24 pages • 48 minutes read
Mark TwainThe War Prayer
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1905A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
The Stranger
In some respects, the stranger’s presence seems otherworldly. He is given no backstory and appears without warning. The fact he is referred to as the stranger suggests no one in the community knows him. He moves to the front of the church, the narrator says, “with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle” (Paragraph 4), and his eyes burn with “an uncanny light” (Paragraph 5). He could be viewed as an angel or some other supernatural entity, thus increasing the significance of his words.
If the stranger is human and not supernatural, he might be viewed as a prophet. The narrator’s description of the stranger recalls images of Old Testament prophets: “his long body clothed in a robe […] his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders” (Paragraph 4). In this reading, even if the stranger is not divine, he speaks for God. The prophets of the Old Testament often decried the iniquities and moral failings they found in the ancient Israelites. The stranger seems to render the same kind of judgment against the church’s members—identifying their hypocrisy and lack of moral imagination. The judgment is even more severe because the religious ceremony is nominally Christian. The minister’s war prayer stands in sharp contrast to Jesus’s command to love one’s enemy and turn the other cheek.
The stranger’s white hair suggests that he is older, perhaps the same age as Twain, who was 70 when he wrote the story. The church’s incomprehension (they label him a “lunatic”) may reflect Twain’s frustration that his fellow Americans rejected his anti-imperialist views. Moreover, the stranger’s age makes him old enough to have fought in the Civil War. Perhaps his realistic understanding of the cost of war comes from personal experience.
The Minister
Like all the characters in the story, the minister is not named, nor does the narrator offer any physical description of him. Twain might keep the minister undefined so that he can represent the clergy as a whole rather than being a specific character. In the story’s opening, the narrator says, “in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country” (Paragraph 1), so the minister’s prayer is not unique. He could be any of the pastors referred to in that line.
The minister is the catalyst for the story. Twain links nationalism and religion, showing how the name of God is used to advance national interests. Even before the story's start, the minister likely presented thinly veiled propaganda from the pulpit, drumming up support for the war. In the story, the minister’s jingoistic prayer leads to the appearance of the stranger and serves as the counterpoint to the stranger’s prayer. The minister and stranger serve as foils, the message of each becoming clearer by comparison with the other.
The most concrete character trait of the minister is his eloquence. Regarding his prayer, the narrator says, “None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language” (Paragraph 3). This detail suggests the minister believes his words, given his passion while praying. If the minister does not believe his own words, the detail still indicates the sway he holds over his congregation.
While the church may find the minister’s prayer to be eloquent and memorable, the narrator only records the minister’s closing lines, perhaps indicating how much (or how little) Twain believes readers should listen to a minister like the one in this story.
Soldiers
Throughout the story, the narrator refers to soldiers as volunteers, demonstrating their willingness to go to war. This willingness also demonstrates a certain naivete, the soldiers not fully understanding the brutality and bloodshed that awaits them. The soldiers dream only of victory and returning home as heroes, making it clear they do not comprehend the consequences of their actions or the reality of war. They do not think about what it would be like to kill and witness suffering. They imagine “the flight of the foe” (Paragraph 2), failing to imagine what happens should the enemy not surrender or retreat.
Like the other characters in the story, the soldiers are faceless and nameless. The narrator refers to them as a group and never as individuals, which underscores the story’s themes of conformism and nationalism. None of the soldiers are given a voice or a line of dialogue, which emphasizes their lack of intellectual and emotional depth and their inability or unwillingness to express their opinions.
The narrator reminds readers that the soldiers are boys rather than men. The narrator says that the soldiers are young four times, adding that they are cheered on by “fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts” (Paragraph 1). The term “sweethearts” implies immaturity and suggests the soldiers are in a stage of courtship and not marriage. By focusing on the young age of the soldiers, Twain elicits sympathy from the reader and strengthens the story’s anti-war message.
Family and Neighbors
Families and neighbors are also gathered in the church. The narrator says they are “proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor” (Paragraph 2). The families, like the soldiers, do not understand the horrors of war. Instead, they focus only on the glory to come. The envy of the families without sons or brothers becomes ironic in light of the stranger’s realistic depiction of war, as does the term “field of honor.” Thoughts of death do enter the minds of parishioners, but death on the battlefield is regarded with pride, the families and neighbors believing it to be “the noblest of noble deaths” (Paragraph 2). Like the soldiers, the families and neighbors have no dialogue aside from joining in the liturgy’s invocation. The narrator says, “with one impulse the house rose” (Paragraph 2), reflecting the conformity of the members and their lack of independent thought. The families and soldiers ignore the stranger’s words. They do not understand him, deciding that “there was no sense in what he said” (Paragraph 11). This detail reveals how indoctrinated the people are and how adverse they are to critical thinking.
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