Crane lived in the days of the scientific revolution. One of the
major names of this time period was Charles Darwin. His theory of evolution
stated that man came from apes rather than directly from the hand of God.
He did not believe that each species was created to be separate and distinct,
but that the species have changed, or evolved, over time. Christians took
this as a great blow.
Darwin’s theory had a major impact on people by increasing their own
sense of loneliness. Until this point in history, we were believed to have
been created in God’s own image. We were just another animal, a hairless
ape, where previously humanity had been considered divine.
What does it say about our place in the universe? It says we’re
just an accident. The universe doesn’t care that we are here.
Historiography is the theory of history. There are many such theories. The historiography of the Old Testament, for example, explains Israel's history as a cycle of sin, divine punishment, repentance, and restoration. Marxist theory eliminates sin and God and finds economic causes for historical events. Popular (as opposed to scholarly) historiographies tend to follow one of three patterns:
According to a static theory, for every improvement in one level, there is a corresponding problem that emerges in another level. The result is that, overall, things don’t get any better or worse.
The idea of progress developed in the 19th century. In religion,
post-millennialism asserted that social progress could bring in the millennium.
In American politics, it was Manifest Destiny that the United States should
advance across the continent to the Pacific. Darwin gives a scientific
basis for the idea of progress. Progress is the idea that things will get
better over time. Yet Darwinism can also cut the other way & assert
that our place in the universe is the result of accident & that an
uncaring universe will wipe us out as easily as it formed us.
Crane is into the idea that the universe is somewhat mechanical
and indifferent. Ever since The Iliad, there has been a questioning
of the idea that war was glorious; the very first lines of The Iliad
describe war as gory, demeaning, and degrading. This type of poem became
popular in the 19th and 20th century. Much of it
has to do with the way war is waged. Today, soldiers can shoot from far
away, using machine guns, cannons, etc. Back then, when war was seen as
glorious, it was about conquest, running out with the flag, and marching
ahead with the calvary.
The Civil War was the first modern war. They discovered that the frontal assault tactic didn’t work so well anymore. The soldiers were easily slaughtered. "War is Kind" was one of Crane’s poems of protest.
Crane uses irony by asserting that war is kind, telling the mothers, wives, girlfriends, and children not to weep. What he means is that war is senseless and cruel.
He explains that the men are fighting for unexplained glory by dying on the battlefield. Fathers are taken away from their children, and young men are taken from their young women. However, the purpose of their work is to march around and get shot, ("these men were born to drill and die"). And then the mothers are advised not to weep when their heart is hanging like a button on their son’s shroud, because war is kind.
"Episode of War"
The lieutenant laid a blanket out on the ground and began to ration out the soldiers’ daily share of coffee. It’s early in the morning before the fighting had begun, when the lieutenant is suddenly shot in the arm (during civilized warfare, there was an understood time for fighting and for eating, sleeping, resting, etc.). He staggers away and later someone tries to resourcefully dress his wound. When he gets to a doctor, he is initially treated nicely, until the doctor sees his wound. He ceases to be a person and becomes another wound for a doctor who already had too many patients. The lieutenant was concerned about his arm and did not want it amputated. He was assured that he would be able to keep his arm. But with the possibility of gangrene setting in, they went ahead and cut it off without his consent. And that was how the lieutenant lost his arm. It was a senseless loss.