eJournals Colloquia Germanica 54/3-4

Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
121
2022
543-4

The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator in Erich Maria Remarque’s The Road Back

121
2022
Veiko Vaatmann
During the writing of The Road Back (Der Weg zurück [1931]), Erich Maria Remarque faced violent opposition from the German right wing, who disapproved of the anti-war stance of his previous novel All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues [1929]) and its film adaptation. After the serialization of the novel, Remarque altered the final text, removing the references to the right wing and making the ending more upbeat. Left-wing critics, who had already condemned Remarque for his political silence, saw the apparent neutrality of The Road Back as a concession to the NSDAP. This article presents an argument for a new reading strategy for the novel, particularly Remarque’s late-stage changes, questioning the ideological reliability of Ernst Birkenholz’s politically neutral first-person narration. Focusing on the four dominant symbols in the revised text (a wedge, a cross, a white moon, and red light)—which, when combined, form the swastika flag—it can be argued that The Road Back should be read as an anti-Nazi novel, an origin story of the warmongering party, as well as a loud premonition of the Second World War—a road back to war.
cg543-40623
The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator in Erich Maria Remarque’s The Road Back Veiko Vaatmann Tallinn University Abstract: During the writing of The Road Back ( Der Weg zurück [1931]), Erich Maria Remarque faced violent opposition from the German right wing, who disapproved of the anti-war stance of his previous novel All Quiet on the Western Front ( Im Westen nichts Neues [1929]) and its film adaptation. After the serialization of the novel, Remarque altered the final text, removing the references to the right wing and making the ending more upbeat� Left-wing critics, who had already condemned Remarque for his political silence, saw the apparent neutrality of The Road Back as a concession to the NSDAP� This article presents an argument for a new reading strategy for the novel, particularly Remarque’s late-stage changes, questioning the ideological reliability of Ernst Birkenholz’s politically neutral first-person narration. Focusing on the four dominant symbols in the revised text (a wedge, a cross, a white moon, and red light)—which, when combined, form the swastika flag—it can be argued that The Road Back should be read as an anti-Nazi novel, an origin story of the warmongering party, as well as a loud premonition of the Second World War—a road back to war� Keywords: anti-war novel, Erich Maria Remarque, ideologically unreliable narration, The Road Back Begreifst du denn nicht? Es gibt nur einen einzigen Kampf: den gegen die Lüge, die Halbheit, den Kompromiss, das Alter! Erich Maria Remarque, Der Weg zurück [Don’t you see now? —There is only one fight, the fight against the lie, the half-truth, compromise, against the old order.] Erich Maria Remarque, Der Weg zurück 624 Veiko Vaatmann Erich Maria Remarque began writing The Road Back ( Der Weg zurück ) 1 in November 1929� 2 By then he had become a famous author� His previous novel, All Quiet on the Western Front ( Im Westen nichts Neues [1929]), had been published earlier in the year and received by the public with great acclaim—the first printing sold out almost immediately� 3 In November of that year, the production of the film adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front also started in Hollywood� 4 In addition to financial independence and fans, the success of All Quiet brought Remarque a fair share of critics, most notably the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP; in German, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei )� The publisher’s promotional campaign for All Quiet positioned Remarque and his anti-war novel in direct opposition to the National Socialists (Schneider 2016; see also J� E�), which did not go unnoticed by the Nazis� On July 21, 1929 Goebbels 5 wrote in his diary: I read: All Quiet on the Western Front � A mean, corrosive book� The war memories of a draftee� Nothing more� In two years, nobody will be talking about this book anymore� But it has had its effect on millions of hearts. The book is done. That’s why it’s so dangerous� 6 The Nazis started a smear campaign against Remarque in their Völkischer Beobachter , claiming that he was a Jew and that his real name was Kramer (Remark—the author’s birth name—backwards) and doing their best to cast doubt on the authenticity of the experiences portrayed in his novel� A slew of negative reviews and gegenschriften 7 (opposing writings) was published (Schneider 2001, 92-3). Right-wing critics considered the book’s anti-war stance an affront to Germany’s war heroes, as well as an implicit indictment of capitalists, politicians, and the German military (Firda 1993, 15)� Remarque avoided reading reviews of his book and distanced himself from politics, repeatedly claiming that his writing was apolitical (see, for example, Schneider 2014)� As late as October 1930, he reportedly stated, “I have no opinion of Hitler� I know nothing about him� I never occupy myself with political questions.… For my part, I am trying to be only a writer” (Lefèvre 87). However, the Nazis made themselves difficult to ignore. Two days before the first installment of The Road Back serialization 8 went to press, the film adaptation of All Quiet premiered in Germany� The Nazis saw this as an opportunity to further their cause and organized a violent demonstration to disrupt the event� Goebbels made a speech to the audience, and stink-bombs and hundreds of white mice were released into the theatre, causing panic� Outside the cinema there were riots and the demonstrators clashed with the police� The Nazis won: only six days later, the film was banned by the Supreme Film Censorship Board. 9 Goebbels, overjoyed by this victory, declared in Der Angriff that the successful attack on Remarque and the adaptation of his novel would serve as a foundation for a strategy to attack democracy by legal means (Goebbels 1930)� Indeed, this clash marked the beginning of a lasting antagonism between the author and the party� Remarque never commented on the scandal surrounding the premiere in the press (Firda 1988, 72)� 10 The Nazis had found a useful enemy in Remarque, not only because of his opposing worldview but also because of his silence—even later, from the safe distance of his exile, 11 he refrained from openly criticizing the Nazis (Firda 1988, 91)� He was, it seems, determined to save his opinions and his philosophy for his work (Gilbert 174-75)� As he stated in his discussion with Lefèvre, “I am unable to understand why people keep wanting to get statements from me, since the best revelation of my soul is in my book” (Lefèvre 91)� Remarque was not satisfied with the serialization of The Road Back and decided to continue working on his novel until just before publication� Remarque added a prologue, tempered the tragic storylines of some of the characters by omitting two scenes and altered the structure (ending the novel with the first-person narrator’s politically neutral thoughts), thus softening the story’s ostensibly pessimistic ending to an extent� He also omitted explicit references to the right wing and to the beginning of a new world war� The result was the final book version of The Road Back , published by Ullstein on April 30, 1931, three months after the final installment of the newspaper serialization (Firda 1988, 72-3)� The Road Back enjoyed a fair measure of success, although it was not as popular as All Quiet (Owen 1984, 167)� The reviews were largely positive, some even considering the sequel a greater literary achievement than its predecessor—that is, if we disregard the responses from political partisans� 12 The usual attacks from the German right were matched by the furious reviews by the left, who were growing increasingly frustrated by Remarque’s (political) silence (Owen 1999, 96) and the apparent neutrality of the book, which was accentuated by its closing paragraphs� As Biha wrote, “It remains only for the perplexed author to seek an ‘alibi’ for those who, in an epoch of tremendous social upheavals, declare themselves as ‘siding with no party,’ as pursuing no tendency in their imaginative writings” (quoted in Firda 1988, 80)� Tucholsky accused Remarque of letting “Goebbels walk all over him” (quoted in Firda 1988, 81)� Biha also called the book “a road backwards, the road of the class-enemy” (quoted in Owen 1984, 168)� The left’s disappointment in Remarque is perhaps best summarized by Carl von Ossietzky, a German anti-Nazi critic who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935 while imprisoned by the Nazis� In his 1932 essay “The Remarque Case,” he wrote, “The man [behind the book] was missing. This man was nothing but The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 625 626 Veiko Vaatmann a child of fortune who happened on a lucky chance, and immediately after that withdrew into private life” (Ossietzky 549-50)� 13 Remarque hardly needs exoneration in the eyes of contemporary readers, as his later novels speak volumes about his anti-Nazi position� Still, this part of his writing career and his silent role in (the fight against) the rise of the Nazis needs some clarity� In an attempt to provide this clarity, I would like to take Remarque up on his challenge and search for “his soul” in his book. At first glance, the political neutrality in the closing paragraphs, accentuated by the aforementioned changes in the book, might indeed seem to be last-minute attempts to appease the right and the NSDAP. However, I would like to argue for a different reading strategy for the novel� In my opinion, there is evidence that, in the changes he made in the final version of the book, Remarque sought an alternative (more subtle) strategy to convey his message by relying on the symbols in the work� He used the four dominant symbols in the revised text—a wedge, a cross, a white moon, and red light—to further emphasize the hopelessness of the situation of the soldiers returning from war, and to create an implicit prediction of the Second World War—a road back to war� Furthermore, through these symbols Remarque offers an artistic response to his right-wing attackers. The implicit indictment of the NSDAP in the veterans’ anguish becomes apparent in the visual combination of the four symbols—they form the swastika flag of the warmongering party� The anti-Nazi stance represented in Remarque’s use of these symbols is at odds with the political neutrality of the concluding thoughts of the first-person narrator Ernst Birkenholz, which raises the question of whether Ernst really speaks for the author. Ernst’s neutrality (and its conflict with the symbolic framework) may be a sign of ideologically unreliable narration, and possibly Remarque’s self-criticism about the path he chose after the war� If so, it would be wrong to consider Ernst a voice for the author and judge Remarque by the narrator’s values� The Road Back recounts the efforts by the first-person narrator 14 Ernst Birkenholz, a young man who was swept up in the war before graduating from school, and his brothers-in-arms, who have returned from the war, to rejoin civilian society in politically, socially, and economically devastated Germany� In The Road Back , Remarque focuses less on the war itself and more on the resulting estrangement between Germany’s soldiers and the rest of the nation after the war, as expressed by Ernst: “For there is an unbridged gulf fixed between soldiers and non-soldiers� We must fend for ourselves” (Remarque 1998, 165)� Postwar Germany is a challenging place for the lost generation, 15 men who have no careers to look forward to upon returning home� They must compete for their place in society with a younger generation free from the baggage of the war� Ernst experiences firsthand the difficulties returning that Paul Bäumer predicted in All Quiet : “We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered” (Remarque 1997, 259)� Remarque went through the same hurdles himself—like Ernst, he first taught in school in Lohne, Klein-Berßen, and Nahne, 16 and later took on odd jobs as salesman, bookkeeper, gravestone salesman, piano teacher, and organist (Schneider 2001, 48)� The central theme of The Road Back is comradery (and its loss), which links it strongly with All Quiet and Remarque’s next novel, Three Comrades , published in 1936, forming a trilogy about the “Lost Generation�” Upon returning home, Ernst sees that the comradeship and fraternity that united the soldiers in the trenches and on the battlefield is starting to fade, and true comradeship ultimately unites the protagonist only with the fallen� Germany has been torn by revolution, and the former soldiers are soon divided as well� When the young men were sent to war, they were ripped out of the society—their links to their loved ones, their past, their dreams, and their faith in the authorities were all torn away from them� What they gained instead was the fraternity of the trenches and the comrades who shared their fate. Now, finally arriving home, they sense that they are still cut off from their former lives, even as the comradery that held them together in the war is fading� The yearning for the comradery they experienced in the war and the guilt that the survivors feel when they think of their fallen comrades give rise to a kind of suicidal nostalgia—a desire to rest under crosses like their fallen comrades� Many of Ernst’s comrades-in-arms die, unable to shake off the experiences of the war and the soldier within themselves� Georg Rahe goes back to Flanders and commits suicide on a battlefield on which he had fought. Max Weil is shot during a protest (on the orders of one of his former comrades)� Albert Troßke is sentenced to prison—he learns that the woman he loves is cheating on him with a rich black market swindler and, as a soldier confronting an enemy would do, reaches for a weapon and slays the scoundrel� Ludwig Breyer endures an illness he contracted during the war (syphilis from a military brothel), and upon receiving his diagnosis, he also chooses suicide� Remarque directs his critique at German postwar society, which appears unwilling (or possibly unable) to integrate the returning soldiers and compensates for this ineptitude with eloquent speeches about duty, sacrifice, and the Fatherland. This judgement is most clearly verbalized during Albert’s trial, where the soldiers disrupt the proceedings and Ernst, speaking on behalf of all soldiers, accuses the authorities and society of abandoning them without guidance on the path from war back to peace: The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 627 628 Veiko Vaatmann You, every one of you, should stand before our tribunal! It is you with your war, who have made us what we are! Lock us away too, with him, that’s the safest thing to do� What did you ever do for us when we came back? Nothing, I tell you! Nothing! You wrangled about “Victory”! You unveiled war memorials! You spouted about heroism! And you denied your responsibility! You should have come to our help! —But no, you left us alone in that worst time of all, when we had to find a road back again. […] But instead you started again to falsify, to lie, to stir up more hatred and to enforce your damned laws (Remarque 1998, 327-28)� As previously mentioned, Remarque was dissatisfied with the newspaper serialization of The Road Back and made some changes to it before it was published as a novel—changes that did little to redeem his reputation in the eyes of his left-wing critics� Remarque wrote a prologue for the book, starting the story with the last months of the war, and added some scenes that reinforce the link between The Road Back and its predecessor� 17 He also left Albert’s prison scene out of the novel and shortened Adolf Bethke’s (and his wife’s) tragic story� He moved two scenes to occur slightly later in the novel (including the scene in the woods, which will be discussed later), thus forming an epilogue� He softened the pessimistic ending to an extent by concluding the final version of the novel with Ernst pondering his life and future (the newspaper version ended with Georg’s suicide). Ernst’s concluding thoughts are reminiscent of the first-person narrator’s contemplation in the last chapter of All Quiet , right before we learn of Paul Bäumer’s death. Ernst’s thoughts reflect a growing sense of hope, which, being the final message in the novel, tempers the otherwise gloomy ending: 18 I have awaited a storm that should deliver me, pluck me away and now it has come softly, even without my knowledge� But it is here� While I was despairing, thinking everything lost, it was already quietly growing� I had thought that division was always an end� Now I know that growth also is division� And growth means relinquishing� And growth has no end� One part of my life was given over to the service of destruction; it belonged to hate, to enmity, to killing� But life remained in me� And that in itself is enough, of itself almost a purpose and a way� I will work in myself and be ready; I will bestir my hands and my thoughts� I will not take myself very seriously, nor push on when sometimes I should like to be still� There are many things to be built and almost everything to repair; it is enough that I work to dig out again what was buried during the years of shells and machine guns� Not everyone need be a pioneer; there is employment for feebler hands, lesser powers� It is there I mean to look for my place� Then the dead will be silenced and the past not pursue me anymore; it will assist me instead� (Remarque 1998, 342) Ernst’s concluding thoughts speak of (political) neutrality, as he sees his salvation in work and in rebuilding, not in the fight for truth or any other ideals. The (political) neutrality in Ernst’s final message is reinforced by multiple omissions in the text, the most notable of which are in the reworked outing scene in the woods� In the beginning of the last chapter in the newspaper serialization (the Conclusion), Ernst and his friends go on an outing to the woods, where they encounter kids playing war games, led by a “führer�” 19 It seems that the sobering lessons of the war are already fading� Indeed, the situation the men encounter in the woods is frighteningly similar to the conditions before the First World War� Remarque does not criticize the boys in this scene but the society that is building up their misguided patriotism, a society that is sending their children to another war. Furthermore, the author most likely identifies with the misguided boys, seeing himself reflected in them. In the short announcement published in the Vossische Zeitung before the serialized printing of All Quiet started, the author is described as “one of the grey masses, one of the hundreds of thousands who, as half children , voluntarily followed the call to defend the flag , eager, unsuspecting, torn away by the urging of patriotic teachers and the example of their comrades” ( J� E�; emphasis added)� Much like the kids in the outing scene, before the war Remarque himself was filled with admiration for all things military, evidenced perhaps most eloquently by the first short prose he ever published, in which the young Remarque describes the youth brigade (in German jugendwehr ), a paramilitary organization� 20 As he later stated: At that time I was brimming over with enthusiasm and animated, as all young Germans were, by a great feeling of patriotism� We were all convinced, all we kids of seventeen, that we were fighting for the salvation of the world and the salvation of civilization. […] At the time of the fighting, I was struggling between two sentiments that I considered equally intangible� War appealed to me as a necessity for saving culture; but, on the other hand, I thought that nothing was worth the death of so many million men� It was this latter conviction that carried the day and I still hold to it� (Lefèvre 89-90) In the newspaper version of the novel, when Ernst and his comrades hear the kids in the woods praising war, Kosole gets an opportunity to voice his thoughts: “‘Yes,’ says Kosole pensively, ‘so it starts again. That is the beginning of a new World War ” (Remarque, “Road,” 1931, 14, emphasis added)� 21 Remarque left Kosole’s premonition of a new world war out of the final version of the book. He also omitted a paragraph in which Willy (once more) points his finger at society: “Willy shrugs his shoulders and puts his hand on Kosole’s shoulder. ‘But don’t think, Ferdinand, that a handful of diplomats and generals alone could contrive such a war� The whole world is to blame for it� Before the war the world was The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 629 630 Veiko Vaatmann one great munitions factory’” (Remarque, “Road,” 1931, 14)� These omissions are not the only differences between the outing scene in the newspaper serialization and the final book. In both versions, when a fight is about to break out between the kids and the veterans, Willy, who has been taking a nap nearby, wakes up and defuses the situation merely by his enormous presence� However, in the book Remarque left out an explicit reference to the right wing� In the newspaper serialization, we read: “Willy looks about him with wide eyes and explodes into laughter� ‘What’s on? Fancy dress ball? ’ he asks� Then he realizes the situation� ‘So, only the parties of the right in Germany have a Fatherland, what? ’ he smirks” (Remarque, “Road,” 1931, 14)� Because of these changes, the premonition of the Second World War and the call for society not to support the warmongering of the right wing is slightly muted in the final book—Ernst’s narration becomes a bit more neutral� This apparent neutrality is the main reason for the outcry of the left wing and the accusations of defeatism leveled against Remarque� The frustration of Remarque’s critics on the left seems reasonable, but it overlooks the symbolic framework of the novel and some of the important additions Remarque made in his final revisions. The first part of the epilogue (in the final version of The Road Back ) ends with the following paragraph: The chauffeur is waiting for us. The car glides softly through the slowly gathering twilight. We are already approaching the town and the first lights have shown up when there mingles with the crunching and grinding of the tyres a long-drawn, hoarser, throaty sound; in an easterly direction across the evening sky there moves a wedgeshaped flight—a flock of wild geese! We look at it�— Kosole is about to say something, but then is silent. We are all thinking the same thing. Then comes the town with streets and noise� Valentin climbs out� Then Willy. Then Kosole. (Remarque 1998, 341; emphasis added) What is it that Kosole is about to say, but chooses not to? What is the thought that the comrades silently share? Perhaps the answer is in the newspaper serialization of the book, where Kosole foretold the next world war, but any reader who does not have the newspaper version at hand is left with a haunting question� Remarque uses Ernst’s ambiguous comment to urge us to reread the text to better understand the comrades at the end of the novel� Remarque also focuses our attention on the symbols in the work� It seems that the thought the comrades silently share is provoked by the wild geese in the sky� Remarque uses the birds here to link the ending of the novel back to the beginning of the prologue, where the comrades, still in the trenches, hear a strange sound reminiscent of gas grenades but realize, after a brief scare, that the sound is coming from wild geese flying overhead. We listen� The hiss and whistle of the invisible, arching shells is interrupted by a queer, hoarse, long-drawn sound, so strange and new that my flesh creeps. “Gas shells! ” shouts Willy, springing up� Now we are all awake and listening intently� Wessling points into the air� “There they are! Wild geese! ” Moving darkly against the drab grey of the clouds is a streak, a wedge, its point steering towards the moon. It cuts across its red disc. The black shadows are plainly visible, an angle of many wings, a column of squalling, strange, wild cries, that loses itself in the distance� (Remarque 1998, 7; emphasis added) The birds symbolize the soldiers� The link between the geese and the soldiers is established in the description of the soldiers marching home at the beginning of the first chapter: They are described as “grey columns” (Remarque 1998, 25) and walking “one behind another in a long file” (Remarque 1998, 26)—in German, this walking formation is called Gänsemarsch (literally translated as “geese march”)� The connection is made stronger by the use of the word Zug to describe both the platoon and the flock of birds. 22 Remarque encourages us to look for parallels between the flock of birds and the soldiers by making comparisons between characters and birds throughout the novel, starting from the first page, when Kosole compares Jupp to an owl ( Rheineule )� 23 Thus, when Kosole, hoping for a big meal, shoots at the flock of geese, he inadvertently foreshadows the events to come—after returning home, the former comrades are pushed into taking up arms against each other. The flying formation of the birds—a wedge— alludes to the estrangement of the soldier and the civilian: A wedge has been driven between the young veterans and the civilian life they were torn from� The most notable difference between the first and last scenes with the geese is the absence of the moon in the latter� Remarque uses the moon as a symbol of life. In the beginning of the novel, the flight of the birds towards the moon induces a homesickness in the soldiers, a yearning to return to their previous life� Just like the Zug of birds is flying towards the moon at the beginning of the prologue, the Zug of soldiers is walking towards life in the beginning of the first chapter: “Along the road, step upon step, in their faded, dirty uniforms tramp the grey columns…. And behind them, the army of slain. Thus they tramp onward, step by step, sick, half-starving, without ammunition, in thin companies, with eyes that still fail to comprehend it: escaped out of that underworld, on the road back into life” (Remarque 1998, 25)� It is also the train ( Zug ) that finally brings the soldiers back home� The moon shines bright when the comrades are rediscovering life: The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 631 632 Veiko Vaatmann Albert comes and stands beside me� The moon is shining � We piss bright silver� “Man, but it’s good, eh, Ernst? ” says Albert� I nod� We gaze a while into the moon � “To think that damned show is over, Albert, eh? ” “My bloody oath—” There is creaking and crackling behind us� Girls laugh out clear among the bushes and are as suddenly hushed� The night is like a thunderstorm, heavy with fever of life , erupting, wildly and swiftly flashing from one point to another and kindling. (Remarque 1998, 43-4; emphasis added) And “never was the moon so bright” as when their life hangs in the air, when confronted by the opposing faction on their home streets (Remarque 1998, 273)� In Rahe’s suicide scene (discussed below), the moon seems to even resurrect the crosses of the fallen soldiers (Remarque 1998, 332)� At the end of the novel, as Ernst ponders his future and finds the will to go on, the moon shines into his room: “There is night in the room, and the moon� There is life in the room” (Remarque 1998, 343)� 24 Thus, as the geese are flying toward a moon in the beginning of the novel (which is set during the last months of the First World War), the combination of symbols implies that the soldiers are moving toward life; in the conclusion, just after Ernst and his comrades witness boys—a new generation of soldiers—praising war, the missing moon implies that there is no future for these boys, or indeed for the whole of Germany� The scene becomes an implicit foreshadowing of the Second World War, replacing Kosole’s explicit statement� The red color of the moon at the beginning of the novel is a foreshadowing of difficulties ahead—the red light is a symbol of suicidal bloodlust, as it stirs the blood and induces (temporary) insanity: There was a place near Houthoulet where so many poppies grew in the fields that they were entirely red with them� We called them the Fields of Blood, because whenever there was a thunderstorm they would take on the pale colour of fresh, newly spilled blood . It was there Köhler went mad one clear night as we marched by, utterly wasted and weary� In the uncertain light of the moon he thought he saw whole lakes of blood and wanted to plunge in� (Remarque 1998, 243; emphasis added) Throughout the novel the color red is primarily associated with outbursts of (short-term) anger. Its temporary nature is figuratively illustrated in the description of demonstrators in Chapter Six, preceding Max Weil’s death: Between the streets over the entrance is the name in illuminated letters: Astoria Dance-Palace and Wine Saloon� The trolley with the torso stands directly beneath it, waiting until some iron girders have been shifted� The dull glow of the lighted sign floods over him, colouring the silent face to an awful red , as if it were swelling with some terrible fury and must suddenly burst into a hideous cry� But then the column moves on, and again it is just the face of the furniture remover, pallid from the hospital in the pale evening, and smiling gratefully as a comrade puts a cigarette between his lips� (Remarque 1998, 270-71; emphasis added) In Ludwig’s suicide scene, we see the birds, the moon, and the red poppy fields of Flanders connected in the mind of the dying man: Then it grew darker� The pealing sounded fainter, and the evening came in at the window, clouds floated up under his [Ludwig’s] feet. He had wished once in his life to see flamingoes; now he knew; these were flamingoes, with broad, pinkish-grey wings, lots of them, a phalanx [ Keil ]— Did wild ducks not once fly so toward the very red moon, red as poppies in Flanders? (Remarque 1998, 300; emphasis added) The birds, flying toward the red moon, appeared in the newspaper serialization of the book only in Ludwig’s death scene� We can assume that by promoting an element that initially appeared only in Ludwig’s death scene, Remarque sought to highlight Ludwig’s death and the connection it creates between the symbols� Ludwig commits suicide upon receiving a diagnosis from his physician that he is suffering from an incurable illness, syphilis, contracted in an army brothel. Remarque uses Ludwig’s diagnosis to juxtapose illness and war� War is a disease, 25 and surviving it does not necessarily mean a complete return to health: a long period of recovery follows� For Ludwig, the war continued in the form of his illness and emotional scars� The disease of war follows the veterans everywhere they go—those who have once fallen prey to the war have no escape from it, even after returning home, and the disease that is war does not vanish from society, even after many years of hellish bloodletting� The war smolders on, to erupt again one day as a blazing suicidal fever� The true enemy of the veterans lies now within—in their blood, as it were—which makes Ludwig’s choice of death so much more poignant: he cuts his wrists� Ernst himself, it seems, is close to suicide when the red glow of the moon hits him in his solitude: The red moon climbs slowly up over the roof of the barn and casts an image of the window on the floor, a diamond and a cross within it, that becomes gradually more and more askew the higher the moon rises� In an hour it has crept on to my bed, and the shadowed cross is moving over my breast . […] At last I get up and dress again� I climb through the window, lift out the dog and go off to the moor. The moon is shining, the wind blows gently and the plain stretches away� The railway embankment cuts darkly across it� The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 633 634 Veiko Vaatmann I sit down under a juniper bush� After a time I see the chain of signal-lamps light up along the track� The night train is coming� The rails begin to rumble softly, metallic� The headlight of the locomotive leaps up over the skyline, driving a billow of light before it toward me� The train roars past with bright windows; for one moment, scarce a breath, the compartments with their trunks and their fates are right close to me; they sweep onward; the rails gleam again with wet light and out of the distance now stares only the red rear-lamp of the train, like a glowing evil eye � I watch the moon turn clear , then yellow� (Remarque 1998, 247-48; emphasis added) This scene gives Ernst the determination not to give up on life yet, not to follow the call of the red light� The shape of the cross that the moon illuminates on Ernst’s chest is an important detail� Already in the newspaper serialization of The Road Back , Remarque had used the leitmotif of a cross, which symbolizes the shadow of war—the burden of guilt over those that have fallen and the yearning for the comradery lost when soldiers return from war and reintegrate into civilian life� The leitmotif of the cross is most clearly evoked in the final scene of the newspaper serialization, which describes Georg’s suicide� Georg returns to Flanders “to see his past once again, eye to eye” (Remarque 1998, 328)� He yearns for comradery, which has started fading among his old comrades, and he is increasingly convinced that he has no place in postwar life. He finds himself on a former battlefield, still redolent of blood, gunpowder, and scorched earth. The flood of memories grips him: “Rahe picks himself up and walks on without direction a long time, till at last he is standing before the black crosses , erect, one behind another in long rows, like a company, a battalion, a brigade, an army” (Remarque 1998, 331; emphasis added)� Georg’s true comrades are resting beneath the crosses� In his last cry, he urges his comrades to rise up against war, against its all-destroying power, which robbed the young men of their unfinished lives: 26 “Comrades! ” he shouts to the wind and the night� “Comrades! We have been betrayed� We must march again! Against it! Against it! Comrades! ” He stands in front of the crosses � The moon breaks through, and he sees them gleaming; they rise out of the earth with widespread arms; already their tread comes on menacing� He stands before them, marks time� He stretches his hand onward: “Comrades—march! ” And his hand goes to his pocket and again the arm is lifted—a tired, lonely shot that is caught up by the wind and swept away� He staggers, he is down on his knees, he props on his arms and with a last effort turns again to the crosses ; he sees them marching. […] His head sinks down� It grows dark about him, he falls forward, he is marching with the column. As one late finding his way home, he lies there on the ground, his arms outspread , his eyes dull already and his knees drawn up� The body twitches once more, then all has become sleep� And now only the wind is still there on the desolate, dark waste; it blows and blows; above are the clouds and the sky, the fields and the endless wide plains with the trenches and shell holes and crosses � (Remarque 1998, 332; emphasis added) This march of the dead is similar to the description of the grey columns marching homeward in the first chapter. Remarque uses this similarity to build a frame for the novel in the newspaper serialization� Georg’s rallying cry to his fallen comrades in the last chapter of the novel—to rise up against the war—also alludes to the cries of the mortally wounded to their departing comrades at the end of the first chapter of the novel: Some of the badly wounded reach out their thin, grey arms like children� “Take me with you, mate,” they say, imploring, “take me with you, mate�” In the hollows of their eyes lurk already deep, strange shadows from which the pupils struggle up with difficulty like drowning things. Others are quiet, following us as far as they can with their eyes� The cries sound gradually fainter� (Remarque 1998, 34) The parallels between these two scenes and the framework built around them attune the reader to the work’s primary theme—comradery (and its postwar demise)� The parallels between the two scenes are also a brilliant demonstration of the irony of fate encapsulated by Georg’s suicide� When, at the beginning of the story, the soldiers returning home from the battlefields hear the cries of their mortally wounded comrades, they are essentially hearing cries of the dead, who want to go with the living� The roles are reversed at the end of the work, and the reader hears the living calling out to the dead� Georg wants to join the dead on their march against war, and the dead do not abandon him as the mortally wounded were abandoned by the living in Flanders� The dead accept Georg into their ranks—even the shape of his dead body, with his outstretched hands, resembles a cross� Although comradery is fading among the living after the war, the surviving troops carry their dead comrades with them after the war as well� We also see the cross motif repeated in the cemetery scene that follows Ludwig’s death (and foreshadows Georg’s suicide)� Ernst visits his friend’s grave and meets Georg in the cemetery� The two understand that the comradery of the trenches they experienced in the war is now gone� The veterans are forever marked by the war, unable to shake the memories, much like the guide dogs accompanying the blind veterans in the demonstrations are unable and unwilling to join their peers: These are followed by men with sheep dogs on short, leather leads� The animals have the red cross of the blind at their collars� Watchfully they walk along beside their mas- The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 635 636 Veiko Vaatmann ters� If the procession halts they sit down, and then the blind men stop� Sometimes dogs off the street will rush in among the column, barking and wagging their tails, wanting to romp and play with them� But these merely turn their heads and take no notice of all the sniffing and yapping. Yet their ears are erect, pricked and alert, and their eyes are alive; but they walk as if they no longer wished to run and to jump, as if they understood for what they are there� They have separated themselves from their fellows, as Sisters of Mercy separate themselves from jolly shop girls� Nor do the other dogs persist long: after a few minutes they give up, and make off in such haste that it looks almost as if they were flying from something. (Remarque 1998, 267-68; emphasis added) Fittingly, it is the cross-maker Weddekamp who foreshadows the troubles to come after the war, with his parting words to Ernst: “The war’s not over yet” (Remarque 1998, 50)� One scene in which we encounter the cross motif was omitted from the book version: Albert, sentenced to prison for killing a black market trader, sits alone in his cell (Remarque, “Der Weg,” 1931)� He looks at his hands, which the light of the setting sun has turned red, and the shadows left by the window bars form crosses on his palms� He tries to position his hands in the light to make the crosses go away, but he does not succeed� The shadow of war holds the entire lost generation in its clutches, and there is no escape from it� By leaving this prison scene out of the book, Remarque somewhat reduced the symbolism of the cross in the novel� There is an important difference between how the formation of the flock of geese is described at the beginning and the end of the novel� In the epilogue, Remarque uses the description “wedge-shaped” (in German, the adjective hakenförmiger ), which, in my opinion, is an invitation to look closer to the form of all four dominant symbols in the novel� 27 Indeed, an interesting thing happens when we combine the forms of the four symbols—the wedge formed by the wild geese (symbolizing soldiers), the white circle of the moon (symbolizing life), the red light (symbolizing self-destructive madness and bloodlust), and the slanted cross (symbolizing the shadow of war)� Combining these symbols in a visual way suggests a familiar image: Figure 1. The NSDAP swastika (hooked cross) flag, later adopted as Nazi Germany’s national flag. The NSDAP swastika (in German, das Hakenkreuz ) flag formed by combining the symbols is a poignant description of the soldier’s everyday reality—returning home in search of a new life, the soldier finds his life overshadowed by memories of war and sees himself standing alone surrounded by self-destructive madness and bloodlust� Remarque’s choice of symbols makes the novel implicitly an origin story of the Nazi party and an analysis of its causes, if not an attack on the party� He implies that there is a disease underlying the birth of the party, a deep trauma caused by the war and the soldiers’ inability to integrate back into society because of the lack of comradery between the veterans and the civilians� These factors give rise to a disastrous suicidal wish to return to the battlefield, where all of the true comrades have been left behind—the road back to war� Christoffersen (86) argues that the title of the novel The Road Back is ambiguous in that it can be interpreted as the soldiers’ physical return to Germany as well as their subsequent journey to psychological recovery� However, Remarque’s use of these symbols makes the title of the novel ironic, just as in his previous novel: 28 instead of the road back to life and society that the soldiers— and, indeed, the reader—expect, we get in the end of the novel a return to the path to war� As we see in the outing scene, the boys’ enthusiasm for the military is again fueled by society, much as it was at the beginning of the First World War. The only difference is that there is now a new generation of boys, a new war, and the call of a new flag. What does this mean for our narrator Ernst and his (ideological) reliability? Wayne Booth’s first definition of the unreliable narrator in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961) has proven resilient: “For lack of better terms, I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work… The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 637 638 Veiko Vaatmann unreliable when he does not” (Booth 158-59)� The shared norms—explicitly or implicitly communicated (intradiegetic) facts and moral or ideological values— make the narrator’s account and evaluations of the storyworld authorial, and therefore reliable� Unreliable narrators cannot be considered reliable voices for the (implied) author and are solely accountable for their words and actions� We can distinguish between two types of unreliable narrators: By distorting the facts of the storyworld, factually unreliable narrators are in conflict with the fictional truth (i.e., fabula), while ideologically unreliable narrators are (in their words or actions) in conflict with the ideological or moral values that the work (as a whole) communicates to the reader (Kindt 133). Ideologically unreliable narrators are in some way biased or confused (Cohn 307), naïve, manipulative, or simply cannot speak their minds because of a restrictive narrative situation� This means that the narrator’s evaluations of the storyworld should not be taken at face value, even if, in their representation of facts, the narrator is completely reliable� Kindt argues that deviant forms of fictional narration can be understood as “mediated exploitations” of conversational rules: although we are in these cases confronted with fictive narrators who ignore the cooperative principle, 29 we assume the literary work in question to be the result of cooperative communication (Kindt 135). The cooperative principle relies on conversational rules, introduced by Grice, which include: a) the maxim of quality—say only what you believe is true and have adequate evidence of; b) the maxim of quantity—make your contribution as informative as is required; c) the maxim of relation—make your contribution relevant; and d) the maxim of manner—make your contribution clear, orderly, and unambiguous (Grice 47). The first three maxims refer to what is being communicated and the fourth to how it is being communicated� From the point of view of the current essay, there are three important ways in which communication can fail to observe these maxims: flouting them, violating them, and infringing on them� 30 When a narrator ignores one or more of the maxims by using a conversational implicature (irony, metaphor, hyperbole, etc�), the narrator is flouting a maxim not with the intention to deceive the addressee but rather to urge the latter to search for added meaning in the narration� The cooperative principle is maintained through what is communicated indirectly� However, when the narrator ignores the maxims with the intention to deceive the addressee, for example, by being deliberately insincere in their evaluations of events, the narrator is violating the maxims and the cooperative principle is not maintained� If such a violation is unintentional on the part of the narrator, the fallible narration 31 is better explained through the narrator’s infringement of a maxim� If we presume that a narrative text as a whole adheres to the cooperative principle, even in the case of unreliable narration, the (implied) author could be considered to be flouting the maxims by introducing into the communication an unreliable narrator (and providing some indirect evidence of that narrator’s unreliability), who is violating (intentionally) the maxims or infringing on them (unintentionally)� Thus, in order to recognize ideological unreliability, the reader must: a) assess violations or infringements on the narrator’s part by looking for inconsistencies in the narrator’s value statements or lapses in authorial style (i�e�, the style we associate with sincere communication); and b) identify any flouting of maxims on the author’s part by reconstructing the values of the (implied) author reflected in the sum of (aesthetic) choices made by the author in the narrative text and compare these reconstructed values with the narrator’s value statements� I believe that the analysis of The Road Back reveals that both strategies result in establishing the ideological unreliability of the first-person narrator. Let us return to the ambiguous paragraph in the first part of the epilogue, where the comrades silently share a thought that Ernst chooses to leave unexplained� Here the narrator infringes on the maxim of manner by leaving his utterance ambiguous� This ambiguity does not distort our reconstruction of the fabula; Ernst is a factually reliable narrator� However, it does signal Ernst’s ideological unreliability� Ernst is not concealing anything from us in order to intentionally mislead—he is sincere in his narration and seems to leave his statement ambiguous only because the thought that the comrades silently share is something very obvious to him� As the thought is not obvious to the reader, this ambiguity introduces a gap between the values of the narrator and the reader� Although Ernst’s ambiguity signals a gap between his values and those of the reader, it does not in itself tell us anything about the nature of that discrepancy� To understand the difference in values, we need to look elsewhere—as I previously suggested, Ernst’s ambiguous utterance urges us to return to the text for another reading to better understand the comrades (and their values) at the end of the novel, and perhaps more importantly, focuses our attention on the symbols in the work� Rereading The Road Back should reveal the values of the (implied) author, most importantly those communicated indirectly through Remarque’s choices in structure and symbols� Comparing these values with the values revealed by Ernst’s narration will determine whether there are any differences or conflicts between them—whether there are signs of the implicit ideological unreliability of the first-person narrator. As previously discussed, Remarque uses the symbols in the novel to implicitly strengthen the work’s anti-war stance and communicate his anti-Nazi position� Ernst clearly speaks out against the war and condemns society for its role in it� Thus, the narrator and the (implied) author share an anti-war stance� However, the narrator is unaware of the anti-Nazi The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 639 stance of the (implied) author� At the end of the novel, Ernst expresses a clear will to live and decides to carry on—without a definite goal but with a clear intention to find that goal. Instead of taking up the fight against the lie, the half-truth, compromise, against the old order, Ernst chooses a path of healing� This is reminiscent of Remarque’s own journey, but does not correspond with the (implied) author’s goal for the novel itself� As the symbols in The Road Back present a case not merely against the war but against the Nazis, one could say that both Ernst and the (implied) author punch in the same general direction, although the punches of the latter are much stronger and much more precisely aimed at the right-wing warmongers and their supporters. This difference in values makes Ernst, as a first-person narrator, ideologically unreliable. While Ernst cannot be considered a full-fledged mouthpiece for Remarque’s message, the author presents us with another character who perhaps can� Willy is the strongest of the comrades, not just physically but also in his convictions: He is the most vocal against the right wing (at least in the newspaper serialization), and the most determined to do something to change things� In contrast with Ernst (and Remarque himself), Willy chooses to return to school as a teacher, taking up the task of educating the younger generations—and to speak the truth, as he often so eloquently does throughout the novel: I’ve come to the conclusion that everybody can do something in his own way, even though he may have nothing but a turnip for a head� My holidays are over next week, and I’ll have to go back to the village as a schoolteacher again� And, you know, I’m positively glad of it� I mean to teach my youngsters what their Fatherland really is� Their homeland, that is, not a political party. Their homeland is trees, fields, earth, none of your fulsome catchwords. I’ve considered it all off and on a long time, and I’ve decided that we’re old enough now to do some sort of a job� And that’s mine� It’s not big, I admit. But sufficient for me—and I’m no Goethe, of course.” (Remarque 1998, 340) As an educator of the masses on the horrors of war and the importance of comradery, Remarque is much closer to Willy than Ernst� Thus, it is perhaps Remarque’s self-irony, if not regret, speaking here in Willy’s words—a critique of his younger self for choosing not to continue as an educator� Compared to Willy’s choice to educate the youth, Ernst’s choice could even seem selfish because it shows a lack of concern for—a lack of comradery with—the next generation, who are being actively groomed for a new war� With his choice to return to school, Willy takes the road the whole postwar society should have taken, as it is the only road back to peace� If Ernst is an ideologically unreliable narrator because his narration falls short of the (implied) author’s message in the symbols of the work, the author should be considered to be flouting the maxims. As all four symbols (and therefore 640 Veiko Vaatmann the visual combination we can construct from them) appear only in the book version, I suspect that strengthening the symbolic framework was the main reason—if not the only one—for Remarque’s extensive reworking of the text after the serialization was published� He must have felt the need to respond to his attackers in precisely the way that he believed an artist should respond— through his work, by aesthetic means, not from a pulpit or in an article, as so many writers on the left (who condemned Remarque for his silence) felt confident in doing. His decision to omit from the novel the explicit critique of the right should by no means be read as a surrender to Goebbels’ attacks but rather as his attempt to elevate his art through the use of symbols� Remarque’s reliance on aesthetic devices to convey the main message of the novel is perhaps less unexpected, if we look at the novel in the context of his earlier poetry and prose writing (not only as a sequel to All Quiet ), ignoring his attempts to distance himself from his earlier works� 32 It is also very much in line with the picture of a man who, in his 1922 essay “Natur und Kunstwerk,” saw the birth of a work of art mainly in form and argued that, although a work of art is intertwined with nature via idea and matter, it is not a mere imitation of nature (Remarque 2001, 176)� In other words, we cannot expect Remarque to put his personal views (only) in the mouth of the narrator� To understand his worldview, we need to look elsewhere, into the author’s implications in the structure and symbols of the work, where Remarque’s “silence” is anything but silent� Furthermore, we should not expect any help from the author himself in our exploration of his art, for as he stated in an interview with Axel Eggebrecht: When a work is finished, the author has nothing more to add to it, even at the risk of being misunderstood� In that case his work would not have succeeded and talking about it would also be of no use� But I am of the opinion that I have only been misunderstood where people wanted to misunderstand me from the start� 33 Remarque’s repeated claims that his writing is apolitical are clearly a smokescreen, as his “silence” speaks of a political view in direct opposition to Nazis� In light of this implicit message of the novel, Goebbels’ fear of the author seems far less paranoid, and the charges from the left against Remarque feel misguided, if not unjust� Notes 1 Unless otherwise stated, passages from The Road Back and All Quiet on the Western Front cited hereinafter were translated from the German by Arthur W� Wheen� The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 641 642 Veiko Vaatmann 2 In November Remarque travelled to his hometown, Osnabrück, for four weeks to work on The Road Back � He left Berlin, where he had become a local celebrity (souvenir hunters had even made off with the nameplate from his apartment door) and could not find sufficient peace and quiet to work. Remarque did not complete the novel during this time and had to return to his hometown for two weeks in the summer of 1930 to finally finish (the newspaper serialization of) the novel (Firda 1988, 65-6)� 3 By the end of its first year in print, All Quiet had been translated into 12 languages and more than half a million copies had been sold (Taylor 63-5)� 4 All Quiet on the Western Front commenced production at 11: 00 a� m� on November 11, 1929, exactly eleven years after the Armistice had been signed� This was a symbolic gesture by the producer Carl Laemmle, with notable publicity value (Kelly 83). 5 Then Nazi Gauleiter of Berlin, Goebbels later became the Reich Minister of Propaganda� 6 Ich lese: “Im Westen nichts Neues�” Ein gemeines, zersetzendes Buch� Die Kriegserinnerungen eines Eingezogenen. Weiter nichts. Nach 2 Jahren spricht von diesem Buch kein Mensch mehr� Aber es hat seine Wirkung getan in Millionen Herzen. Das Buch ist gemacht. Deshalb so gefährlich. (Goebbels 2003, 390)� 7 For example, a 1929 satirical book, Hat Remarque wirklich gelebt? ( Did Remarque Really Live? ) by Mynona (the pseudonym of Salomo Friedländer) questioned Remarque’s military service� 8 Like All Quiet , the German version of The Road Back was first serialized in the newspaper Vossische Zeitung (from December 7, 1930 to January 29, 1931); the English serialized version appeared in the U�S� magazine Collier’s from January 17, 1931 to February 28 of the same year (Owen 1984, 198)� 9 In her memoir, Leni Riefenstahl gives a firsthand account of the events during the premiere (102)� The events surrounding the premiere, the subsequent ban of the film and its censorship are also thoroughly covered in Kelly (102-32) and Schneider (1998, 43-7)� The antagonism between the author and Goebbels (and the Nazis in general) is analyzed in detail in Dörp’s twopart essay “Goebbels’ Kampf ”. 10 The only public comment Remarque made was a written statement against the film ban at a Berlin protest event of the German League for Human Rights, “Remarque and Reality,” on January 26, 1931 (Schneider 2001, 76)� 11 Just after Hitler came to power in January 1933, Remarque left Berlin, barely escaping the Nazis’ clutches� He chose exile in Switzerland, where in summer of 1931, he had bought a house in Porto Ronco, on Lake Maggiore, which became his refuge from fame� From this point it became his permanent residence� On March 2, 1933, Remarque’s name appeared in Völkischer Beobachter among the names of many other well-known writers and cultural figures declared personae non grata by the authorities (Tims 79)� On May 10 of that year, Remarque’s novels All Quiet and The Road Back were burned in a Nazi bonfire on Berlin’s Opernplatz “for literary betrayal of the WWI soldiers and in the name of educating the people in the spirit of the truth” (Schneider 2001, 100)� In 1938 he was stripped of his German citizenship (Owen 1984, 176). The Nazis finally got their revenge on Remarque when they executed his sister, Elfriede Scholz, by beheading in 1943� She was accused of defeatism and for criticizing the Führer (Gilbert 249-56)� 12 Good overviews of the reviews are provided by Owen (1984, 162-208) and Westphalen� 13 “Aber dieser Mann war nicht da, sondern nur ein Glückskind, das einen Zufallstreffer gemacht und sich daraufhin sofort ins Privatleben zurückgezogen hat” (Ossietzky 1932, 549-50)� 14 The events of the novel are conveyed primarily by a first-person narrator, in present tense and chronological order (except for individual reminiscences by Ernst)� However, at times Remarque uses a third-person narrator—for example, at the beginning of the first chapter, and in describing the events that Ernst is not there to witness, such as the deaths of Ludwig Breyer and Georg Rahe and, in the newspaper version, Albert Troßke’s imprisonment and the end of Adolf Bethke’s marriage� 15 The term “the lost generation” was first used by Ernest Hemingway in the foreword to The Sun Also Rises to characterize the generation of people who came of age during the First World War� Hemingway was quoting Gertrude Stein, who, in a conversation with him, declared: “ You are all a lost generation ” (Hemingway xvi)� The estrangement between the returning soldiers and the civilians was a worldwide phenomenon, not unique to postwar Germany� 16 From August 1919 to March 1920 Remarque taught in Lohne, Emsland, near Lingen, from May to June 1920 in Klein-Berßen in Hümmling, and from August to November 1920 in Nahne near Osnabrück� As a war veteran he struggled with the postwar values he was supposed to teach to his students� In addition, he had a huge disagreement with the dean in Klein-Berßen. As a result, Remarque quit teaching in November of 1920 (Schneider 2001, 52-3)� 17 The relationships between the characters create strong links between the books� The main character of The Road Back , Ernst Birkenholz, was a member of Paul Bäumer’s company, and a number of short passages in All Quiet ’s sequel reveal that the men knew one another: The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 643 644 Veiko Vaatmann It’s a power of time since I last ate a fresh chop� In Flanders it was—we bagged a couple of sucking pigs—we ate them down to the very ribs one lovely, mild summer evening—Katczinsky was alive then—ach, Kat—Detering—a sight better they were than these fellows at home here� I prop my elbows on the table and forget everything around me, so clearly do I see them before me� —Such tender little beasts too; we made potato cakes to go with them—and Kropp was there and Paul Bäumer—yes, Paul—I neither hear nor see anything now; I lose myself in memories� (Remarque 1998, 116) The torch is symbolically passed between the two young men on a train, on the way home, when Tjaden’s leg swings from the baggage shelf and smacks Ernst in the face (Tjaden is the only character who appears in both works). These boots (which originally belonged to Franz Kemmerich) were an important symbolic object in All Quiet , being passed on from one comrade to the next after Franz’s death� Paul inherited them after Müller died, and promised them to Tjaden in the event of his own death� It appears that Remarque uses the boots to “baptize” Ernst into Paul’s story� The scene on the train was a later addition, not included in the newspaper serialization� The links between these works are also reinforced to some extent by the primary characters’ close resemblance to one another� Paul and Ernst are similar personalities and share a similar fate� As Murdoch points out, Ernst’s voice is virtually identical to Paul’s� We could say that Paul’s coming-of-age story, cut short by his death at the end of All Quiet , continues in The Road Back through Ernst’s struggles (Murdoch 56)� Robert, the main character of Three Comrades , also belonged to Paul’s and Ernst’s company, demonstrated by short passages in the novel (Remarque 2013, 328)� These links, together with the common theme of comradery, help unite the “Lost Generation” books as a trilogy� 18 In the newspaper serialization, Ernst’s reflections precede Georg’s suicide. 19 The original ending of the film adaptation of The Road Back (1937), directed by James Whale, screenplay by Robert Cedric Sherriff, makes the allusion to Hitler even more explicit� After Albert’s courtroom scene, the comrades take a walk in the woods� On the trail, they encounter young people dressed in uniform, who are led by a thickly mustachioed dwarf, also in uniform (a new generation of soldiers)� Unfortunately, this version of the ending never made it to the cinemas because the studio decided to make concessions to Nazi Germany. James Whale refused to make changes in the film and was forced to step down as director; more politically acceptable extra scenes were subsequently directed by Edward Sloman (Kelly 143). The final cinema release of the film ends with a scene depicting a conversation between the main character and his beloved after Albert’s court hearing, in which Ernst expresses hope that there is a road back to a normal life, happiness, and lasting peace� This scene is followed by a montage of arms races and preparations for war in various countries� 20 Somewhat ironically, the first published text for the future anti-war writer was a short prose text entitled Von den Freuden und Mühen der Jugendwehr (Remarque, Das unbekannte , 1998, 17-21)� With this text Remarque won a writing competition in the local magazine Heimatfreund: Ein Blatt für die Jugend des Regierungsbezirks Osnabrück , in June 1916, just a few months before being conscripted (Christoffersen 3). The young Remarque should not be accused of overzealous militarism; rather his work emanates adventuresome qualities as well as the comradeship familiar to readers of All Quiet and The Road Back � 21 “Das ist der Anfang eines neuen Weltkrieges” (Remarque, “Der Weg zurück”)� 22 In the epilogue Remarque uses the word Schar for the flock of geese—the same word he uses to describe the fallen soldiers in the Ernst’s fever dream: “eine Schar von Schatten” (Remarque 2014, 328)� 23 Wheen translates Rheineule as “poor fish” (Remarque 1998, 4). 24 “Die Nacht ist im Zimmer und der Mond� Das Leben ist im Zimmer” (Remarque 2014, 374)� 25 Remarque first drew the parallel between illness and war back in the first novel in the Lost Generation trilogy: “I think it is more of a kind of fever,” says Albert� “No one in particular wants it, and then all at once there it is� We didn’t want the war, the others say the same thing—and yet half the world is in it all the same” [¼] war is a cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery. The deaths are merely more frequent, more varied and terrible� (Remarque 1997, 184, 239)� Remarque made the link between illness and war even more vivid (promoting it to the main theme of the work) in his next novel Three Comrades (1937), where the first-person narrator’s beloved Pat, who has a serious illness, is juxtaposed with three veterans recovering from their psychic traumas (the woman’s illness is for her the same kind of fight for survival as being on the battlefield was for the soldiers). 26 The scene is reminiscent of the end of the film adaptation of All Quiet , in which we see a double exposure of soldiers marching and a field full of crosses. The young men (one of them Paul Bäumer) march into battle in silence, casting a last beseeching glance in the direction of the viewer� The scene is an accusation from the dead over wasting unlived lives� Perhaps The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 645 here the adaptation served as an inspiration to Remarque—the film was privately screened for him in Osnabrück when he returned there to continue the work on The Road Back in mid-November of 1930 (Schneider 2001, 76)� 27 Some of the cover illustrations of The Road Back have also recognized the importance of these symbols� For example, Ülle Meister’s cover illustration of the Estonian translation of the novel, titled Tagasitee , beautifully captures three dominant symbols in the work—we see the geese flying across the yellowish-reddish moon, which has painted the barbed-wire-covered ground beneath it red (Remarque 1994); Otto Antonini’s cover illustration of the Croatian translation of the novel, titled Povratak , portrays a soldier against a background of slanted crosses, with half of the cover painted red (Remarque 1931)� 28 The title of All Quiet on the Western Front comes from the statement of Paul Bäumer’s death at the end of the novel. It is a reference to a war report on the day that Paul died� The irony of the situation is best revealed in the fact that Paul’s death goes unnoticed—the demise of one person on an otherwise peaceful day is not included in the war report� It’s as if Paul’s death never happened� 29 Grice described the cooperative principle in the following way: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (1975, 45)� 30 According to Grice (“Logic and Conversation”), the types of failing to observe the maxims are flouting them, violating them, opting out of a maxim and clash of the maxims; others have since included infringement of a maxim and suspending a maxim in this list (Thomas 74-8)� 31 In assigning unreliability, we must consider the intention (and motive) of the narrator. The narrator who has difficulty receiving, interpreting, or conveying storyworld information is fallible —unintentionally factually unreliable—whereas the narrator who is deliberately dishonest about storyworld events is untrustworthy —intentionally factually unreliable (Olson 101-2)� The latter can be either malevolent or benevolent (merciful)� 32 By the time Remarque wrote All Quiet , he had published The Dream Room ( Die Traumbude ) (1920), and Station at the Horizon ( Station am Horizont ) (1927)� In 1924 he had also written an unpublished novel, Gam (not published until 1998) and had published short stories, poetry and articles� Although Remarque distanced himself from these works, they offer us a window onto his growth as a writer and his use of aesthetic means to convey a message, which requires further study and should not be ignored just because these writings predate his main body of work� 646 Veiko Vaatmann 33 Eggebrecht, “Gespräch mit Remarque (1929)”: “Doch wenn eine Arbeit fertig ist, hat der Autor zu ihr nichts mehr zu bemerken, selbst auf die Gefahr hin, daß er mißverstanden wird. In diesem Falle wäre seine Arbeit eben nicht gelungen, und das Reden darüber hätte auch keinen Zweck. Ich bin aber der Meinung, daß ich nur dort mißverstanden worden bin, wo man mich von vornherein mißverstehen wollte”� Works Cited Biha, Otto� “Wirklich zurück�” Die Linkskurve 3 no� 8 (1931): 24� Booth, Wayne C� The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed� Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983� Christoffersen, Rikke. “Narrative Strategies in the Novels of Erich Maria Remarque: A Focus on Perspective�” DPhil diss�, U of Stirling, 2006� Cohn, Dorrit� “Discordant Narration�” Style , 34, no� 2 (2000): 307-16� Dörp, Peter. “Goebbels’ Kampf gegen Remarque: Eine Untersuchung über die Hintergründe des Hasses und der Agitation Goebbels’ gegen den Roman “Im Westen nichts Neues” von Erich Maria Remarque�” Erich Maria Remarque Jahrbuch 1 (1991): 48-64� ---. “Goebbels’ Kampf gegen Remarque (2). Eine Untersuchung über die Hintergründe des Hasses und der Agitation Goebbels’ gegen den Amerikanischen Spielfilm ‘Im Westen nichts Neues’ nach dem gleichnamigen Bestsellerroman von Erich Maria Remarque�” Erich Maria Remarque Jahrbuch 3 (1993): 45-72� Eggebrecht, Axel. “Gespräch mit Remarque (1929).” Ein militanter Pazifist: Texte und Interviews 1929-1966. Ed. T. Schneider. Köln: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1994. 43-51. Firda, Richard Arthur� Erich Maria Remarque: A Thematic Analysis of His Novels � New York: Peter Lang, 1988� ---. All Quiet on the Western Front: Literary Analysis and Cultural Context. New York: Twayne, 1993� Gilbert, Julie� Opposite Attraction: The Lives of Erich Maria Remarque and Paulette Goddard � New York: Pantheon Books, 1995� Goebbels, Joseph. “In die Knie gezwungen [Brought to Their Knees].” Der Angriff (Berlin) , no� 1, 12 December 1930� Goebbels, Joseph� Joseph Goebbels Tagebücher 1924-1945. München: Piper Verlag GmbH, 2003� Grice, Paul� “Logic and Conversation�” Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts. Ed� Peter Cole and Jerry L� Morgan� New York: Academic Press, 1975� 41-58� Hemingway, Seán� “Introduction�” The Sun Also Rises , Ernest Hemingway� New York: Scribner, 2016� xi-xx� J� E� “Nichts Neues im Westen�” Vossische Zeitung , 8 no� 11 (1928)� Kelly, Andrew. Filming ‘ All Quiet on the Western Front.’ London: I. B. Tauris, 1998. The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 647 Kindt, Tom. “Werfel, Weiss and Co.: Unreliable Narration in Austrian Literature of the Interwar Period�” Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel. Ed� Elke D’hoker and Gunter Martens� Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008� 129-46� Lefèvre, Frédéric� “An Hour with Remarque�” Readings on ‘ All Quiet on the Western Front.’ Ed. T. O’Neill. San Diego: Greenhaven P, 1999. 86-93. [Originally published in The Living Age , 339 (December 1930): 344-49]. 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Remarque , ‘Drei Kameraden.’ Köln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 2014. ---� “The Truth about the War Finally: Critics’ Expectations of War Literature during the Weimar Republic� The Reception of Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues [ All Quiet on the Western Front ], 1928-1930.” Journalism Studies , 17, no� 4 (2016): 490-501� Taylor, U� Harley� Erich Maria Remarque: A Literary and Film Biography � New York: Peter Lang, 1988� 648 Veiko Vaatmann Thomas, Jenny� Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics � London: Routledge, 2013� Tims, Hilton� Erich Maria Remarque: The Last Romantic . New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003� Westphalen, Tilman. “Kameradschaft zum Tode: Nachwort von Tilman Westphalen.” E. M. Remarque , ‘Der Weg zurück.’ Köln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1998. The Road Back to War: The Ideological Reliability of the Narrator 649