Too Short

The vivid portrait that Remarque paints of Kemmerich’s dying face was a particularly touching scene. The way Remarque describes it seems so nonchalant and matter of fact, as if this should be considered the norm in a war situation. The passages goes, “His lips have fallen away, his mouth has become larger, his teeth sick out and look as though they were made of chalk. The flesh melts, the forehead bulges more prominently, the cheekbones protrude. The skeleton is working itself though. The eyes are already sunken in. In a couple of hours it will be over” (Remarque 28). This is a dark and real description of death that is not appealing to read, but powerful to picture.
The descriptions of the gas and the movement and affects of the gas are powerful scenes. Remarque personifies the gas making it a more vivid description. “The gas still creeps over the ground and sinks into all hollows. Like a big, soft jellyfish it floats into our shell-hole and lolls there obscenely… inside the gas-mask my head booms and roars—it is nigh bursting. My lungs are tight, they breath always the hot, used-up air, the veins on my temple are swollen. I feel I am suffocating… I wait some seconds – he has not collapsed—he looks around and makes a few paces—rattling in my throat I tear my mask off too and fall down, the air streams into me like cold water, my eyes are bursting the wave sweeps over me and extinguishes me”(Remarque 69-70). The metaphors, used to describe the movement and power of the gas are dramatic and effective in painting a cruel picture.
The final scene that moved me was because of the grotesque picture that it portrayed of the goriness of war and the demeaning and dehumanizing aspect of war. Human are just objects used to fight, without attachments and human characteristics. “I start after one who escapes and wonder whether to shoot him in the leg—then it shrieks again, I fling myself down and when I stand up the wall of the trench is plastered with smoking splinters,