A Mystery Of Heroism

The story bombards the reader with scene after scene of destruction. Wherever one looks, there is death. There is no sense of a human enemy, just the “red hate” of the shells. The guns have come alive with the goal of killing as much as possible. There is no discussion of the causes of the war, making the war seem meaningless. War has not only transformed the battlefield. Crane constantly makes comparisons (often through the use of figurative language) to the world beyond the battlefield—the domestic world and the world of nature. The effect is that all have been ruined by war. There is no escape from the reach of the guns. One can observe as a spectator, but one will eventually be trapped by the machinery of war.

This machinery rips open bodies, scattering them over the grass, grass that once was peaceful and rippled gently. Crane’s focus on “eyes” and “legs” emphasizes both the spectator nature of war and the disembodiment of the soldiers. Wholeness is broken into parts; all is bombed into fragmentation. The only thing unified, under the battery, is the animal-like infantry column that moves with 400