An Expression of Calm - All Quiet 17 - A Closing Discussion
"We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will will merely submit, and most will be bewildered; -- the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin."
All Quiet on the Western Front - Closing Discussion (thru Chapter 12) : This not only ends our novel, All Quiet on the Western Front - but it also brings to a close our prolonged discussion of war which really began on the first day of class (Chris Hedge's Commencement Speech). There is so much to go over today - I know of no other way than Ringmaster Teacher - and I want to leave some time at the end of class for two things - every student's comment, question, or takeaway from the novel - and time to show the very ending of the excellent movie version (which we used to show - the entire movie- after class for extra credit a long, long time ago) of All Quiet on the Western Front from 1930. We will talk about the ending - how the Hospital Chapter gets the readers hopes up - only to have them dashed by the end of Kat - and then Paul. And we will get back to that guy on the bus - who said he joined up in Vietnam after having read this book - and I think I have an answer to that...
Lesson Overview
We have a lot to do today - talk about Chapters 10 (part 2), 11 and 12. I also want to leave time for the students' (all of them) takeaway on the novel. And you need to leave time to show the last 3 minutes of the 1930 movie - it really is a perfect ending of the book. If time is an issue and something has to be sacrificed - it would be the chapters that the students have already gone over in their groups (Chapter 10 part 2).
You will start as always with a quiz - and today's quiz is very telling. Every single year that I taught the book - I had a fair amount of students in each class miss or get wrong the question about what happens to Paul Baumer at the very end of the book. There is a simple answer for that: The book appears typologically and otherwise to end on page 295 with the line -"heedless of the will that is within me." Only by turning the page do you see the rest of the story and that Paul actually dies on the cusp of the end of the war. Such a waste.
Please see my Lesson Notes for ALL of the important questions and ideas to be discussed today. Here are a small sampling of some of those questions and ideas to put to the students:
pg. 240 - Why does Paul get hit? How does this fit in with what came before?
246 - The nurse who torments Paul and Albert by not "understanding" the rules of the Front.
250 - The nuns and their prayers - not understanding what the men need - more subtly: the men in turn not understanding the rules of the "nuns"
258 - Peter and the dying room - how this gets our hopes up for the book (and Kat & Paul)
263 - The irony of "how senseless is everything that can be written" when we are reading and discussing and being moved by "WORDS"
268 - How things end with Albert - again, like Peter and the dying room - a hopeful note
284 - Other men in the company dying - "What good was it that Bertinek was good at math".
290 - The totally unexpected death of Kat - we thought he had made it - we thought it was a minor wound. Our expectations
296- The death of Paul - how does he die? What is especially ironic and tragic about his death?
Ok - the vet on the back of the bus from our first lesson on All Quiet. He told me - much to my shock - that he joined up and fought in Vietnam after reading All Quiet on the Western Front in his high school class. I think I have an answer. Ask the students how many of them didn't or ALMOST didn't read those last two pages with Paul's death. In my experience it's about 1/2 the class. Ok - the guy on the back of the bus missed it. Paul survived. He made it back. He then becomes exactly what Mary (in the intro to Slaughter House 5) worried about - he becomes a Romantic Figure. The way to DeRomanticize War - the question - the theme I have tried to keep my students focused on during this entire unit - is to kill off your main character. Not even The Things They Carried did that.
Now - it's time to hear what your students thought about the book. Go around the entire room - but you will probably have to leave it at their comment or question - there won't be much time for a discussion on these points.
Finally, show the clip of the very ending of All Quiet on the Western Front from the 1930 movie. It is a perfect ending to this unit.
As I said, the lesson notes have these (along with page numbers) and many, many more ideas and things to talk about (if you can read my writing)...
My Lesson Notes & a sample reading page
These are the definitive notes. See above for some of what we go over in this Teacher Led discussion.
It is like a time machine - going back to these notes...
See above for instructions - the text with my notes served as a guide for the questions, comments and ideas that I ask - though I was always ready for and often elicited the students ideas, questions, etc. Over the years - as I wrote notes in this text - the previous years' notes and questions become incorporated into the lesson. Again - you will find that these instructions are flexible - and I had to be - they kept changing the amount of time that we had in the classroom.
All Quiet (1930) ending
The ending of this movie is absolutely perfect - and works so well to tie the unit on All Quiet on the Western Front together. I have shown it at the very end of our discussion for years. In the old days, we used to watch the entire film after school for extra credit. About a third of the students would show up. It was also a great thing to do - but students, as the years went on, cared less and less about extra credit. Make sure you screen it yourself first.
I am aware there was a recent (2022) movie - I haven't seen it and probably won't. I heard they got rid of the singular focus on Paul Baumer - which is, in my opinion, the entire point of the book.
Remote Enhancements
I did this pretty much as it is remotely. Teacher led discussions work fine for remote learning as long as you can count on your students active participation.
Links
AllQuietClosingDisc_2016.m4aAudio Recording of Today's Lesson
An audio of our class discussing the end of All Quiet on the Western Front from 2016
Grand Illusion - Movie and Questions : Students will watch a film - answering some questions immediately - and more involved thinking prompts at home.
Grand Illusion is about French Prisoners of War and their attempts to escape the German Prison camp that they are in. However, it is even more about the idea of "class" and its illusions - along with the illusions of the natural boundaries that are the basis of war.
WHAT CAME BEFORE:
All Quiet on the Western Front 16 - Chapter 10.5 - The Dying Room - Group Work
Thoughts on the Lesson
I can no longer remember if it was a student or myself who saw the answer to "the guy on the back of the bus". We don't know for sure - but he probably missed those last two pages - as so many students (and perhaps teachers) have. Paul Baumer, and his book and his poplar trees are like old friends - and I remember every year looking forward to venture forth with them once more.