An Episode of War

by

Stephen Crane

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Nature and Human Insignificance Theme Analysis

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Rank vs. Human Judgment Theme Icon
Inexperience and Shame Theme Icon
War, Clarity, and Beauty Theme Icon
Nature and Human Insignificance Theme Icon
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Nature and Human Insignificance Theme Icon

In Stephen Crane’s “An Episode of War,” readers watch the moment a Civil War lieutenant is wounded on the sidelines of combat. But instead of launching into a tale of allies and enemies—as a typical war writer might do—Crane focusses on the fragility of his group of soldiers. They can’t understand what’s happened, and they struggle to take any action at all. People, argues Crane, are often powerless to understand or change their fate—especially in situations as stressful as war. To heighten the sense of their insignificance, Crane portrays nature as a domineering, mystifying force that both conceals the men’s enemies and stands as a looming reminder of their frailty.

By making his Civil War soldiers passive and confused, Crane suggests that even hard-boiled, trained fighters can be helpless. Though his wound is minor, once the lieutenant is shot in the arm, he and his men stand “silent,” rather than charging into battle. The lieutenant’s audible “hoarse breathing” heightens this silence as he struggles to sheathe his sword—itself a symbolically passive action. His body language, too, gives the impression of weakness: he walks “slowly” and “mournfully,” and he holds his arm “tenderly,” as if it’s made of “brittle glass.” More than quiet and overly gentle, Crane’s soldiers—he calls them “spectators”—are unable to move in this decisive moment. Though unwounded, they stand “statue-like” and “stone-like.” Their main verbs are passive ones like “look,” “watch,” “stare,” and “gaze.” This silent passivity on the battlefield is a far cry from the strong-willed behavior readers expect from fighters. This opens readers up to the idea that people, in Crane’s view, are ultimately frail.

But, by keeping their enemy hidden from the story, Crane makes his men seem helpless not just against a particular opponent, but helpless simply as human beings. The lieutenant soon sees very serious action, but Crane uses ambiguous diction to make it unclear who is fighting whom. Crane names fighters only with an indefinite article—“a general,” “an aide,” “a bugler”—in order to divert readers’ attention from a specific man-to-man conflict. Crane also never mentions historical facts of the fight. There is no Confederacy, for instance, and no Union: just soldiers against each other. Crane doesn’t even name the battle he’s depicting, the date, or the place, forcing readers to view the men’s uselessness as a universal human fact, not just a fact about the Civil War. If Crane detailed the Confederates’ historical disadvantage to the Union, for instance, readers might simply think these men were poorly trained. Instead, Crane’s ambiguity of diction and action makes readers feel that all humans in all times, no matter how trained or prepared, face the same fundamental disempowerment.

In absence of a visible enemy, Crane uses the distant forest—a symbol for the vastness and power of nature—to heighten the men’s sense of smallness. Eight separate times, the lieutenant and his men stare at the “wood,” the “forest,” or “the woods.” Because a specific enemy never appears from it, the forest becomes the closest thing to an aggressor. At first the men turn toward the wood to find the enemy—but instead find vague “little puffs of white smoke” indicating only the obvious fact of gunfire. Soon, the forest itself becomes “the hostile wood.” While Crane of course knows that trees cannot themselves be malicious, he uses this ironic personification to heighten the men’s sense of vulnerability in the world. Then, as the “puzzled” lieutenant tries “awkwardly”—and fails—to sheathe his sword, he glances again at the forest. And he takes a parting glance at it again as finally he sulks away from the font lines, feeling “helpless.” That the lieutenant glances at the forest in these particular moments of weakness seems to contrast nature’s vastness and power with humankind’s helplessness.

Crane’s figurative language in two places gives readers one final clue to his view that nature can be a reminder of humans’ insignificance. First, when the orderly-sergeant feels awe at the “little[ness]” of humankind, Crane expresses this with a metaphor about “the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence.” Second, Crane describes the forest as a thing “that veiled [the lieutenant’s] problems.” In a story so short, Crane expects readers to connect these two mentions of fabric—a curtain or a veil—that separates humans from the fundamental truths they are desperate to learn. By including the distant forest in this symbolic barrier to truth, Crane hints that nature can be seen as a realm of permanent and fundamental truth, but that it is beyond humankind’s comprehension. Though Crane never himself demonizes nature against the humans in this story, he hints that nature is indifferent to the conflicts of humans on Earth. As such, nature, for Crane, is one more means to suggest the smallness, impermanence, and fickleness of human beings.

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Nature and Human Insignificance Quotes in An Episode of War

Below you will find the important quotes in An Episode of War related to the theme of Nature and Human Insignificance.
An Episode of War Quotes

Turning his eyes from the hostile wood, he looked at the sword as he held it there, and seemed puzzled as to what to do with it, where to put it. In short, this weapon had of a sudden become a strange thing to him. He looked at it in a kind of stupefaction, as if he had been endowed with a trident, a scepter, or a spade.

Related Characters: The Lieutenant
Related Symbols: The Forest
Page Number: 653
Explanation and Analysis:

A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man’s hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence—the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird’s wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little.

Related Characters: The Lieutenant, The Orderly-Sergeant
Page Number: 654
Explanation and Analysis:

As the wounded officer passed from the line of battle, he was enabled to see many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to him. He saw a general on a black horse gazing over the lines of blue infantry at the green woods which veiled his problems. An aide galloped furiously, dragged his horse suddenly to a halt, saluted, and presented a paper. It was, for a wonder, precisely like a historical painting.

Related Characters: The Lieutenant
Related Symbols: The Forest
Page Number: 654
Explanation and Analysis: