Quotes From Chapter 5

Quotes from Chapter 5: All Quiet on the Western Front

For each quote, summarize the quote and comment on what is being said. Do you agree? What’s surprising about what is said? What does it remind you of?

Quote Summarize Comment


"And then what?"
A pause. Then Haie explains rather awkwardly: "If I were a non-com. I'd stay with the Prussians and serve out my time."
"Haie, you've got a screw loose, surely!" I say.
"Have you ever dug peat?" he retorts good-naturedly. "You try it."
Then he pulls a spoon out of the top of his boot and reaches over into Kropp's mess-tin.
"It can't be worse than digging trenches," I venture.
Haie chews and grins: "It lasts longer though. And there's no getting out of it either."
"But, man, surely it's better at home."
"Some ways," says he, and with open mouth sinks into a day-dream.



Haie would stay with the Prussians and do the time that he needs to do. Haie likes his job and doesn’t like digging trenches. I would probably agree with this quote because I wouldn’t want to be digging wholes either. What is surprising is that he actually likes his job and what he does. This quote reminds me of my mom because she also likes her job and enjoys working.



You can see what he is thinking. There is the mean little hut on the moors, the hard work on the heath from morning till night in the heat, the miserable pay, the dirty labourer's clothes.
"In the army in peace time you've nothing to trouble about," he goes on, "your food's found every day, or else you kick up a row; you've a bed, every week clean underwear like a perfect gent, you do your non-com's duty, you have a good suit of clothes; in the evening you're a free man and go off to the pub."
Haie is extraordinarily set on his idea. He's in love with it.
"And when your twelve years are up you get your pension and become a village bobby, and you can walk about the whole day."
He's already sweating on it. "And just you think how you'd be treated. Here a dram, there a pint. Everybody wants to be well in with a bobby."


There is hard work from morning to night. They get paid poorly. In the army there is nothing to worry about. You have to clean your clothes and then in the evening you get to go and do your own thing. When you’re a village bobby you get to walk around all day. Everyone wants to be a bobby. I would not agree with this quote because I wouldn’t want to be in the army. I would be afraid to die. Plus you don’t get paid as much. What is surprising about this quote is that they say that you shouldn’t worry when you are in the army but I think that you should worry because you will never know what is going to happen. This quote reminds me of school because you also never know what will happen at school or during school.
Kropp feels it too. "It will go pretty hard with us all. But nobody at home seems to worry much about it. Two years of shells and bombs—a man won't peel that off as easy as a sock."
We agree that it's the same for everyone; not only for us here, but everywhere, for everyone who is of our age; to some more, and to others less. It is the common fate of our generation.
Albert expresses it: "The war has ruined us for everything."
He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.
We sit opposite one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby coats, cooking a goose in the middle of the night. We don't talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have.
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. What does he know of me or I of him? Formerly we should not have had a single thought in common— now we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, and are so intimate that-we do not even speak.



They had to do two years of shells and bombs. It’s not easy to take all of that off your shoulders or out of your life. They think that it’s the same for everyone everywhere. It is fate for there generation. The war has ruined their lives. They are not young anymore. They believe in the war. I would probably agree with this quote because they do work hard but it is probably hard for them to give away their lives to go to war. What is surprising about this quote is that it is their generation’s fate of going to war. This quote reminds me of family because its like generations of your family should do this and that or they need to become this and make that.



Choose your own: Approximately 40 words




We remember mighty little of all that rubbish. Anyway, it has never been the slightest use to us. At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood-nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn’t get jammed, as it does in the ribs.




They are saying that none of the things they learned in school is useful to them now while they are in the war. I wouldn’t agree with this quote because I actually like school and I think that we actually do learn useful things in school. What is surprising about this quote is that they think that school didn’t tech them anything useful. This quote reminds me of school because some people at school are always like we aren’t learning anything or why are we doing this we are never going to use this again in our life.