A Mystery Of Heroism

In 1896, “A Mystery of Heroism” was published in Crane’s first collection of stories, The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War, one year after the publishing of The Red Badge of Courage. Like The Red Badge of Courage, “A Mystery of Heroism” depicts the horrors of war, showing how soldiers become trapped in the endless machinery of war, a machinery that leaves little room for romanticized visions of heroism.

Many references are made to the “gaze” of the infantry as the soldiers’ eyes look all around them. In fact, most of the first half of the story is focused on a series of scenes. The eyes of the infantry move in a “machinelike,” circular fashion, usually without any commentary on the action, at least not at first, as they view the soldiers fighting on the battery, the house that has been destroyed, the meadow that is no longer a place of calm and beauty, and the woods where another battle rages. The gaze does not linger long on any one scene but instead keeps moving on. No scene is given priority over another.