at those heroes cannot really be true heroes. A romantic hero is someone marked by courageous acts, honored deeds, someone who engages in daring chases, fights, and exciting escapes. Since Crane also was a pioneer of naturalism, he valued instincts and behavior and the motives for people to turn out as they did. Getting the water by taking a dangerous path means nothing then without the motive. Nevertheless, Crane throws in a short moment where he forgets his indifference about heroism and creates his own heroism, a realistic one. To Crane, being a hero is more an individual state, it does not have to be glorifying but something that is natural, and a good act. Standing up for one‘s beliefs without regarding the outcome. Collins just went to get some water. He was thirsty and wanted to show his courage. It was no belief he pursued, and a rather purposeless action, nothing heroic at all to the realistic eye. The only little moment where Crane changes his character is when Collins turns around to give the officer some water. This does not save him from dying, which it would have done in a romantic story, but just offers him kindness. It portrays a very social, real-to-life heroic act, neither selfish nor very grant and honored, but individually seen as a giant leap of benevolence and a pursuing of moral belief, without great meaning to the world, an every day natural scene. “But Collins turned…Here’s your drink…Turn over, man, for God’s sake…There was the faintest shadow of a smile on his lips as he looked at Collins” (p.492). Even though Collins was not given a medal for his act he did something, in realistic measures, heroic. The poem is saying the same thing. Allthose people dying in war, in itself, is not very heroic at all. “These men were born to drill and die”(War is Kind, p.494). Men mostly fought, because that was their job. We all die sooner or later. The soldiers are n...
