Children at Heart (WR#2)

            Going through high school, then college, and eventually having a career, we all look back on our childhood and wish to relive those moments. As children, all attention was surrounded around us and the sky was the limit. Our true personalities sprouted. Growing and developing physically and mentally, the sense of freedom slowly slips through our fingers like butter. As adults our mentality becomes mature along with responsibility. Although, every once and a while there is that spark; that spark of childhood memories; memories that makes us feel warm, happy, and ourselves. That spark is our true personality. In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the author demonstrates through imagery that even though we grow and mature mentally and physically, even though we desire to become adults, even though we grow old, we are all still a child at heart.

            Remarque demonstrates through the characters that even at war, men still have the childish personality stored in their hearts. Paul, a young soldier, comforts Kemmerich, one of Paul’s comrades, because of a small wound causing him to have an amputated leg. They both know that Kemmerich is on the border line of death, but before his life disappears he gave his boots to Paul. The generous guy he is, he then gave them to Müller, another comrade of Paul, because he desired them. They both eventually put them on and saw themselves as adults. Remarque uses the boots as an imagery of adulthood. Paul felt, “But when we go bathing and strip, suddenly we have slender legs again and slight shoulders. We are no longer soldiers but little more than boys; no one would believe that we could carry packs” (29). Remarque handles the boots as imagery toward adulthood. Putting on the boots made Paul and Müller feel like men. All sense of childhood disappeared. When the boots and everything else that covered them came off, the characters true self appears. The slender legs and slight shoulders is who they truly are. They have the skinny body of a child, with the mentality of a man.