“Three Comrades” (“Drei Kameraden”) is a novel by E.M. Remark. Written during the years of fascism. The first publication (1937) appeared in the USA in English translation, and then in 1938 - in the German emigrant publishing house Querido-Verlag (Amsterdam). In “Three Comrades” they finally decided artistic features creative manner writer and his ideological position.
Together with the novels “On Western Front without change" and "Return", "Three Comrades" form a unique cycle about Remarque's contemporary, a simple middle-class German of the 20th century, who alone is trying to establish himself in a hostile and deceitful post-war world. Remarque largely follows the aesthetics and poetics of E. Hemingway, whose influence on German artist all critics note. In Remarque's "Three Comrades" there is a direct connection with the novel "A Farewell to Arms!" You can find many parallels both in the plot and in figurative system, as well as in tragic ending and interpretation of the theme of love.
The heroes of the novel are Robert Lokamp (the story is told on his behalf), Otto Koster and Gottfrig Lenz - front-line comrades who own a small car repair shop. They are people of the “lost generation”, who have lost faith in political idols and social ideals. These are none other than the heroes of the novels “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “The Return” who have matured in the ten post-war years. Protecting themselves from the hostile forces of society, they seek support in simple forms of human solidarity, determined by their front-line experience, in mutual assistance, friendship and love. They are emphatically apolitical and live in a closed world they have created, as if outside of time, outside the reality surrounding them. However, the existing fascist order cruelly takes revenge on the heroes for their avoidance of the problems of our time. The “last romantic” Lenz dies absurdly (he is accidentally killed by a stormtrooper), Robert, who has lost his beloved, plunges into despair, and tragically experiences the death of Robert’s friend Kester.
Remarque's "Three Comrades" is a novel written in the form of a diary, divided into separate, chronologically successive episodes. His heroes are not only alter ego "of the author, but also typical representatives of their generation. Thus, the subjective, lyrical line of the narrative is connected with the objective chronicle. Hectic pace of life, care the best people from public and political life, a feeling of unsteady ground, growing distrust and discontent, a premonition of tragic events. It is no coincidence that the ending of the novel is the most pessimistic and hopeless of all the writer’s works.
“Three Comrades” is a book not only and not so much about friendship, but about love. Robert's love for Pat and their relationship give meaning to their existence in this cruel and incomprehensible world. The love scenes of the novel amaze with their poetry, sincerity, tenderness and poignancy. "Three Comrades" is one of the most famous novels Remark. To this day, readers different countries the world is attracted by Remarque's interpretation eternal problems love, friendship, devotion, life and death.
Three comrades (disambiguation)
"Three Comrades"(Drei Kameraden) is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, which he began working on in 1932. The novel was completed and published by a Danish publishing house Gyldendal called "Kammerater" in 1936. It was translated into Russian in 1958.
Plot
The action takes place in Germany around 1928. Three comrades - Robert Lokamp (Robbie), Otto Köster and Gottfried Lenz run a small auto repair shop. The main character, auto mechanic Robbie, met charming girl Patricia Holman (Pat). Robbie and Pat are people different destinies and from different walks of life - fell in love with each other.
The novel shows the development of their love against the background of the crisis of those years.
Issues
People who have gone through the crucible of war cannot escape the ghosts of the past. War memories constantly torment the main character. A hungry childhood caused his beloved to become ill. But it was the military brotherhood that united three comrades: Robert Lokamp, Otto Koester and Gottfried Lenz. And they are ready to do anything for friendship. Despite the death that permeates it, the novel speaks of a thirst for life.
Heroes
- Robert Lokamp (Robbie) - main character novel. Beloved of Patricia Holman (Pat). Friend of Gottfried Lenz and Otto Koester. Member of the First World War.
- Otto Koester- one of the main characters. During the war, he was a pilot; in the novel, he was the owner of the auto repair shop where the main characters worked. Otto is an amateur racing driver, participated in races in the Karl car, in which he won several times. He is interested in boxing.
- Gottfried Lenz- one of the main characters of the novel. He served in the army, traveled a lot around the world, evidence of which is his suitcase, covered with all kinds of postcards, stamps and other things. He worked in a car repair shop with Kester and Lokamp. A very easy-going, positive person, the “soul” of the company. Outwardly, he stood out in the crowd with his straw-like mop of hair. Friends called him the ultimate, “paper” romantic.
- Patricia Holman (Pat)- the beloved of the main character. The story of this love forms the basis of the plot of the work.
Productions and film adaptations
- 1938 - film "Three Comrades" ("Three Comrades") - film directed by Frank Borzage (USA)
- 1998 - film Flowers from the Winners - the action is moved to the 1990s in Russia. Directed by Alexander Surin.
- 1999 - play, staged by Galina Volchek. Theater "Sovremennik".
Excerpt from G. Bergelson's review on the topic “Three Comrades”
Living in exile, Remarque continued to create. But the next thing happened
He published the information only in 1938. It was the novel "Three Comrades".
The setting of the book is Berlin. We judge this by individual signs
cities, such as the famous Charité clinic, and those who
the novel melts in the original, - according to a number of words and expressions in the Berlin dialect -
those that the author puts into the mouths of some characters. As for-
Xia time of action, then this is 1928. The time is indicated absolutely precisely,
because it is an important object artistic research, carried out
nogo author of the novel.
Although it has been a while since the last shots were fired
again ten years, life was still saturated with the memory of the war, after-
the consequences of which were felt at every step. It’s not for nothing that they, these memories
misunderstanding, and the author himself led to the creation of his famous anti-war
novel.
The memory of front-line life is firmly embedded in the current existence of the three
the main characters of the novel, Robert Lokamp, Otto Köster and Gottfried Lenz,
seems to continue within him. This is felt at every step - not only in
big, but also in small, in countless details of their life, their behavior, their
conversations. Even the smoking asphalt cauldrons remind them of camping fields.
high kitchens, car headlights - a spotlight clinging to the plane during
his night flight, and the rooms of one of the patients in the tuberculosis hospital
Riya, to whom his comrades in misfortune came to visit, a front-line
dugout.
The war left an indelible mark on the way of thinking of the three comrades.
cabbage soup “Strange as it may seem,” notes Robert, for example, feeling that from
the aroma of freshly brewed coffee can be heard from the kitchen, but the smell of coffee
I'm happier. Ever since the war I knew: what is important, significant cannot
calm us down... It’s always a little thing, a trifle that consoles us..." And if he says:
“Our past has taught us not to look too far ahead,” then we understand
We understand that by “past” here we also mean the war years.
The constant memories of the heroes about their youth at the front have nothing
common with the glorification and romanticization of war. On the contrary, this novel by Re-
brand o peaceful life is as much an anti-war work as
the previous two. "Too much blood has been shed on this earth to
it was possible to maintain faith in the heavenly father!" - this is the conclusion
Lokamp after a conversation with a priest in a church garden.
But thoughts about war do not only belong to the past: they also give rise to
fear of the future, and Robert Lokamp, looking at the baby from the orphanage,
bitterly ironizes: “I would like to know what kind of war it will be in which
I hope he will keep up." Remarque put these words into the mouth of the hero-storyteller for a year
before the start of the Second World War.
In "Three Comrades" Remarque showed himself to be a most skilled master of individual
al characteristics. Each of the three main characters has its own face and
acts in full accordance with the internal logic of his nature. In sa-
At first they appear as a kind of triune character, but very soon
the reader begins to immediately recognize any of them by their behavior, language
ku, in manners, even in gestures. Somewhat later than two of his comrades
Otto Kester “reveals”, and this turns out to be natural, justified,
- after all, restraint is perhaps the main property of this amazingly integral
nature. But as we get to know Kester, we become more and more
we are convinced of his willpower, his determination, his ability to quickly
navigate in difficult situations, accept and carry out the only
possible solution, sometimes even going all-in, especially when it comes to
friend's earnings. And how unlike him with his freckled face, blue-
with my eyes and red forelock, now boyishly mischievous, now in a good sen-
timental Gottfried Lenz, whom he and his friends nicknamed for good reason
"the last romantic"!
The least “recognizable” person is probably Robert Lokamp. This is explained by the fact that
that the narration in the novel is conducted on his behalf, and, instead of objective
judgments about the character, the reader is presented with deep self-characteristics
ka, which he has to figure out “on his own.” But the figure of Ro-
Bertha is of particular interest: she is more identical to herself than any other
to the author and is very often used by him to convey his own
thoughts. It is no coincidence, apparently, that it was this hero that Remarque forced into many
gom repeat your own life path, as he did earlier in
in relation to Paul Bäumer and Ernst Birkholz: Robert Lokamp is thirty
years old, exactly the same as the writer himself was in 1928; him too
was mobilized in 1916 and was also seriously wounded; his mother, like
mother of Remarque (and Paul Bäumer), died of cancer; he also had to become
teacher and also tried many professions after the war, including
profession of pianist and performer. Far from it full list details, confirm
emphasizing the autobiographical nature of the image of the hero-storyteller.
Robert Lokamp in much to a greater extent, than his comrades and in-
in general any of the other characters in the book are shown from the inside. According to him
in my own words, for many years after the war he lived “stupidly, thoughtlessly and
hopeless." And if he, a dropout university student, spread
with books, concerts and theater performances, in a humorous word-
in the spring, in a skirmish with Lenz, he says that he has long lost the hunt
something to learn and that he himself does not know why he lives in the world, then in
this joke is large share truth.
Forcing Robert to engage in introspection, Remarque explores thoughts and
the mood of the "lost generation" in general. Much of what
characteristic of him, characteristic of his comrades as well, only Lenz has this
appears under the guise of a joke, and Kester, stingy with words, rarely speaks at all.
speaks his thoughts out loud. However, the same can be said about a number of
other heroes. After all, in fact, this is a novel not only about three comrades.
Don't they belong to " lost generation"Ferdinand Grau, Valentin
Gauser, Alphonse and some other characters from those who survived the fire
war, but lost peace of mind and is now trying to get out of the
shock through endless drinking and brawls?
Moreover, to a certain extent, the “lost generation” includes
also one of the main figures in the book is Patricia Holman. Although charming
Pat is younger than his lover Robbie and his friends and, naturally, not
knows what life is like in a front-line trench, she is also a victim of war: how
doctors state that her fatal illness is a consequence of malnutrition
Denmark for children's and teenage years, which occurred during war times. Kes-
Ter, Lenz and their other friends willingly accept Pat into the “ranks of comrades”
(Alphonse: “After all, you are ours now. I would never have thought that a woman could
to belong in such a company"), and this is explained not only by respect for
Robert's love feeling, but also because the sadly ironic attitude
The girl’s approach to life is close to their own views. Owner of the boarding house
Frau Zalewski finds straightforward, but quite apt words, character-
deploring their mental trauma: “You hate the past, you despise the present-
those, and the future is indifferent to you."
"Three Comrades" is a novel with a broad social background. This is achieved in
in particular, by the fact that it is densely “populated” with episodic and semi-episodic
characters representing various circles and strata of the German people
yes, and among them there is, it seems, not a single one who does not remain in the reading room
memory, although some of them, such as the old National Treasurer,
leaf, living in the boarding house Frau Zalewski, captured using everything
two or three strokes. All the other inhabitants of this establishment are also remembered.
nia, as well as its owner and her maid Frida, as well as other persons
the profits of the novel, which only fleetingly appear on the path of the main characters.
A special place in this round dance is occupied by a line of tuberculosis patients
sanatorium, with which last chapters In the novel, Pat is driven by illness.
Here, by the way, it should be noted that in the way stories about destinies
these people, so different in origin and position, are woven into a common
narration, the influence of T. Mann's novel "The Magic Mountain" is very noticeable
(1924).
The theme of partnership as the most important one in the novel is already given in the title.
vii. Confirmed bachelors Otto Koester, Gottfried Lenz and Robert Lokamp
live, essentially life together. They are not averse to being rude to each other.
gu, as boys or young men do, but the interests of a comrade are inescapable
They turn out to be higher for each of them than their own. The fate of the comrade
society takes shape here differently than in “Return”: it does not
is an illusion, stands the test of time, does not disintegrate, but transforms
becomes friendship in the highest sense of the word, and effective friendship,
active, threatened only external forces like a killer's revolver
Lenza.
The partnership undergoes the most serious test after an outbreak of the disease.
Pat's death until her death, on the eve of which Otto makes a sacrifice
wear: sells his "Carl", a car that was like theirs
fourth comrade and about whom Kester had previously said that he would rather agree
wants to sell his hand rather than sell this car.
In this novel, Remarque managed to create an amazingly poetic
a picture of love. It’s all here - from the birth of mutual feelings between Robbie and
Pat until the tragic denouement - breathes truth and delivers true es-
tic pleasure. Sincere and natural, completely devoid of any
affectation, any game, love takes the hero and heroine out of their state of mind
numbness. In Robbie, she breaks through the shell of indifference, and he
he tells himself that he has known happiness. The theme of love is closely intertwined with
the theme of camaraderie. Together they form an anchor of salvation for people
ryannogo generation", liberate them from loneliness.
Camaraderie, active friendship and love - important aspects humanistic
what Remarque program. Another significant aspect of it is the composition
joy. “Pity is the most useless thing in the world,” passionately
Robert throws out in a conversation with Frau Zalewski. - She is the other side
gloating, let it be known to you." But these words, as he himself admits,
Roy-narrator, pronounced with irritation. They mask true thoughts
and Lokamp’s feelings are caused precisely by this “most useless object on
light", pity, compassion for the unfortunate lot of the accountant Hasse and even
his wife, although her infidelity was the reason for her husband’s suicide. Such a position
tion is characteristic of Robert and his friends: behind the rudeness and cynicism
hides a truly humane attitude towards those who need compassion
Denmark
And there are a lot of people who need sympathy in the novel, because Remarque
feels well the dependence of the destinies of his heroes on difficult fate Germa-
research of that era. Many microplots are skillfully woven into the fabric of the book,
dedicated to people whose lives “reduced to nothing but painful struggle
for a wretched, bare existence." These people include, for example, the authorities
dealers of pitiful belongings going under the hammer, who are met at auction
Kester and Lokamp buying an old car here. Impossible to forget
nor a married couple who are forced by necessity to part with this car.
billem, nor the lonely old woman who bought a parrot here so that she could have it at home
there was at least someone who would “talk” to her. And the three products themselves
The villages are also in a constant struggle for existence, the affairs of their workshop
They go from bad to worse and eventually end in failure.
The cross-cutting theme, which turns into one of the leitmotifs of the novel, is
The topic of unemployment comes up. Many times it is said here about Berliners dreaming
find at least some income. We meet them in the most unexpected
places - on the races, where they hope for the smile of fortune, in museums, where
there is an opportunity to warm up, - we learn the stories of entire families who were poisoned -
gas because the heads of these families had completely despaired of
get a job. But even those who have jobs live in fear: they are afraid of
tear it down, since behind every dismissal there yawns “the abyss of eternal unemployment-
tsy".
"Three Comrades" does not contain an obvious anti-fascist tendency, if not
consider that the pogromists killing Lenz, although their party
affiliation is not indicated, Nazi thugs are definitely guessed
PS Apparently, Remarque had not yet joined in 1938, as many others had done.
other emigrant writers, on the path of open struggle with the hated
Hitler's regime. But then the news coming from Germany and the events
world history intensified the position of the writer and forced him to refuse
to avoid political neutralism. After all, in the very year when they were
"Three Comrades" was published, the Nazis occupied Austria and Czechoslovakia,
and a year later they imposed a second world war. And already in 1940
Remarque's anti-fascist novel "Love Thy Neighbor" was published.
Fascist “justice” took revenge on Remarque by sending him to the guillotine
the writer's younger sister, a resident of Dresden, dressmaker Elfrida Remarque,
married Scholz, accused of speaking out against the policies of the Fuhrer and
personally against him and in a defeatist mood. Surviving archival
materials indicate that at the tribunal meeting held
On October 29, 1943, under the chairmanship of the executioner of the German people, Ro-
Landa Freisler, the “dirty little book” on the Western Front without
changes" concocted by the accused's brother."
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Three comrades
Subtitles
Plot
The action takes place in Germany around 1928. Three comrades - Robert Lokamp (Robbie), Otto Kester and Gottfried Lenz run a small auto repair shop. The main character, auto mechanic Robbie, met a charming girl, Patricia Holman (Pat). Robbie and Pat - people of different destinies and from different walks of life - fell in love with each other. The novel shows the development of their love against the background of the crisis of those years.
Issues
People who have gone through the crucible of war cannot escape the ghosts of the past. War memories constantly torment the main character. A hungry childhood caused his beloved to become ill. But it was the military brotherhood that united three comrades: Robert Lokamp, Otto Kester and Gottfried Lenz. And they are ready to do anything for friendship. Despite the death that permeates it, the novel speaks of a thirst for life.
Heroes
Main characters
- Robert Lokamp (Robbie)- the main character of the novel, he is about 30 years old. Beloved of Patricia Holman (Pat). Friend of Gottfried Lenz and Otto Kester. Participant in the First World War.
- Otto Koester- one of the main characters. Also about 30 years old. During the war, he was a pilot; in the novel, he was the owner of the auto repair shop where the main characters worked. Otto is an amateur racing driver, participated in races in the Karl car, in which he won several times. He is interested in boxing.
- Gottfried Lenz- one of the main characters of the novel. Same age as Otto and Robert. He served in the army, traveled a lot around the world, evidence of which is his apartment with photographs of various places, a suitcase covered with all kinds of postcards, stamps and other things. He worked in a car repair shop with Kester and Lokamp. A very easy-going, positive person, the “soul” of the company. Outwardly, he stood out in the crowd with his straw-like mop of hair. Friends called him the ultimate, “paper” romantic.
- Patricia Holman (Pat)- the beloved of the main character. The story of this love forms the basis of the plot of the work.
Other heroes
- Gigolo- owner of a drinking establishment, good friend Lenza. He loves to fight and loves choral compositions.
- Valentin Gauser- Robert's comrade in arms. He had a hard time surviving the war because of his desire to survive it. After returning from the front, he enjoyed every minute of his life and drank away his inheritance.
- Professor Jaffe- Patricia's attending physician.
- Matilda- a car repair shop cleaner who likes to drink.
- Rose- a local prostitute who has a little daughter. Rosa was forced to give her to a shelter, but continued to take care of her and knit things for her.
- Hasse's wife - married couple who constantly quarrels over lack of money.
- Ferdinand Grau- artist, makes good money from portraits of the dead from photographs. Likes to philosophize.
- Frau Zalewski- owner of the boarding house where Robert Lokamp lived. Considers Robert a "gold-plated vodka bottle" due to his addiction to alcohol.
- Jupp- a boy-apprentice at a car repair shop. He had big ears and dreamed of becoming a racer.
- Erna Bernig- a girl secretary who is in the pay of her boss at work, his mistress. Lives in the boarding house Frau Zalewski.
- Georg Block- poor student.
Male friendship and fidelity in love are the last refuge in the world of Ela. This is the main idea of "Three Comrades". Thematically, the novel is adjacent to the anti-war duology: Remarque tells the story of the fates of those who went through the nightmare of war and survived. Robert Lohkamp, Otto Köster and Gottfried Lenz are connected not just by front-line friendship, but by a commonality of views and fate.
The novel tells about post-war Germany, about young men, now men, who, if not outwardly, then internally confront a world where such concepts as love, marriage, humanity, and friendship are devalued. Traces last war- in the destinies and souls of generations of people who witnessed it. Poverty, post-war unemployment, fierce competition, the struggle for survival - the soil on which the positions of the national chauvinists, who promised the nation prosperity and a well-fed life, were strengthened.
The heroes of the novel constantly turn to the military and post-war first years past. However not here detailed description scenes of military life. The reader only had to compare the milestones in the lives of the protagonist of the novel by Robert Lokamp and the hero of the book “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Paul Bäumer to be convinced that they are from the same generation. This is the generation of the author himself. At the age of eighteen they went to the front, either not to return, like Paul and his comrades, or to return devastated and defeated, like Lokamp, Kester, Lenz.
On the day of his thirtieth birthday, Robert sums up his life. He is a man of few words. Dates are placed sequentially on a sheet of paper, memories are in memory. The first date is 1916, when he, “a skinny eighteen-year-old big man, became a recruit.” In 1917, Kester was wounded and their unit was subjected to a gas attack. 1918 - infirmary. 1919 - revolution, famine. “Machine guns are fired every now and then on the streets. Soldiers against soldiers. Comrades against comrades." In 1920, Kester and Lenz were arrested. They tried to defend progressive views, but after the reactionary coup of 20, they no longer fight. In subsequent years, fate separates them. Lenz goes to South America, the colorful stickers on the suitcase given to Robert are evidence of his exotic travels. During these years, Lokamp worked as a railway worker in Thuringia, as an advertising manager for a rubber products factory, and as a pianist at the Internationale. All this is in the past, as is the attempt to get an education, the memory of which is “documented”, perhaps only in the past. business card at the front doorbell button: “Robert Lokamp. Stud. Phil. Two long ones."
The war continues to be invisibly present on every page of the novel. Patricia explains her tuberculosis by hunger and malnutrition during the war years. Mimi became a prostitute because her husband died in the war from pneumonia, died, not died in battle, so she was not given a pension. Robert's neighbor in the furnished rooms also lost her husband, and now Frau Bender serves as a nurse in an infants' shelter. In 1918, two of her children died of starvation. When the shelter was closed, she was thrown out onto the street. The past is invisibly present in the minds of the heroes. They get drunk “masterfully” because it “glares... with dead eyes” into them, into their memory. But for such cases there was vodka,” says Robert.
They are used to it modern life evaluate from the perspective of the past, sometimes without realizing it. Here in the boarding house, or rather, in the furnished rooms, Frau Zalewski appeared a child in a stroller - Frau Bender brought him. In a purely feminine way, the inhabitants of the house bent over him, “as if the first baby born into the light of God was in front of them,” and demand sympathetic attention from Robert. “After all, he has no idea what awaits him. I would like to know what war he will be in time for,” he declares. The time frame of the novel expands not only into the past, but also into the future.
One of the most colorful figures in the novel is Valentin Gauser, who served in the same company with Robert. This man “out of great misfortune gave himself a small happiness,” according to Lokamp. After the war, he received an inheritance and “began methodically drinking it away.” He remembered every day, every hour of the war, it was as if he continued to live in the dimension of those terrible events, remembering the dates. “Robbie, the thirty-first of July 1717,” says Valentin, raising his glass. And if the events of “that war” “roll over” his comrades in the evenings (this thought runs in the subtext: “in the evenings this tavern becomes... something like home” for them), then Valentin constantly lives with memories that shook his psyche .
The author describes in detail the life of the microcosm in which his heroes live. This is a workshop that belongs to Kester, but the income from which they share equally, these are furnished rooms, bars, cafes where they drink, eat, communicate with friends, these are the streets where they carry a patrol watch and make “big patrol rounds” of their girlfriends -prostitutes, “soldiers of love,” as the author ironically calls them. This is the world of “little people”, opposed to bigots and moneybags. This world has its own ethics, its own relationships. Invited to a company of prostitutes, Robert knows that during the celebration (they are seeing off the marriage of Lilly, who over the years of her service in the ranks of the “soldiers of love” has risen to the higher level of “lady from the hotel” and has accumulated almost four thousand marks) he must not allow a single indelicacy hint - everything is like in a “decent” society. “In short, the conversations at this table would do honor to even the most sophisticated ladies’ society,” we read in the novel. Robert, who visited Patricia’s apartment and saw the fashionable furnishings of the apartment that no longer belonged to her (she had to live on something), leads her down the street and does not hide his acquaintance with the “priestesses of love.” He is not ashamed of his poverty, his acquaintances, friends.
Like the main characters, their neighbors and acquaintances retained their spiritual sensitivity and kindness. They acutely feel the grief of others and strive, if possible, to help. The remarque shows an auction at which the poor sell their last belongings for pennies, among them the owner of a rather worn, but clean and well-maintained car. Seeing that a wacky-looking speculator is trying to snatch it up for next to nothing, Kester and Lokamp raise the price and buy the car themselves, albeit for a low price that is quite satisfactory to the owner. “Everything will immediately go towards paying off debts,” says his wife. Friends give all their winnings at the amusement park to random acquaintances: a cook, a blacksmith, a woman with a child. Despite the losses they suffered, the pain of which does not subside in their souls, Lokamp and his comrades retained a bright view of working people, spiritual sensitivity, often covered with a touch of cynical wit.
The author is concerned about the growing lack of spirituality in society and the strengthening of consumer sentiment. The excellent landscapes of the artist Ferdinand Grau are not in demand, and he lives by painting portraits of dead people from their photographs. This depresses the artist, whose talent is not truly in demand by society. Symbolic meaning his portrait acquires: “blue eyes, set, like two pieces of the sky, into a flabby, wrinkled face.” His constant dissatisfaction with himself served as the reason for the development of a unique philosophy, alien to the active creative search of a true artist: “Never, Robbie, try to know too much! The less you know, the life is easier. Knowledge makes a person free, but also unhappy. Let's drink to naivety, to stupidity and everything that relates to them - to love, to faith in the future, to dreams of happiness - to divine stupidity, to paradise lost."
Robert observes how the audience in the theater besieges the buffet during intermission, and draws a disappointing conclusion: “Music amazingly awakens the appetite of many. Hot sausages were snapped up as if an epidemic of starvation typhus had broken out.” He himself, like Patricia, is capable of acutely experiencing and subtly feeling music: “It was like the south wind, like a swollen sail under the stars, like a warm night, completely unreal. It seemed that a dull stream of alien life was rustling; heaviness disappeared, boundaries were lost, there was only brilliance, and melody, and love, and it was simply impossible to understand that somewhere there was need, and suffering, and despair, if such music sounded.” But Lokamp himself sadly notes that he hasn’t been to the theater for a long time and would not have gone there if it weren’t for his love for Pat. Love enters the novel from its first pages. In a world where, according to Lokamp's firm conviction, you cannot rely on anyone but yourself and in best case scenario comrade, in a world where despair and emptiness reign, feelings for a beautiful girl filled Robert’s entire being. Now life becomes meaningful, and its meaning is in meetings with Patricia, in intimacy with her, in the struggle for her life. And this is Lokamp, whose philosophy of marriage boiled down to the fact that a woman awakens the worst instincts in a man - “the passion for possession, for social status, for earnings, for peace.” Like a precious gift, he receives a meeting with Patricia on his birthday, not yet knowing what she will mean in his life. He feels for Patricia such a feeling when another creature dear to you becomes a part of your “I”, as if gradually growing inside you. While visiting the amusement park in the labyrinth of ghosts, Patricia suddenly became scared and for a second, for a moment, she found herself in Robert's arms. “I let her go, but something in me couldn’t part with her,” he says. This love has passed the test of poverty: Patricia has practically nothing to live for, but there is a rich Breuer who loves her. This is a “nice person,” according to the girl, but she loves Robert. Frau Zalewski categorically told him that this girl was not for him, and Lokamp was drinking away moments of despair due to the fact that he could not give her everything she deserves. “This is love and yet something else. Something worth living for. A man cannot live for love. But he can live for another person,” Robert reflects at the hour when Patricia said that she was happy with him.
Patricia is really not just a loved one - she is also a friend, able to forgive Robert’s boyish antics, understanding him, honest with him, devoted. What Robert and those around him admire about the girl is her simplicity, naturalness, and lack of any kind of panache. The word “friend” in addressing Pat did not come right away, but at the moment of highest tension, when the girl started bleeding: “Pat,” I said, “my brave friend.”
In difficult times, Patricia and Robert have friends by their side. Kester first parted with the racing car “Karl,” which he assembled piece by piece, and then with the workshop so that Patricia could be treated in a mountain sanatorium, and Robert could be with her when the girl’s illness worsened. He brings Professor Jaffe for a consultation with Patricia in the village where she and Robert were vacationing.
Otto Kester, Gottfried Lenz and Robert Lokamp went through the war, for a long time they were each other’s only support that helps them survive both in the war and in the fight against the worst thing - loneliness, the memory of the past that “does not let go.” The novel ends on a tragic note: Patricia dies, Gottfried dies. He is killed by "guys in high boots." Remarque does not directly say who, but it is clear that they were fascist thugs. Two irreplaceable losses for Kester and Lokamp...
In “Three Comrades,” Remarque still tries to maintain the position of a person standing “above the fray,” but with the whole meaning of what he wrote, he affirms hatred of war, of predatory greed, hypocrisy, cruelty, and selfishness. And although the author makes the reader a witness to road and tavern adventures and fights, the leading melody of “Three Comrades” is tragically sad. Remarque felt that a force was brewing in society that would lead the people along a terrible, destructive path, promising tired people the temptation of easy money.
The novel is read with interest also because the author’s style of narration is designed for the reader’s imagination and makes one empathize with the characters. The novel's speech is dynamic, even aphoristic. The life conclusions of the heroes, their reflections are expressed in aphorisms such as: “We feed on illusions from the past, and make debts towards the future”, “A good ending only happens when it was bad before it. A bad ending is much better,” “But without love, a person is nothing more than a dead man on vacation,” etc.
The humanistic pathos of the novel in the affirmation of enduring human values - work, love, friendship, this is the reason for its success among the reader.