Chapter Seven

  Chapter 7 starts to give very mixed feelings about the war. Paul has been given a leave-pass to go back to his home town and then go to a camp on the moors to train with them. He says how he is lucky, and he knows that, but he also knows that a lot can happen in 6 weeks. He starts to wonder if he will see his friends again. It's sad to know that this is how the war has made them think. That he can't even be happy that he gets to see his family, because what if when he goes back to fight they're not there?
    When he gets home he finds his mother in bed sick with cancer. She is happy to see him but then she starts asking questions. She asks, "Was it very bad out there, Paul?" Paul is stunned! What should he say? he thinks angrily about how his mother couldn't understand just how terrible the war was. So he lies, he says, "No, Mother, no so very. There are always a lot of us together so it isn't so bad." I guess it isn't entirely a lie, he was with a lot of other people, but that doesn't change the fact that the war was terrible and nothing like they had expected. His mother tries to argue, saying that Heinrich had come and told them it was terrible "with the gas and all the rest of it". Paul shortly debates telling his mother about when they found dead soldiers, but then thought better of it and told her it was "only talk". He lies to his mother, to protect her from knowing how harsh the war going on was but I find it a little ironic. All of the soldiers were angry with Kantorek, their old school teacher who had told the soldiers about how amazing war was and how you should take pride in fighting for their country. And although what Paul was saying wasn't quite to that extent he was lying about how good the war was, just as Kantorek did to them.
     At the end of the chapter, it talks about how he regrets leaving and going to visit his home and how he should have just stayed. He says how he was indifferent and often hopeless but that he will never be again. After he talked to Kemmerich's mother about how kemmerich died, but he lied again, about how Kemmerich had died. His mom asked if he was lying and Paul swore on everything that was sacred to him, and when he said that he thought for a second, is there even anything that is sacred anymore? He reflects on how the war has changed them all and how he can never go back to the way he was before, and how he wished he had stayed at the war. It's weird because they give off the message that they don't want to be in the war, but they don't want to go back home either.
I found this picture of soldiers in a trench during the war. You can see that they don't look happy, or proud, unlike how people back home said that they would.