An Episode of War

One of the themes that quickly becomes apparent in "An Episode of War" is that of knowledge and how it is gained through experience. The first iteration of this theme comes to a head in the interaction with the orderly-sergeant in paragraph 7, in which the narrator says, "It is as if the wounded man's hand is on 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," and goes on to speak of the "power of it" (paragraph 7, sentence 6). The story suggests that the brush with mortality that a wound represents gives one access to an ample array of knowledge. The story also provides a caveat, however: while the injured person's hand may be on the curtain, the story does not necessarily imply that the curtain is ever fully drawn back to actually reveal the knowledge behind it. The idea that an injury automatically grants one cosmic knowledge is further undermined as the story continues and the lieutenant interacts with the Officer (paragraph 16) and finally the surgeon (beginning at paragraph 18), in which, instead of power, the lieutenant feels shame.