What always stuck with me was Paul's visit with his mom in chapter 7. Paul's mother is dying a slow painful death to cancer. Paul visits her but he feels like a different person. He is no longer a naive boy but a battle weary young man. On Paul's last night, his mother gives him advice about how to handle the war that he finds both absurd and moving. She gives him two pairs of wool underpants that he knows cost her dearly. In bed, Paul regrets having come home; before this, he was indifferent and hopeless, but now both he and his mother are in agony. It is a very sad scene.