Chapter Four continues and the group is out of danger for the moment, but the cries of wounded horses can be heard loud and clear from somewhere nearby. Detering, a farmer, can't stand the cries of the dying and panicked horses and wants to put them out of their misery, but Katczinsky won't let him. Detering is angry and comments on the cruelty of using horses in the war.
Some time later, at three o'clock, the group is returning to the base camp. However, a bombardment starts as they're en route to their destination through a graveyard and they have to take cover. Everyone gets to cover in just the nick of time and the shells land near the graveyard. They make their mark and Paul is hit by two splinters: One grazes his arm but doesn't injure him, another hits his helmet without injuring him directly but it does cause him to almost loose consciousness. A crater has opened and Paul dives into it, and a damaged coffin is inside. Katczinsky tells Paul that the air is filled with gas, and Paul puts on his gas mask. Paul, Kat, Kropp, and one other soldier jump into the shell-hole, but soon realize that the gas will collect in it more densely than on the surface. They're about to leave the hole when another bombardment starts, and a coffin lands on the unnamed soldier's arm. He tries to tear his gas mask off but Kropp keeps him from doing so while the other two work away at the coffin.
I commented before that when the first bombardment started I probably would have deserted the army regardless of whether it was logically plausible or not, so I would probably be a corpse incapable of hearing anything even if I wanted to. However, assuming that I didn't desert the group, I still wouldn't even be capable of imagining what a horse screaming would sound like.
The quick reactions of the soldiers, whether incredibly fast unconscious thinking or some primal reflexes, astounds me repeatedly. Even if someone told me to take cover, I probably wouldn't react fast enough to dive behind a gravestone or mound before the shells hit. Probably the thing I can connect to most so far is the soldier whose arm was trapped under the coffin trying to tear the gas mask off. I would probably react the same way if I was wearing the already intolerable gas mask and suddenly had my arm pinned under something. I can't help but think Paul is unlikely to die at this point, if at all - a hundred blank pages in a 150 page book is rather expensive if you're mass-producing copies of a book.
Why do you think Remarque chose to have these main characters in a hole in the ground, and a coffin fall on them? He could have chosen any setting, any object. What is the resulting image, and what affect does it have on the tone of the novel?
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