Stephen Crane consistently uses figurative language to create images that vividly describe all aspects of war. For example, in the passage, “The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting,” an example of personification, the cold, the fog, and the army are described as persons with specific behaviors, feelings, and needs. In addition, Crane uses personification to create a personality for the combatants, both collectively and individually. The clauses, “brigades grinned” and “regiments laughed,” are good examples. When Henry’s voice is described “as bitter as dregs,” this simile allows the reader to experience the voice of an individual soldier.
The imagery developed for an impending battle uses similar techniques. The battle is “the blaze” and “a monster”; the combatants are “serpents crawling from hill to hill”; Henry’s regiment is a “blasting host” (a killing machine); “red eyes” (enemy campfires) watch across rivers. All these images contribute to an ominous mood of foreboding.
The regiment is sometimes identified as a person, sometimes a monster, and sometimes a reptile. These images cause the reader to lose sight of the fact that the regiment is really a unit of men—of individual soldiers. The continued use of personification draws the reader to a feeling that a battle is a battle of regimental monsters, not of individual men.
In Chapter 5, Crane continues the use of figurative language, including simile, personification, and metaphor, to paint images of war. For example, he writes that “A shell screaming like a storm banshee went over the huddled heads of the reserves,” a simile, and “They could see a flag that tossed in the smoke angrily,” a personification, and that “The composite monster which had caused the other troops to flee had not then appeared” a metaphor. The enemy is still not visible. The wait for that “composite monster” continues. Just as the troops experience the dreadful wait, the reader feels the same emotions that all the soldiers are feeling. Crane develops this fear by using figurative language to create monster imagery.
Crane employs similes and personification to draw pictures of soldiers and their weapons. For example, a soldier’s “eyeballs were about to crack like hot stones”; “The man at the youth’s elbow was babbling something soft and tender like the monologue of a babe”; “The guns squatted in a row like savage chiefs.” Crane uses both personification and simile in the line, “The cannon with their noses poked slantingly at the ground grunted and grumbled like stout men, brave but with objections to hurry.” This line makes the weapons appear to be living creatures. The use of personification in the line, “The sore joints of the regiment creaked as it painfully floundered into position,” turns the regiment into one large, tired soldier. Crane’s similes describe groups and individuals in these examples: the rebel forces were “running like pursued imps” and Henry, at first, “ran like a rabbit” and, later, “like a blind man.”
Crane develops imagery, using metaphor and personification, to make it clear that Henry has lost all his rational powers and that he is in a total state of panic. For example, to Henry, the enemy soldiers are metaphorically “machines of steel,” “redoubtable dragons,” and “a red and green monster”; the men who were nearest the battle would make the “initial morsels for the dragons”; “the shells flying past him have rows of cruel teeth that grinned at him.” These images clearly show Henry’s fright of the enemy.
In Chapter 9, Crane continues to use figurative language to support the war motif. He turns machines of war into people by using personification in the line “a crying mass of wagons.” He changes Henry by using a simile, “His [Henry’s] face would be hidden like the face of a cowled man,” by using metaphor. Henry (in his own mind) is a “worm” and “a slang phrase.” Crane also paints a picture of the battlefield using metaphoric description of battlefield action, examples being, “the heart of the din” (the battle) and “the mighty blue machine” (the Union Army).
In Chapter 11, Crane uses metaphoric language to describe both the enemy and war in several ways, including “The steel fibers had been washed from their hearts,” the enemy is the “dragon,” “They [the enemy] charged down upon him [Henry] like terrified buffaloes,” and war is “the red animal, the blood-swollen god.”
