22 pages • 44 minutes read
Stephen CraneA Mystery Of Heroism
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
The Brutality of the Machinery of War
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 eyes, a unit of spectatorship. There is little room for heroism in this transformed land.
Deflating the Hero and the Heroic Journey
Heroism is denied in this story. There are no heroic decisions seen as the eye travels all around the battlefield. Instead, the “iron will of men’s laws” have changed both the natural world and the domestic world into a horrific scene of chaos, bloodshed, and meaninglessness. No human interactions inspire glory and honor. Dialogue is clipped and often ignored. Men transform into sudden grotesque pictures of agonizing death.
Both Collins and the lieutenant with the broken arm are lured, seemingly without any will, to the meadow, which calls to them. Collins’s journey to get the water and return has the markings of the hero’s journey. But this is no traditional hero’s journey as can be found in “history and legend” (Paragraph 56). There is simply Collins attempting to run through the meadow with his sloshing bucket of water.
This brutal battlefield leaves little room for heroic action. Men do their best not to be blown up, running chaotically without any sense of control. And yet, despite constant shelling, confusion, and blood, Collins is able to risk his own life and aid the lieutenant. Of course, it is too late. And of course, the bucket of water is spilled in the end, benefiting no one. However, the “mystery of heroism” shows that no one knows how they will act in such a terrible ordeal until they are in the middle of the battlefield, running for their life.
American Realism and Naturalism: Crane’s Modernism
Crane can be seen as stripping away any Romantic notions that glamorize war. Often referred to as a Realist and Modernist writer, Crane, like many other artists at the turn of the century, wanted to deflate Victorian ideals of the 19th century. Part of this stripping of the old, inflated language was to show a new way of depicting reality, exploring new subjects and new techniques in order to “make it new,” the mantra of many modernists. Crane uses many Impressionistic techniques to bring the world of war, in all of its vivid and horrifying imagery, to the reader.
In depicting a world without glory and heroism, where war has turned men into beasts without control over their lives, Crane has also created a story that fits the Naturalism movement, which aimed to show how humans had little volition in their lives and were trapped by the determinist laws of society. The soldiers are clearly trapped by the world of this story. When they are characterized as acting as one body rather than individuals, it emphasizes their inability to gain power over their own lives. Their actions are determined by the social construct of the world around them, which controls their actions, just as it controls the actions of the “brute-soldiers,” the horses. Like the horses, they are unable to back away but instead must run right into the jaws of death. The gaze is ever searching for a way out of those jaws, to no avail.
Related Titles
By Stephen Crane
