As Paul recovers enough to walk about the hospital, he analyzes the impact of the war from another perspective. The experience of seeing so many hideous wounds, so many groaning, dying men forces him to ponder the great waste of the war, which extends throughout Germany, France, and Russia. Speaking for Remarque, he says,
How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.
Paul broadens this thought out to his entire generation, no matter what country or side in the war. How will they ever go back to a civilian life they cannot comprehend? They went directly from school to killing. They do not even know what civilian life is supposed to be like as young adults. The entire chapter is filled with despair, death, and pain; the suffering of the men in the hospitals is only assuaged by the mercy of the sisters who tend them.
One aspect of the chapter is hopeful, however. When Lewandowski’s wife comes to visit with their child, she brings a ray of hope to the ward and to the story. In this shadow of death and suffering, the men join together to allow the couple some privacy so they can share their love. It is one bright bit of sunshine in a shadowy valley of gloom.
