All Quiet on the Western Front Vocabulary Flashcards
showing a lack of experience, wisdom or judgment
naive
a brown soil like material of boggy, acid ground, consisting of partly decomposed vegetable matter
peat
a list of data items, commands: a live or squence of people awaiting their turn to be attended to or proceed
queue
to exclude from a society or group
ostracized
a place, usually a civilian’s house or other non military facility where soldiers are lodged temporarily
billets
the complete range or scope of something
gamut
disconcertion; confusion; embarrassment; anxious embarrasment
discomfiture
angry or dissatisfied
disgruntled
persisting tirelessly
indefatigable
having an irritatingly strong and unpleasant taste or smell
acrid
too long; slow, dull; tiresome or monotonous
tedious
dreamily or wistfully thoughtful
pensiveness
a thing said or done for amusement; joke
jest
without suffering any injury, damage or harm
unscathed
fearing apprehensive; a feeling that something bad will happen
foreboding
have an effect or impact, especially a negative one
impinges
start to lose strength or momentum
faltering
unconsciousness or incapacity resulting from a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke
apoplexy
showing warmth and friendliness
affably
the remnants of a liquid left in a container, together with any sediment or grounds
dregs
annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand
obtuse
ardently active, devoted, or diligent; full of
zealously
very attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail
fastidious
very severe or serious; causing grief or great sorrow:
grievious
a departure from what is normal, usual, unexpected, typically on that is unwelcome
aberration
A young German soldier fighting in the trenches during World War I. He is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He is, at heart, a kind, compassionate, and sensitive young man, but the brutal experience of warfare teaches him to detach himself from his feelings. His account of the war is a bitter invective against sentimental, romantic ideals of warfare.
Paul Bäumer
A soldier belonging to Paul’s company and Paul’s best friend in the army. he is forty years old at the beginning of the novel and has a family at home. He is a resourceful, inventive man and always finds food, clothing, and blankets whenever he and his friends need them.
Stanislaus Katczinsky
One of Paul’s classmates who serves with Paul in the Second Company. An intelligent, speculative young man, he is one of Paul’s closest friends during the war. His interest in analyzing the causes of the war leads to many of the most critical antiwar sentiments in the novel.
Albert Kropp
One of Paul’s classmates. he is a hardheaded, practical young man, and he plies his friends in the Second Company with questions about their postwar plans.
Müller
One of Paul’s friends in the Second Company. he is a wiry young man with a voracious appetite. He bears a deep grudge against Corporal Himmelstoss.
Tjaden
A pompous, ignorant, authoritarian schoolmaster in Paul’s high school during the years before the war. he places intense pressure on Paul and his classmates to fulfill their “patriotic duty” by enlisting in the army.
Kantorek
A noncommissioned training officer. Before the war, he was a postman. He is a petty, power-hungry little man who torments Paul and his friends during their training. After he experiences the horrors of trench warfare, however, he tries to make amends with them.
Corporal Himmelstoss
One of Paul’s classmates and comrades in the war. After suffering a light wound, he contracts gangrene, and his leg has to be amputated. His death, in Chapter Two, marks the reader’s first encounter with the meaninglessness of death and the cheapness of life in the war.
Franz Kemmerich
The first of Paul’s classmates to die in the war. he did not want to enlist, but he caved under the pressure of the schoolmaster, Kantorek. His ugly, painful death shatters his classmates’ trust in the authorities who convinced them to take part in the war.
Joseph Behm
One of Paul’s close friends in the Second Company. he is a young man with a wife and a farm at home; he is constantly homesick for his farm and family.
Detering
A French soldier whom Paul kills in No Man’s Land. he is a printer with a wife and child at home. He is the first person that Paul kills in hand-to-hand combat, one of Paul’s most traumatic experiences in the war.
Gérard Duval
One of Paul’s classmates and close friends during the war. he serves with Paul in the Second Company. He was the first in Paul’s class to lose his virginity.
Leer
One of Paul’s friends in the Second Company. A gigantic, burly man, he was a peat-digger before the war. He plans to serve a full term in the army after the war ends, since he finds peat-digging so unpleasant.
Haie Westhus
A soldier in a neighboring unit. he is a bed wetter like Tjaden.
Kindervater
A patient in the Catholic hospital where Paul and Kropp recuperate from their wounds. he desperately wants to have sex with his visiting wife but is confined to bed because of a minor fever.
Lewandowski
One of Paul’s classmates. he becomes a training officer and enjoys tormenting Kantorek when Kantorek is conscripted as a soldier.
Mittelstaedt
