An Episode of War

“The lieutenant’s rubber blanket lay on the ground, and upon it he had poured the company’s supply of coffee.” 

This opening line of the story sets up the quotidian reality of the lieutenant’s life prior to being wounded in order to later contrast it with the notoriety the wound gives him. It also establishes the seeming randomness of war and introduces the symbol of coffee. 

“He was on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics, […] when suddenly the lieutenant cried out and looked quickly at a man near him as if he suspected it was a case of personal assault.”

This is the moment in which the lieutenant is wounded. Here, we can see the subtlety of Crane’s writing style and the way he plays with anticlimax and situational irony: the lieutenant’s downfall happens right at the cusp of triumph, albeit a minor one. Not only that, this moment contrasts the banality established in the first paragraph and first half of the second paragraph with the changed status of the lieutenant as a wounded man in the rest of the story. 

“During this moment the men about him gazed statue-like and silent, astonished and awed by this catastrophe which happened when catastrophes were not expected—when they had leisure to observe it.” 

Here we see the narration shift into a more didactic mode, providing almost a moral of the story: that bad things often happen when one least expects them. The “leisure” of the opening scene has been disrupted by “catastrophe.” It also contrasts catastrophes in the pitched heat of battle to this one, taking place as it does during a relative lull in the action, which allows it to be more visible, since the other soldiers have the luxury of observing beyond the life-and-death import of what is directly in front of them.