While drawing up my presentation/activity/group discussion thing for class today, I kept coming back to what Aubrey posted about - there's a very real distinction between the Homefront and the Western Front. Only, I drew the seperation more distinctly. There's a homefront, the reserves, and the trenches themselves. And I figured out that while the book dealt with gender, nature, and authority in different ways depending on where Paul found himself, I kept coming back to gender. Specifically, the ways in which women are thought of and portrayed.

The men (boys?) first discuss women in the beginning chapters while they are still in the reserves and have not taken us to the trenches just yet. They immerse themselves in Nature and really try to enjoy what quiet happiness they can get. There is a scene in which they talk about women, and only two of them (Tjaden and another man, if I remember correctly) get crude. When they do, the others feel uncomfortable. Like Tjaden crosses a line that they won't follow him across. Which is absolutely bonkers, because they have already been to the trenches together. 

Then, while in the trenches, they are bombarded by artillery in the run up to a raid. They grab the brass rings that come with the artillery and talk about making clothes for women back home. Kropp talks about using them to make clothes for his wife, and the men start talking about how his wife must be voluptuous and sexy and a real catch. He enjoys it. The narrator explicitly mentions how pleased he is that his trenchmates think his wife must be a looker. 

The French girls is this awkward outlier. They are in the reserves, so they aren't technically free of the war. However, they sneak past the guards and are on the French side of the river, free of their commanding officers, and they presumably have sex with the French girls in exchange for food. However, it's more than a few French women prostituting themselves for some army bread. Paul is caught up in the romance of the situation and he really thinks that he and "the slim brunette" have a romantic connection. As far as he is concerned, what he experiences is love. Then, of course, he tells her that he's going back to Germany and realizes that she didn't care about him as much as she cared about him being on the front. I would say that he's devastated, but he's only as devastated as the war lets him be. He moves on pretty quickly.

The last example I can think of is when Kat and Paul find a poster of an actress while in the reserves. They are dumbstruck that someone so beautiful can be anywhere near the front, even if it is only in picture form. (Compare that to when the Kaiser shows up for inspection, and how let down Paul is that the Kaiser is shorter than he appears in pictures.) Paul talks about how they don't really have words to express themselves, and it's almost sad how struck they are by this picture. 

With all of the above said, I feel like I can begin to figure this out but I don't quite have it nailed down just yet. It makes sense in the nature-drenched reserves, where they are putting outhouses together so that they can play cards in the field together, that someone would get sexual with their idea of women. However, they still hold on to the idea of respect and virtuosity toward women from home, so the rest of the men feel almost embarassed. Then, while in the trenches, they go full carnal with their ideas. And the French women are a moment of impusle, of Paul thinking that he has found true love but really falling for a hero-worshipping Frenchwoman. And the poster is less about women on the front and more about it being a sad, yet humorous, scene in which Kat and Paul try to reconcile beauty while being surrounded by death and disease and decay. But I feel as if there is something missing from my understanding of this larger idea, and I'm hoping that I've structured my presentation in a way that will end up getting the class (and therefore, myself) a better answer.