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War Is Kind | Introduction

“War is Kind” is the first poem of Stephen Crane’s second collection of poems, War is Kind and Other Lines, published in 1899, less than a year before he died. The poem is sometimes referred to by its first line, “Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.” The subject of the poem is war and its effects. In this way it echoes the stories and scenes from Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage. Though Crane had been turned down because of poor health when he volunteered to enlist in the U.S. Navy, he saw his share of war and death as a journalist, covering conflicts in Greece, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Spain. When Crane published War is Kind and Other Lines he and his wife, Cora, were deeply in debt. Having already established his literary reputation at 23 as the author of The Red Badge of Courage and many newspaper stories on wars around the globe, Crane was able to secure an advance for the collection.

Many of the short parable-like, densely imagistic lyrics in the collection deal with God’s absence, the indifference of nature, the ironies of war, and the vagaries of love. “War is Kind” itself is a 26-line poem in five stanzas focusing on the emotional loss of three women whose lover, father, and son, respectively, have died in war. Crane’s detailed snapshots of the fallen men in the first, third, and fifth stanzas evoke the savagery of war and its inherent cruelty. The indented second and fourth stanzas function as the poem’s chorus, and provide more generalized images of war and cutting statements about the military. The poem’s speaker, simultaneously sympathetic with the victims of war and cynical about the purposes of war, implicitly criticizes the image of the romantic hero, showing in graphic scenes the realities of battlefield death and the emotional torment it causes for those left behind.

War Is Kind Summary

Stanza 1: The title alerts us to the ironic tone of the poem, as it is very difficult to imagine war being kind in any way. The opening stanza confirms that tone, as it addresses the lover of a soldier who has died in battle, telling her not to weep at his death. We are then presented a melodramatic image of that death, with the dying soldier throwing his “wild hands towards the sky/ And … [his] affrighted steed … running on alone.” Since this poem was originally published, the image of the riderless horse galloping away from its fallen owner has become a staple of Western movies.

Stanza 2: The speaker now presents more generalized images and statements about war, as opposed to the close-up image in the opening stanza. These lines convey a sense of the soldiers’ exhaustion, futility, and resignation, as they fight with the flag (“unexplained glory”) flying overhead. The speaker continues with his bitter irony when describing the battlefield “where a thousand corpses lie.” The “great” battle-god alluded to might be Mars, the god of war in Roman mythology. This stanza, along with the fourth, functions as a refrain, as its third and sixth lines are repeated in each, and as a chorus. In Greek tragedies the chorus comments on characters and events, frequently making moral judgements about them. These lines underscore the senselessness of war and also touch on Crane’s attitude towards the stupidity and insidiousness of the military. He adopts a condescending tone towards the soldiers as well, describing them as “little souls.” By saying that “These men were born to drill and die,” the speaker at once... » Complete War Is Kind Summary