The Pre-Liminal State of the Home Front Versus the Liminal State of the War Front
By: J. Garcia
Tags: WIB History, Literature, War, Literary Criticism

There is a clear divide between the war front and the home front in Erich M. Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. In the novel, the war front is a world of gruesome terror and perpetual death. On the other hand, the home front is a world that exists removed from the most serious effects of the war. If the war front represents a liminal world with shifting territorial lines and new replacements for dying men, then the home front represents a pre-liminal world, which fails to understand the real effects of war for those living on the front. The front lines exist in the in-between state of death and survival. The home front continues manifesting the nationalistic attitudes that led Germany to war in the first place. Remarque establishes the differences between the liminality of the war front against the pre-liminal state at the home front by constructing a home front removed from and detached from the bloody affairs of the front line.

The pre-liminal world, before the Great War, was awash in a fervent nationalism that pushed Germany forward into war and continued at the home front during the war. Ambitious historical notions of ever-expansionist empires, such as Europe had seen for generations, fed the views of the Germans. The young were led by their teachers and parents to join up and sacrifice for the fatherland. The narrator explains: “Kantorek had been our schoolmaster… During drill-time Kantorek gave us long lectures until the whole of our class went, under his shepherding, to the District Commandant and volunteered” (Remarque 10, 11). The home front demonstrated the continued pre-liminal attitude even after World War I had dragged on for years. Although the home front suffers, its residents are far removed from the atrocities of the front lines. People in the home front piece together the stories of the war as a mental exercise, not a physical one. Therefore, they revert constantly to the pre-liminal notion of war as a national good.

In is interesting to note, the ones contemplating war as a mental exercise at home were mostly women. Philip Thody in his essay “The Civilian at Home” explains, “most civilians, after all, are women” (90). Therefore, although they can, to some extent, imagine what is happening at the front, they failed to understand the trauma the young men faced in the war front. When the narrator returns home he hears his sister’s voice and becomes “powerless.” He states, “I can do nothing, I struggle to make myself laugh, to speak, but no word comes, and so I stand on the steps, miserable, helpless, paralyzed, and against my will the tears run down my cheeks” (Remarque 57, 58). However, notice the sister’s immediate reply to Paul’s reaction, “my sister comes back and says: ‘Why, what is the matter?’” (Remarque 158). There can be many issues at play here, but the sister’s lack of comprehension of the narrator’s consternation upon his return to the safety that the home front represents allows us to see the disconnect between those at the home front versus those at the war front. In fact, because most women had never been to the front or experienced the horror of dismembered bodies, blood, and gore they could probably not understand the men’s state of mind coming home from the war front.

While at the home front privations, such as food shortages and rationing were taking place, however, the mentality had not shifted from a pre-liminal state to the liminal state the soldiers were facing at the war front. As we have seen the pre-liminal state consisted of an ardent nationalist sentiment. When the narrator returns, he can see that this has not changed. People are still looking at the war from the perspective of Germany’s standing in the world. Speaking about morale at the home front Thody states, “in Germany in myth, it was the collapse of morale on the home front which led to defeat in the First World War” (89). As Thody points out it was a myth that the lack of moral on the home front caused the German defeat. In the novel, Remarque demonstrates the home front’s morale was well and upbeat when the narrator returns as evidenced by his shock and consternation.

The first indication of the pre-liminal state demonstrated at home was his sister’s welcome, but it was quickly followed by his mother’s illness and a stern major he meets another day. His mother’s illness reminds the narrator that there are troubles outside the war and not brought in by the war. Paul’s mother has cancer, but she is also ready to help spur her son on patriotically. She is ready with a “jar of preserved whortleberries” that the narrator would later enjoy with his friends at the front (Remarque 159). On the other hand, the Major is preoccupied with command structures and salutes which have a tendency to disappear in the front lines. He states, “you think you can bring your front-line manners here, what?… Thank God, we have discipline here!” (Remarque 163). The Major’s focus on decorum and form shows how disconnected he is from the gruesome action on the front lines. Again, the pre-liminal state revolves around patriotism and a prewar world and not the reality of the ongoing war.

The home front assists the war effort but it is separated by social and economic difference. Heike Weber explains, “female effort…called upon women to contribute to the war through resource-saving housekeeping, and, more specifically, through the separation, collection and donation of any potentially reusable waste” (372). At home, the war affected its people by reorganizing the economy but the character’s family were not displaced or suffered other major privations. At the front, the war is a contribution of lives. The war front is shaped by death. From the narrator’s sister to Kontarak, those at home are worried about issues that were important before the war and probably would be after but not the liminal state of the war with its struggle between survival and not much more. At home, they live in general safety. Their fears are more closely connected to a pre-liminal war existence than the shifting and ongoing processes of war.

On the front lines home, safety, and rank disappear behind the liminal nature of the fighting and death. Remarque pointedly writes, “the terror of the front sinks deep down when we turn our back upon” (140). The war front is about basic survival. The soldiers exist in a liminal state of fighting and surviving. The lines move this way and that but the war continues. They are stuck between what is (war) and what will be (post-war life). The narrator explains, “We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war” (Remarque 87, 88). The war represents a state of in-between for these young men who cannot move on with their lives. For the young men fighting the war, the home front becomes a thing of the distant past and future that gets drowned out by the explosions of the social impasse of the shells.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque makes clearly makes the differences between the war front and the home front. Teachers, parents, and students interpreted their duty as supporting the nation through fervid patriotism, which taken as a whole represents the pre-liminal state of the home front. However, once at the front, patriotism melts away under the reality of war and those at the front are then thrust into a liminal state. The at the front experience the pre-liminal state. The narrator recounts how he enthusiastically joined the war. However, the harsh reality of death, toil, and sickness does away with the pre-liminal state and allows the soldiers at the front to pass onto the liminal state found in the front lines. They await the post-liminal, which would be demarcated by the end of the war. However, those on the home front never pass the pre-liminal state because they are removed physically from the worst of the war.