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. receives him again and often for ever” (55). In this way, Remarque’s depiction of nature is quite
traditional; according to Tim Matts and Aidyn Tynan in “Geotrauma and the Eco-Clinic: Nature,
Violence, and Ideology,” “Nature . . . is the ideological object par excellence, in the sense that it
is conjured up out of the web of intersubjective, social interactions in order to ground those
interactions in some extra-social element” (154). Thus, Remarque’s descriptions play into the
“extra-social” parts of the soldiers’ lives in a very standard way. Nature is even described in
religious terms, with Paul declaring: “Earth!—Earth!—Earth! Earth with thy folds, and hollows,
and holes, into which a man may fling himself and crouch down. In the spasm of terror, under
the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, though grantest us
the great resisting surge of new-won life” (55). The soldiers trust and rely on nature, practically
worshipping it because at this point in the novel, it is the only stable and apparently morally pure
thing in their lives.

However, despite the soldiers’ trust and expectations, nature fails to truly protect Paul
and his friends from horror, showing that even a power as strong as the natural world must bend
to the will of war. The soldiers seek protection in the one thing they trust, but it constantly fails
them. Toward the end of the war, Paul relates that “there was one man who even tried to dig
himself into the ground with his hands, feet, and teeth” (279), and the obvious futility of his
efforts backlights the fruitlessness of the soldiers’ trust throughout the rest of the novel. Instead
of offering the protection the soldier misguidedly seeks, the earth is just as helpless as he is.
Similar things happen repeatedly: when the soldiers seek shelter, “the earth bursts before us. It
rains clods” (66); later, when they are exhausted, wounded, and dehydrated, “The sun blazes
hotly” (114). These instances reflect Michael J. Lawrence’s assessment in “The Effects of
Modern War and Military Activities on Biodiversity and the Environment” that “it is evident that

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