The Lieutenant’s Family Character Analysis

The lieutenant’s sobbing family—his sisters, mother, and wife—meet him when he returns home missing an arm in the story’s conclusion. Though Crane only gives the family only three lines of description, he intends them to say a great deal about his protagonist’s inexperience and sense of shame. The fact that his mother is here makes the lieutenant seem young; this is heightened by the fact that, presumably, he has no children. If he is merely a teenager (as many Civil War fighters were), then his accidental injury while dividing the company’s coffee takes on the greater meaning of an inexperienced teenager thrown into forces beyond his control. Furthermore, the absence of any brothers or a father suggests that perhaps they, too, are off at war. The young lieutenant’s premature return without them, then, would have acutely heightened his shame. Last, their tears add yet another layer of embarrassment. A mother might weep at a son’s dramatic escape from death, but likely not at the inglorious reality: a fumbling accident over coffee. The fact that she weeps gives readers a clue into the heroism that the outside world expects from returning soldiers, an imagined heroism that weighs heavily on the conscience of Crane’s embarrassed protagonist.