Who is Kantorek in the book Western Front?
Kantorek is an old schoolmaster of Paul, who is the narrator in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Kantorek encourages his students to join the German army through propaganda. Paul feels Kantorek misled them and gave them no useful skills or information to use during their time in the war.
What special ability does Kat have?
Kat’s ability to scrounge extra food and provisions amazes Paul. Kat is a cobbler by trade, but he has an uncanny knack for making the most of life on the front. Kat believes that if every soldier got the same food and the same pay, the war would end quickly.
What kind of person is Himmelstoss?
Corporal Himmelstoss A noncommissioned training officer. Before the war, Himmelstoss 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.
What has happened to Kantorek the former teacher?
What has happened to Kantorek? He has been called up as a territorial. Mittlestaedt rules over him and pays him back for all of the degrading that Kantorek did to him in school. Why is Paul repulsed by the conversation he has with his German master?
What is Kropps philosophy of war?
Kropp’s philosophy of war is if you could just set the two leaders to fight and then declare the winner’s country the winner of the war, war would be more just because the “right” people would do the fighting.
What Himmelstoss means?
Himmelstoss is just such a figure: an unthreatening postman before the war, he evolves into the “terror of Klosterberg,” the most feared disciplinarian in the training camps. At this stage of the novel, Himmelstoss represents the meanest, pettiest, most loathsome aspects of humanity that war draws out.
Why is Himmelstoss hated?
Lesson Summary He’s a training officer at the training camp the boys must attend before being deployed to the front lines, and he’s universally hated because he’s a bully. He’s cruel, plans sadistic punishments, and throws his weight around. He does this because he’s insecure about his job as a postman before the war.
What does Kantorek say about war?
It is difficult to imagine them in combat. Kantorek tells them that it is their duty to enlist, and anyway, “I believe it will be a quick war, that there will be few losses.