The Brutality of War Theme Analysis

Stephen Crane’s “A Mystery of Heroism” depicts an unnamed battle in an unnamed war. The purpose of the war is never made clear, and the tactics or goals of the battle are similarly left muddy. The enemy army is remote and never appears in person. Collins’s regiment engages with that enemy only through shells and bullets. Meanwhile, the story often focuses on the terrible destruction of the battle: houses blow up, a meadow burns, soldiers are mangled and die painfully, and even horses die horrifically. By portraying a war and battle that seem to have no larger purpose, in which heroic quests are undertaken for ridiculous reasons and then the fruits of the quest wasted, and in which the overwhelming consequence is the destruction and devastation of nature, human homes, human lives, and even animals, “A Mystery of Heroism” emphasizes the senseless waste and destruction of war.

The story studiously avoids offering any meaning or purpose to the battle taking place or the war at large. The protagonist Collins’s regiment has no identifiable goal. It is not attempting to advance or take ground, it is not fighting for any ideal or country or reason. The enemy, meanwhile, is both nameless and faceless, appearing only as shells and bullets. To Collins, it seems that the enemy is the shells themselves, capable of “red hate” and targeting their own victims. Even in Collins’s company, the artillery is hard at work firing from afar during the battle, while the infantry, which fights up close, stands around watching with nothing to do. Because of the shells, the deaths on the battlefield are sudden and senseless—war has become impersonal, mechanized, and disconnected from a human enemy. The battle could be occurring everywhere or anywhere, and story becomes not the portrayal of a single battle but rather a statement about the very nature of war.

The lack of any purpose to the battle, along with the aimlessness of the troops and the officers, makes it seem as if the primary purpose of the battle is the destruction it causes. Through vivid imagery, the story emphasizes how war destroys everything: lives, landscapes, and civilization itself. The story describes in detail the “convulsive” movements and “torn” bodies of dying men and horses. Descriptions of brutal violence are frequent and plainly offered as a simple fact of battle. The landscape of the battlefield is often personified to emphasize the pain inflicted by war on the land itself. In the meadow, which begins the story green and beautiful, there is a “massacre of the young blades of grass.” The very ground beneath the grass is then torn up and displaced, flung into the air by exploding shells. The meadow is not only burning; it is “suffering.” War’s destruction of not just nature but also human civilization is evident in the repeated bombing of the structures on the other side of the battlefield. The well-house and barn have been struck by a shell; only fragments, embers, and smoke remain. To emphasize the destruction, the well-house is struck again as the infantry watches, sending the fragments flying. These structures, the product of human effort, are completely obliterated. They are not strategic or intended demolitions, but rather the needless collateral damage of a purposeless war that breeds only devastation. The story, then, invites the essential question that none of the characters have an answer to: if all the destruction has no purpose and the deaths are simply senseless waste, why wage war at all?