Life & Wisdom Quote by Erich Maria Remarque

Violence here isn’t a set piece; it’s weather. Remarque’s genius is how quickly the scene turns from public noise into private dread, using the blunt mechanics of motion to strip away any romance people might attach to crowds, heroism, or war. “The crowd, still shouting” suggests a collective voice that has detached from meaning. Shouting becomes reflex, a social engine that keeps running even as bodies start breaking.

Then the verbs do the moral work. “Gives way,” “plough,” “stumbling”: this isn’t a march of purpose but a forced passage through human material. “Plough” is especially ruthless. It borrows from agriculture - the language of making land productive - and applies it to people, implying that war’s “progress” is achieved by cutting through civilians as if they’re just another medium. The sentence rhythms are clipped, observational, almost reportorial, which makes the panic feel more credible. No lyricism, no permission to aestheticize.

The women “hold their aprons over their faces” is a small domestic detail that lands like an indictment. Aprons belong to kitchens, care, ordinary labor. Here they become improvised masks, a gesture of shame and self-protection, as if the air itself has turned toxic. Remarque isn’t only showing fear; he’s showing the contamination of the everyday by spectacle and brutality.

“A roar of fury goes up” and then the final reveal - “A wounded man is being carried off” - is the pivot: the crowd’s rage has no clear target, but the wound is specific. The subtext is Remarque’s signature anti-heroic realism: the mass emotion is loud, the suffering is carried away quietly, and the world keeps moving.