Inexperience and Shame Theme Analysis

Stephen Crane’s short story “An Episode of War” depicts a Civil War lieutenant as he sustains a wound in the battle camp and searches for medical attention. A plot like this might normally appear in a valiant and patriotic war thriller, but Crane uses it ironically: to show the fragility, stubbornness, and naiveté of humans in war. Through the attitudes of secondary characters, Crane makes his wounded protagonist look and feel childishly ill-prepared for the rigors he has supposedly been trained to handle. Crane portrays his protagonist in this way not to make fun of him but to argue that the trials of war can reduce otherwise adept humans to a state of inadequacy. Crane uses the lieutenant’s feeling of childishness to make a larger narrative comment about shame: his growing humiliation shows that the public nature of war—with its esteemed ranks in battle and its promise of glory back home—has a unique ability to expose people’s shortcomings to themselves.

In the opening scene, Crane shows his lieutenant as technically skilled, but only at a distance from the fight—a perfect setup for failure when real danger strikes. First, a lieutenant is necessarily a deputy role, an emergency deputy for a higher ranking officer. (The phrase “in lieu” means “in the place of.”) It’s a respectable office but clearly a substitute. By choosing this role, Crane hints that the highest official in his story has only secondary abilities. Behind the front lines, the lieutenant has plenty of skill—only the wrong kind of skill. He carefully distributes coffee to his men by misusing the implements of war: he spreads the grounds on his rubber blanket (a new technology designed to protect soldiers from the damp earth) and divides “astoundingly equal” portions with his sword. Wearing a “frowning and serious” face, he is “on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics.” His tools of choice and grave appearance suggest the concentration of a war strategist poring over a map, but the punchline is that Crane’s protagonist is merely serving drinks.

The man’s tactical ability disappears the moment a bullet strikes his arm (a wound that hurts him but does not endanger his life), and Crane reverses his scene of “triumph” into a total failure. At this crucial moment, instead of brandishing his sword against the enemy—as would be expected—the lieutenant hides it. But even this is difficult for him. He remains stationery and silent while “engaged in a desperate struggle” to sheathe it with his left hand. The tool he once wielded with precision at a safe distance from combat has now “become a strange thing to him […] as if he had been endowed with a trident.” Crane’s ironic use of the war terms “trident” (the weapon of the Greek god Poseidon) and “struggle,” combined with his depiction of a sword as a harmless object, draw attention to a skilled man’s total inability in war.

Soon, other characters belittle the lieutenant and help turn his newfound self-doubt (a private feeling) into shame (a public one). An officer “scolds” the lieutenant for failing to wrap his arm, and, a surgeon treats him with “scorn” and “contempt.” Before these bullies, the lieutenant hangs his head, feels demoted to a “very low social plane,” and believes (absurdly) that “he did not know how to be correctly wounded.” His embarrassment takes on the terms of childhood inexperience. First, he fails to answer basic factual queries about the battle and regards his questioners with wide-eyed “wonder.” Second, the scolding officer unwraps his sleeve, laying “bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered under his touch,” as a parent might do when changing a baby’s diaper. Third, the surgeon mocks his fear, saying “Come along. Don’t be a baby.” Last, when he approaches the field hospital (a converted schoolhouse), the wounded lieutenant won’t approach “the door of the old schoolhouse.” Because he’s so squeamish, readers are told, he stubbornly neglects his wound, which ultimately leads to the amputation of his arm. Although the lieutenant’s justifiable fear stems from the pain and medical treatment he’ll face on the other side of the door, he seems overly preoccupied with the schoolhouse itself—just as a child might hate going to school. Crane’s language of adolescence perfectly captures the lieutenant’s new relation to world. Once presumed competent for leadership, he is now publically seen as “helpless” and feels lesser as a result.

When the lieutenant returns home, his family’s grief represents society’s public glare, and it is here that he feels the heaviest shame for his inexperience. The lieutenant’s sisters, mother, and wife greet him. But by limiting this homecoming to two short sentences, Crane invites his readers to ask certain questions about its emotional impact on the lieutenant: where, for instance, are his brothers? Did they achieve the glorious death that he missed? Also, the lieutenant has a wife but no children. Does that imply that he is no older than a teenager? Crane’s implications here—of a failed young man returning home—gives readers a new way of feeling his embarrassment. His family “sobbed for a long time” over his lost arm, and it seems that his family has pieced together a traditional wartime narrative: a valiant struggle and a narrow escape from death. The ironic truth, however, is that he was hit while serving coffee and lost an arm due to his fear of medical treatment. Because he stands “shamefaced amid these tears,” readers assume he is painfully aware of the difference between his family’s vision and the reality of his bumbling, inglorious accident. Crane asks readers to imagine the types of war stories they expect to hear, and to compare those stories to the reality of his bumbling lieutenant. Once readers do this, the heaviest burden upon the lieutenant is not the judgment of officers on the battlefield; it is his family’s (and, by extension, society’s) expectation of a valiant hero at home.