A Mystery Of Heroism

In 1896, “A Mystery of Heroism” was published in Crane’s first collection of stories, The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War, one year after the publishing of The Red Badge of Courage. Like The Red Badge of Courage, “A Mystery of Heroism” depicts the horrors of war, showing how soldiers become trapped in the endless machinery of war, a machinery that leaves little room for romanticized visions of heroism.

Many references are made to the “gaze” of the infantry as the soldiers’ eyes look all around them. In fact, most of the first half of the story is focused on a series of scenes. The eyes of the infantry move in a “machinelike,” circular fashion, usually without any commentary on the action, at least not at first, as they view the soldiers fighting on the battery, the house that has been destroyed, the meadow that is no longer a place of calm and beauty, and the woods where another battle rages. The gaze does not linger long on any one scene but instead keeps moving on. No scene is given priority over another. The dispassionate, detached gaze does not linger on the dying soldiers. The effect is to show how the soldiers are trapped by the forces of death that enclose them.

Except for Private Fred Collins and two other privates (Smith and Ferguson) mentioned once in the story, characters are not given names. The characters are simply known as “a lieutenant of artillery,” “the fat major,” “the wise captain.” There is little dialogue or character interaction to alleviate the constant barrage of battle images everywhere. When they do speak, the officers’ and soldiers’ voices are disjointed and disembodied. Dialogue rarely builds into conversation, but rather, voices overlap and repeat against the background noise of war. There are no admirable, heroic words stirring soldiers to action, only chaos and fear. Crane’s realistic depiction of war is stripped of glory, as he focuses instead on recreating the sensory details of battle.

There is no dominant narrative beyond this kaleidoscope of images and voices until the story focuses around Collins and his sudden thirst. The story returns to his comments about his thirst, comments that are at first swallowed by the battle raging around him. In exploring Collins’s motivations for seeking the water, the narrator enters Collins’ mind, showing his confusion and surprise at his own actions and also at his own lack of fear. Crane depicts how people can end up in dangerous circumstances, like war, without truly understanding their own motivations. Collins has been maneuvered into this foolish undertaking for water, but a larger comparison can be made to the rest of the soldiers, showing how they all have been maneuvered into this awful tableau of death.

While Collins’s quest takes on the epic dimensions of the traditional hero’s journey, Crane constantly undercuts the heroism. Collins’s journey makes little sense to anyone else. The officers question whether he really wants to go. His fellow soldiers question whether he is serious. Collins also questions heroism, both his own and that of others. He realizes he can’t be a hero because of his own petty actions. These faults prevent him from entering the “land of fine deeds” (Paragraph 58). The “land of fine deeds” is juxtaposed with the actual land that Collins finds himself in: one of deadly explosions, a “little line of men running into battle,” and a man dying “as if he had slipped on ice” (Paragraph 60). There is little that seems “fine” in these descriptions, but instead Crane emphasizes the chaos and insanity of battle as the land roars with the screams of guns and men.

And yet Collins does have his heroic moment. When he turns around to return to the dying lieutenant, bringing him water despite the danger, he risks his own life in order to comfort another. And yet even this moment is deflated because the heroic effort is wasted: By the time Collins returns, the lieutenant is unable to move, and Collins is so nervous that he ends up spilling the water over the man’s face. This foreshadows the end, when the joking men also end up dropping the water. The object of the epic quest, a simple bucket of water, is ultimately spilled and wasted.