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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Crane’s writing style in “An Episode of War” shifts throughout, from ornate to simple and back again. The more ornate sections typically occur when the lieutenant is feeling big emotions. At the beginning of the story, for example, the lieutenant is feeling happy and proud while dividing up coffee grounds for his subordinates, and the language is therefore playful and full of figurative language. Later, when the lieutenant is shot out of the blue, Crane once again uses figurative language and rich descriptions, this time with a more contemplative tone, as seen in the following passage:
A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man’s hand is upon 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.
Crane’s writing style in this moment is extremely expressive: he refers to a battle would as a “terrible majesty” and then uses a metaphor to describe how a “wounded man’s hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence.” The passage waxes poetic about all of the different facets of life that raising this “curtain” would reveal, from wars to snow to feathers.
The simpler and more direct passage in the story typically occur when the lieutenant is dissociated from his feelings and emotions. One such moment is when the officer and the surgeon are scolding him for being shot and another is when, at the end of the story, he stands before his family as an amputee, assuring them (dishonestly) that he is fine.
Related Themes:
