An Episode of War

In the story, coffee serves as a contrasting element, a symbol of the soldiers’, and especially the lieutenant’s, lives outside of wartime. The quotidian nature of the story’s first action also serves to give the lieutenant being shotmore impact by the inherent contrast. We see the lieutenant’s sense of fairness in the care with which he divides the coffee, and it also represents a moment of near-triumph before his downfall. Later in the story, coffee returns and serves to contrast the story’s two main settings: the front line and behind the lines. After the lieutenant has left to seek medical attention, he sees “a brigade […] making coffee and buzzing with talk like a girl’s boarding school” (paragraph 16, sentence 1). The carefree and decidedly civilian scene of coffee being made behind the lines serves to highlight the contrasting danger of the opening scene of the story on the battlefront.  

Although appearing only briefly in the narrative, the lieutenant’s sword provides a valuable symbolic function. After being shot in the arm while holding the sword, the lieutenant is forced to shift it awkwardly to his other hand, and then:

he looked at the sword as he held it there, and seemed puzzled as to what to do with it.