front: Alienation

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terrible beyond anything we could imagine. All our senses are
assaulted: we see newly dead soldiers and long-dead corpses tossed up
together in a cemetery (Chapter 4); we hear the unearthly screaming of the
wounded horses (Chapter 4); we see and smell three layers of bodies,
swelling up and belching gases, dumped into a huge shell hole (Chapter 6);
and we can almost touch the naked bodies hanging in trees and the limbs
lying around the battlefield (Chapter 9).
The crying of the horses is especially terrible. Horses have
nothing to do with making war. Their bodies gleam beautifully as they
parade along--until the shells strike them. To Paul, their dying cries
represent all of nature accusing Man, the great destroyer.
In later chapters Paul no longer mentions nature as an accuser but
seems to suggest that nature is simply there--rolling steadily on through
the seasons, paying no attention to the desperate cruelties of men to each
other. This, too, shows the horror of ...

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