Laughing Brunette

The second theme I gained from today's reading, was the soldier's only escape during the war... ladies. Kropp and Paul stood in front of a poster of a beautiful woman with a well kept man, they took no notice of the male at first, only admiring the woman from head to toe. They later saw the male, and unrealistically tried to make themselves like him. It was unrealistic because he was clean, and he had nice WHITE shirts. Later, two more soldiers walked by, and the woman on the poster reminded him of his first "intercourse", as Paul described it. I had to keep in mind that these were young men at the age of seventeen to twenty.Paul, Kropp, Kat, and Tjaden later met some French women across a river(which I assume is a borderline between the two enemies, because both parties did not want to cross the bridge in broad daylight). In exchange of "comfort", they presented the ladies with bread, cigars... rations that was suppose to help strengthen themselves through the war. From this, situations during that time were revealed. Not only were the soldiers starving and needy of food, so were people at home front(as we will find out later when Paul takes his seventeen day leave for home). Even through these desperate times, the soldiers were willing to give up their rations in order to gain service of these women, this showed how greatly they craved for it.At night, the men sneaked into the house of these women. Paul had gone with a brunette lady, who seems to be older than him. However, during the time Paul was there, he was not thinking any dirty thoughts. He was thinking about leaving worries, and his for just a moment, leave the war behind. It was the soldier's way to escape from a world of blood, bodes, rifles, shelling... This is also why this book is banned. This novel goes into no detail, because the focus of it was not the event itself, but the mental food and thoughts going through the soldier's heads, that had nothing to do with ladies.