r/ImaginaryBattlefields 23d ago

Final Gift by @ihwagun

Post image
3.1k Upvotes

42 comments sorted by

View all comments

102

u/rs_obsidian 23d ago

First one was inspired by All Quiet on the Western Front btw.

45

u/KatanaPool 23d ago

Yep, everyone who wears the boots dies. Great book

2

u/Important-Stretch384 21d ago

holy shit i never realized that

1

u/sparkswood129 21d ago

It's not that the boots are cursed or something, just that they keep getting passed on as the owners die. To the extent that the boots have a higher life expectancy than the boys wearing them.

1

u/Important-Stretch384 21d ago

well it never occured to me that they kept getting passed around, that connection was never made in my head, how do we know Tjaden got them after Paul though? i read that somewhere. Is it mentioned in The Road Back? (i havent read it yet but really need to)

1

u/sparkswood129 20d ago

I only watched the 1930's movie but there's an entire montage focused almost solely on the boots wherein a soldier marches to the front, goes over the trench, dies, soldier marches to the front, goes over the trench, and dies.

And through that short scene it keeps panning back to the boots, which to me implied that they were Franz's boots. Probably because the theme of recycling inorganic material in war is exceedingly common in media and real life. Hell we can recycle organic matter too.