An Episode of War

Throughout “An Episode of War,” Stephen Crane subverts readers’ expectations. Instead of beginning with an exciting battle, as one might expect a war story to do, the story begins with the banality and boredom that the soldiers’ experience in their day-to-day life between battles, in which a “great triumph” is divvying up the coffee into equal measures (paragraph 2, sentence 3). Then, when something “exciting” does occur (the lieutenant getting shot in the arm), it is treated in so subtle a manner that an inattentive reader could easily miss it altogether. It is signaled simply by the lieutenant’s shout, general confusion, and then the others noticing blood on his sleeve. Clearly, Crane is not writing the story in order to glorify the excitement of war or simply entertain through fast-paced action. Instead, Crane focuses on the non-reactions of everyone involved. Not only does the lieutenant not seem to react the way one might expect—after he “crie[s] out” and “wince[s]” and “sway[s] dangerously, he simply “straighten[s]” and looks out across the field to the woods (paragraph 2, sentence 3 and paragraph 3, sentence1)—but the others around him are “statue-like and silent” (paragraph 3, sentence 3). All of these reactions work against what many readers may expect of a war story.

Instead, the story revolves around the lieutenant’s (and sometimes the other characters’) thoughts, feelings, and interior live(s). Using an omniscient narratorin the style of free and indirect discourse, the narrator of the story passes not only into the mind of the lieutenant, but also occasionally into the minds of the other characters as well, in order to explore the fallout of this singular event—the lieutenant being shot—from multiple perspectives. One of these characters in a supporting role who adds valuable insight is the orderly-sergeant: “At the time, [the orderly-sergeant] leaned nervously backward, and did not allow even his finger to brush the body of the lieutenant. A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy away from this new and terrible majesty” (paragraph 7, sentence 3). Crane, while not exactly plumbing the depths of the orderly-sergeant’s particular psyche, uses his character as a means to explore a more universal truth about war and the way that fellow soldiers react to a wounded man.

Similarly, the narratorial distance strays away from a close third-person situated around the lieutenant’s individual experience a little later in the story as well: “And the men in silence stared at the woods, then at the departing lieutenant; then at the wood, then at the lieutenant” (paragraph 9, sentence 1). This moment marks the dividing line between the beginning of the story, focused around the front line and containing a more collective consciousness, and the second half of the story, in which the lieutenant’s consciousness becomes the primary interpreter of the world around him. Here the reader is firmly in the perspective of the lieutenant’s fellow soldiers, watching him leave, something he himself could not really easily see or know. From this moment on, however, the story stays close to the lieutenant’s point of view, and every reaction of a fellow character (for instance, the officer who helps bandage his wound in paragraph 16, or the surgeon in paragraph 18) is filtered through how the lieutenant sees it: “[The officer’s] tone allowed one to think” (paragraph 16, sentence 8) and “[The surgeon] seemed possessed suddenly of a great contempt for the lieutenant” (paragraph 18, sentence 4). In both of these moments, the narrator focuses on the way these interactions seem to the lieutenant, rather than the more exterior, more objective view that preceded the dividing line of paragraph 9.

Finally, the story takes an interesting turn in the final paragraph. Up to this point, the story has remained focused on a single incident and its aftermath: the wounding of the lieutenant and his journey to the hospital tent, taking a matter of minutes. The final paragraph leaps forward well into the future and again returns to a perspective outside of the lieutenant’s point of view. We first get a more objective, exterior narrator: “And this is the story of how the lieutenant lost his arm” (paragraph 24, sentence 1). There is situational irony at work here, since the last thing we saw previous to this was the surgeon’s assurance that he would not amputate the lieutenant’s arm, and then the moment of foreshadowing when the door to the schoolhouse appears “as sinister to [the lieutenant] as the portals of death” (paragraph 23, sentence 1). The final paragraph subverts the reader’s expectations yet again. Then it takes us forward in time to the end of the war and the lieutenant’s return home, cementing the theme of the ultimate meaninglessness of war and the randomness of fate with the lieutenant’s final piece of dialogue: “I don’t suppose it matters so much as all that” (paragraph 24, sentence 3).