All Quiet on the Western Front Response #1

Author's note: We are reading All Quiet on the Western Front in english class right now and conversing (a.k.a. text coding) with each chapter.  It is a novel about World War I and the struggles that came with it while soldiers were in war.  The point of the novel is to show what adulthood truly is and show the difference between expectation and reality.  Here is my response on what chapter two in the book is trying to convey.

Being an adult comes with many new adventures like the ability to vote, live on our own, join the military, and multiple other things.  Mostly, though, being an adult means that we have a new sense of power; people younger than us must follow our commands without questioning them.  In the book "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque, power is shown by the soldiers and their officials through imagery of the soldiers following ridiculous commands.  Adulthood in this novel means power, yet it is made clear that although adults are clever and have experience, each generation that comes after outsmarts them, overcomes them, and obtains the power that the adults previously held. 

Baumer, a soldier in the war, says that he has "remade his [disciplinarian's] bed fourteen times in one morning" (23), which leaves one wondering: How does making one's bed relate to training for war?  He goes on to tell all of the unnecessary things that this disciplinarian makes them do, like kneading boots until they are "as soft as butter and not even Himmelstoss, [the disciplinarian, can] find anything more to do with them" (23).  The author of the novel uses this imagery to show that these tasks are only given in a way that abuses the power that the officials have.  Although Himmelstoss finds ways to make Baumer look like a fool, Baumer and his friends always come back with a way to disobey him and surpass what commanded them to do.  These young men see it as they have nothing to lose, so they try their hardest to outsmart the adults in their army just to add some fun to a devastating war.  Adults have power, but younger generations figure out schemes to become more clever than them and make them look like the fools.  Therefore, being an adult, as shown in this novel, gives you power, but it is in no way unlimited.