THE POSTER Part 2

SUMMARY The passage is about a poster that the men see in Army Theater a while ago and the poster is describing what she looks like and how she dressed and a man wearing a sailor’s outfit. They discuss how old she would be. Paul thinks that she is twenty-two and they talk about how she would be older than them. Kropp says that “then she would be older than us, she is not more than seventeen.”(142) The boys are disturbed by this. They feel that their raged uniforms would be no match for the man in white trousers. Paul says, “We proceed to tear the young man with the white trousers off the hoarding, taking care not to damage the girl.”(142)

SUMMARY PRT.2 They proceed to take the lice off their skin and pretty themselves up. They pretty themselves up because they are taken back to the real world and thinking how they would impress a girl. Leer and Tjaden talks about Leers sex life.

THEME  The theme of the passage is lost generation. The men strive to relate to woman. When they think about impressing them they think about getting deloused. Paul says, “We might see if we could get a clean shirt as well.” (143)

PAUL’S FEELINGS  Paul feels that he and his comrades are unfit to court woman. He feels this way do to his dirtiness. He begins to see the difference between him and his comrades and unlisted men. Paul says “Who isn’t smutty is no solider; it merely does not suit us at the moment, so we edge away and march off to the delousing station with the same feeling as if it were a swell gentlemen’s outfitters(143)”