31 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen CraneAn Episode of War
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Gaining Knowledge through Experience
One of the themes that quickly becomes apparent in "An Episode of War" is that of knowledge and how it is gained through experience. The first iteration of this theme comes to a head in the interaction with the orderly-sergeant in paragraph 7, in which the narrator says, "It is as if the wounded man's hand is on 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 goes on to speak of the "power of it" (paragraph 7, sentence 6). The story suggests that the brush with mortality that a wound represents gives one access to an ample array of knowledge. The story also provides a caveat, however: while the injured person's hand may be on the curtain, the story does not necessarily imply that the curtain is ever fully drawn back to actually reveal the knowledge behind it. The idea that an injury automatically grants one cosmic knowledge is further undermined as the story continues and the lieutenant interacts with the Officer (paragraph 16) and finally the surgeon (beginning at paragraph 18), in which, instead of power, the lieutenant feels shame.
On a less grandiose level, the story suggests that gaining practical knowledge often requires distance and context. It is only once the lieutenant is removed by some distance from the front lines that he can take in the whole of the battle, despite no longer being a participant, involved with the reality of it up close.
Perception
The theme of perception takes multiple forms as "An Episode of War" progresses. The first is that variances in perception affect one's access to knowledge, and so the themes of knowledge and perception are intertwined. When the lieutenant is shot, the others around him feel that he now has access to some form of higher knowledge. However, as the narrative returns more to the lieutenant’s point of view, we find that this is not really the case. He does not in fact understand the mysteries of war, doubting even whether or not he fully understands how to be properly injured after his interaction with the officer. Then, the roles are somewhat reversed: the lieutenant ascribes to the officer secret knowledge that he himself lacks. Even this, by the time he reaches the surgeon, is proved to be false. In all of these interactions, misperceptions accrue, so that each character thinks the other has more knowledge than they actually do.
Similarly, the perceptions of the lieutenant's injury shift, as has been noted above, but also his own perception of it shifts from horror of amputation in the third-to-last paragraph, to resigned acceptance by the final paragraph, suggesting that time itself can cause perceptions to shift. Finally, the lieutenant's perception of the battle itself shift as well: as he gains distance, he can see more of the wider context, so that he better understands what is happening. In fact, he notes, his view becomes, for a wonder, precisely like an historical painting" (paragraph 10, sentence 4).
War
Although war is a rather obvious theme for a story titled "An Episode of War," Crane does indeed engage with and provide commentary on war and its effects on those who are involved. The beginning of the story is decidedly un-war-like, with the only details that suggest war, beyond the title, being the fact that the character is a lieutenant, and even as the lieutenant gets shot, the subtlety of the writing still leaves the conflict itself un-accentuated. This in itself suggests that war is perhaps less glamorous and action-packed than one might think.
Once the lieutenant is wounded, "war" is listed as one of the "revelations of all existence" an injured person seems to have access to, and yet, as the story continues to follow the lieutenant's character arc, this feels less and less true, until by the end the lieutenant cannot tell if the war will have a profoundly life-altering effect on his life (amputation of his wounded arm), or not. Then, once he does in fact lose his arm, the story does not dwell on it or the lieutenant's reaction in the moment, instead skipping ahead to a less immediate effect, in which the lieutenant's family members react to this development. And then, the lieutenant's reaction is to downplay its significance: "I don't suppose it matters so much as all that" (paragraph 24, sentence 3). This final line of the story not only removes some of the power of this dramatic change in his life, but also removes the significance of the experience that caused it, as if the war itself no longer matters as much as it once did.
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By Stephen Crane
