A detailed analysis of the poem "War is Kind" by Stephen Crane prescribed for the O/L English

Literature Syllabus by R.C.Fernando

War is kind by Stephen Crane echoes Wilfred Owen's poem on war "Dulcet Decorum est" which also
brings out the savagery of war in graphic details of a soldier dying an agonizing death after inhaling
poison gas released by the enemy. Both poets had first hand experience of war; Owen as a soldier who
fought in the front and Crane as a war reporter.
Crane's poem of five stanzas takes us right into the heart of the battle field with soldiers crying and dying
all around. Especially, the indented second and fourth stanzas captures the cruelty of war in sharply
focused scenes of dying soldiers. Stanzas one, three and five, on the other hand, are about two women
and a baby who have lost their loved ones in war. The first stanza is about a woman who has lost her
lover, the second stanza about the loss of a father and third about the death of a son. In each of these
stanzas, the poet seems to console the mourners in in a tongue in cheek manner.
Here is the poem:
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Swift, blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button

On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
The poem opens in tone of consolation: "Do not weep maiden.." which is immediately followed by the
cutting lines: "for is kind". This is both ironic and sarcastic. Next, the poet presents to us the graphic
image of a man who throws his hands wildly at the sky. If not for the verb "throw", it might remind us of
somebody praying to God. The man on horseback must have been shot and after loosing control, he fell
down and the scared horse ran alone. The frantic gesture of the dying soldier brings home the gritty
reality of war with a shocking effect.
The second stanza begins with the "hoarse, booming drums of the regiment" with its deafening
onomatopoeic effect. Those days drums were used to herald the advancing troops,may be to boost their
morale. The next two lines bring out sad fate of the soldiers who are engaged in war:
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
Instead of glorifying the soldiers, as in patriotic poems such as Rupert Brook's "The Soldier", the poet, in
this poem refers to them as "little souls". The poet's tone here is sympathetic and it contrasts with the
traditional image of the soldier as a tough dare-devil type of man. The next line with its strong alliteration
of "d" sound in "drill and die" suggest the dispensable nature of their doomed lives. In other words, they
serve as pawns in the hands of the rulers with vested interests. The next line carries ironic overtones:
The unexplained glory flies above them
Glory is personified as an unreachable and fleeting phenomenon as the soldiers would never experience
the so called "glory" while they live. The contrast between the ideal and the real nature of war is nowhere
so evident as in the following lines:
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
The first line with its strong alliteration of "g" sound suggests the pomp and greatness of war especially
with the allusion the Mars, the Roman God of War or the "battle-god". However, the next line creates a
totally different scenario of corpse-strewn landscape, which reminds us of a similar scene in Tennyson's
Charge of the Light Brigade:
"Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred"

The 3rd stanza is addressed to a baby whose father had died in war:
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
The way the soldier dies here is no less horrible than the death of the soldier in the first stanza. The first
world war was mainly an underground warfare as soldiers were fighting from trenches. The conditions of
the trenches were appalling and many soldiers died of diseases rather than from war. The "yellow
trenches" bring out the unhealthy conditions of the trenches. The excruciating pain suffered by the dying
soldier is conveyed through the verbs "raged" and "gulped". This gruesome scene brings out the cruelty
of war in no uncertain terms. These lines also echoes Dulcet Decorum Est:
"He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning".
This is immediately followed by the sharply ironic lines "Do not weep/War is kind".
The next stanza takes us to the battle field again:
Swift, blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
The regimental flag with its golden crest seems to symbolizes the spirit de corps and heroism of war.
The next line, however, conveys the stark reality of war as, according to the poet, the soldiers are just
born to "drill and die". This sudden fall from the sublime to the banal is called bathos or anti-climax. The
next two lines with "virtue of slaughter" and "excellence of killing" are also laden with heavy irony. The
ghostly panorama of "a field where thousand corpses lie" again highlights the grim reality of war.
The final stanza with the image of a mother mourning his dead son provides an appropriate conclusion
to the poem:
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

The heavy alliteration of the "h" sound in the first line creates sense of heaviness of heart felt by the
mother. The simile "humble as a button" is somewhat surprising and it links with the "shroud" in the next
line. It is "bright and splendid", thus suggestive of a ceremonial funeral. In other words, the soldier is
glorified after his death as one who laid down his life for the country and against this aura of glorification,
mother's love has become insignificant like "a button".
The poem ends with the cutting lines:
"Do not weep
War is kind"
which runs like an ironic refrain throughout the poem.
Like most poems about war, this poem too brings out the cruelty of war and its miserable aftermath in
telling imagery. The ironic style used in the poem reminds us of other war poems of the genre such as
"blowing in the wind", "Dulcet decorum est" etc