Quote 73
I become faint, all at once I cannot do any more. I won't revile any more, it is senseless, I could drop down and never rise up again. (2.53)
Paul realizes the need to suppress his body's emotional and physical reaction to the horrible things he's sees. He won't be able to survive if he continues to react in such a way.
Quote 74
My limbs move supplely, I feel my joints strong, I breathe the air deeply. The night lives, I live. I feel a hunger, greater than comes from the belly alone. (2.58)
What kind of hunger does Paul refer to here? He seems very physically alive at this moment, but not necessarily emotionally alive.
Quote 75
"That's the uniform," I suggest.
"Roughly speaking it is," says Kat, and prepares for a long speech; "but the root of the matter lies elsewhere. For instance, if you train a dog to eat potatoes and then afterwards put a piece of meat in front of him, he'll snap at it, it's his nature. And if you give a man a little bit of authority he behaves just the same way, he snaps at it too. The things are precisely the same. In himself man is essentially a beast, only he butters it over like a slice of bread with a little decorum. The army is based on that; one man must always have power over the other. The mischief is merely that each one has much too much power." (3.55)
Kat suggests it is part of human nature to yearn for power over humans and that war merely satiates this yearning. We can't help but think about Lord of the Flies by William Golding, for that novel explores this very idea of how exactly power corrupts and of how much humans love to have power over each other.