[Music] in Chapter 12 of All Quiet on the Western Front autumn begins and Paul boy mer notes that he's the last of the seven from his class left alive there are rumors that a truce is coming one that will bring an end to the war Paul believes that if this doesn't happen soon the soldiers were revolt Paul's given 14 rest days he contemplates the fact that there was a point at which if they had returned home earlier he and his comrades could have created some kind of change in the world but now he believes the surviving soldiers are weary broken burnt-out rootless and without hope we will not be able to find our way anymore Paul believes that no one will understand what they've been through and what's more the war will be forgotten by those who didn't fight in it while those who did have been ruined by it alone and without hope Paul thinks that nothing more can be taken from him because he has already given all he has at this the end of the novel a new narrator takes Paul's place and informs the reader that Paul is killed saying he fell in October of 1918 on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front that the army report confined itself to the single sentence All Quiet on the Western Front in death Paul's face had an expression of calm as though almost glad the end had come in this final chapter Paul sees that the soldiers are finally at their breaking point and will likely revolt if conditions don't change soon now that his friends are all gone it begins to dawn on him how little meaning his life has without them to buoy his spirits he seems to understand how frozen the veterans of World War 1 will be after the war ends because they won't be able to move on nor will they be understood by non-veterans the war has destroyed their minds bodies and souls a third person narrator briefly provides the last lines of the novel after Paul's died attaching no emotions to the outcome of death merely reporting it in an impartial way the narrator tells nothing of how Paul died or who he was he's treated as just another casualty of the war his life destroyed in the blink of an eye Paul's death is a tragic example of situational irony in which there's a startling difference between what actually happens and what's expected to happen Paul dies on a quiet peaceful day in the front surprising giving how many times he's narrowly escaped death during combat in the past it's a cruel twist of fate that his death occurs just a month before the war is over