What is the short story "the little regiment" by stephen crane about?

Question

Summary?

Answer 1

In a loose way, it's about a military regiment during the American civil war and how they came to choose their name. But that is not REALLY what the story is about... that is the setting more than anything else. And as a setting it is only overlayed in the loosest sense.

The story is really much more about the quixotic behaviour of people. The main characters in the story are two brothers who - most of the time - seem to wish for nothing more than the others' destruction. It is, however, plainly obvious that their feelings for each other are actually quite the opposite: neither will permit the other to get into serious trouble, they covertly show better manners around each other, and when one seems to be dead, the other is obviously devastated.

It doesn't take too much imagination to take this as a kind of allegory for the civil war itself. In many senses (sometimes literally) the people and governments fighting each other were brothers, like the main characters. And perhaps, if this was the intention, the author is not too far off... perhaps the fullness of the civil war was really a small contention that grew out of hand. A twist on too much closeness that seems to come out as hate.

Because the setting is placed so lightly, it's not too hard to imagine these soldiers being any soldiers on any side in any time. They all share a common grain of just doing their thing and trying to get by. The story goes quite a way to making these people very human. And that is what the story is about. The condition of being human.

Answer 2

The Open Boat Sparknotes

Answer 3

Read It!