All Quiet On The Western Front: Alienation

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is 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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