Kemmerich's Boots

   Earlier on, I had brought up Kemmerich's death and its significance. I never really thought about what his boots could have symbolized, even though they ended up being more important throughout the story than Kemmerich. It wasn't until Remarque brings up Muller's death that I realized just how important they were. On page 279, he says "Muller is dead..... Before he died he handed over his pocket-book to me, and bequeathed me his boots    the same that he once inherited from Kemmerich. I wear them, for they fit me quite well. After me Tjaden will get them, I have promised them to him." Muller was one of their best friends, just as Kemmerich was, but instead of cherishing and keeping some of their favorite things safe    the boots    they thought of their usefulness and made the best of them.
   The sad part is, this isn't wrong. We think of one of our best friends dying, and we'd probably think that we'd want to keep their things safe and perfect forever. Some people won't even touch a person's room for years after they die. They'll leave it the way it was the day they died. Here, someone dies, you have to move on. There was no sensitivity. There was no grieving period. There was no remembrance. All there was was making use of something the dead couldn't.
   Another important thing about the boots was that even before these men were dead, they counted on being killed so strongly, that they promised their things to each other. When Paul says he's promised his boots to Tjaden, it seems a little weird, but in the war this wasn't unusual. The men would rather have their things go to good use than be taken by the enemy or thrown away or rotted in the ground.
   The last symbolization of these boots was that they showed how brief the lives of these men were. A pair of boots lasted longer than three men's lives, possibly more seeing as though we know Kemmerich stole them from the English troops. I think this is a clear way of showing how quickly the war killed, how many the war killed.

When death happened in these numbers, there was no time to grieve. You had to move on. This is a German cemetery.