understand that the soldiers have even more to lose during the war than their own life. Paul gradually loses all his friends and although he continues his struggle for survival, he becomes gradually estranged from his own life, from his own memories of the other life before the war, and from life itself.
             The characters as are described in the beginning of the novel are all young men, just coming out of school to the front, without much experience of life and without something precise to go back to in their memories. They are merely schoolboys who didn't even get the chance to understand their own existence an to choose their path in life, either in their careers or their personal life. This makes the war even more incomprehensible to them, and the impact it has on their lives is much greater than on the people who already had a life to leave for the war :
             " (...)Muller, who still carries his school textbooks with him, dreams of examinations, and during a bombardment mutters propositions in physics(...) " ( Remarque, 5)
             They are faced with death and savage killing of other human beings, with hunger, lack of sleep, permanent fear, horrible sounds and growls of wounded or dying soldiers, in short, with a useless lesson on survival that surpasses their understanding, all these for a cause they do not understand. These experiences come to them at a point in life where they are just beginning to be aware of their own lives and of the meaning that life should have.
             It is even more suggestive that Paul describes his comrades in the beginning of the book, presenting them as differe
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