When we're young, we try and think of all the possible things to come in the future. No matter how big or small, our imaginations envelop this view where everything will be handed to us. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque makes it prevalent that the soldiers are ready for war, but they may not be ready to work for it.
The boys don't know what's to come or what's to happen next. They go into the war as boys and they have yet to know what's to happen. They need to mature and grow into men to fully understand all that is around them. It was said that, "When we went to the district commandant to enlist, we were a class of twenty young men, many of whom proudly shaved for the first time before going to the barracks. We had no definite plans for out future. Our thoughts of a career and occupation were as yet of too unpractical a character to furnish any scheme of life" (21). The whole idea of the soldiers growing up into men shows through this. Nothing will be handed to them. They need to earn it all. They were new to the war when they first came in but in order to understand everything they needed to mature into men. It may not have happened at first but the boys would have soon needed to turn to men.
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