The Private History of a Campaign That Failed, Research Paper Example

“The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” by Mark Twain is a short story in which the author has written a fictional account of militiamen in the Missouri State Guard. The men are part of a pro-Confederate sub-group of the military known as the ‘Marion Rangers’. As Twain’s characters are shown to be fledglings in their nervous inexperience, the story climaxes upon the killing of an innocent man whom the novice militiamen mistake for an enemy Yankee. Overall, “The Private History of a Campaign that Failed” showed a unique side of war and the disillusionment that often meets men who enter military services with romantic notions of glory, only to be blunted by very harsh realities.

Though Twain uses humor to convey his fictionalized memoir, the realities of life and death are forced upon the young men. The story is comprised of humorous squabbles amongst the young men regarding the ranks among them, the taming of their mounts, and retreating from anything even remotely resembling a threat or enemy. Though the group was gathered unofficially and the recruits were not actually part of the military, the boys of this militia felt very passionate about the Confederate cause and believed their duty was to protect the integrity of the Confederacy from infiltration by the Yankee cause (Rachels, 231). Though their actions seem insignificant and somewhat cowardly as they constantly move away from any area with a perceived threat, the boys are still filled with delusions of their importance as well as the implied bravery that is characteristic of any military man who fights passionately in defense of his beliefs and the wartime cause. This delusion is shattered with the killing of the innocent horseman they mistake for a Yankee assaulter: “We stayed several days at Mason’s and after all these years the memory of the stillness and dullness and lifelessness of that slumberous farmhouse still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence of death and mourning (Twain, 2004). The narrator expresses true guilt over the death of the man, differentiating between the militiamen’s ‘kind of war’ and the true kind of war fought by men of the legitimate military (Twain, 2004). This reality check shifts the story abruptly from humor to drama and personal realization.

“The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” is a story of mixed sentiment, engaging the reader in a humorous tale that weaves a bitter truth into its short length: “In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war, killed in fair and legitimate war, killed in battles as you may say, and yet he was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother” (Twain, 2004). The time period showed Missouri, as it was, during the wartime era; it was one of fifteen states that was openly declared a slave state. The union of the Marion Rangers was short lived and the group disbanded shortly after the true nature of war blew apart the delusions of glory, bravery, and victory the men had applied connotatively to war and battles.

In the last line of the story, Twain sums it up best through his narrator: “I could have become a soldier myself if I had waited. I had got part of it learned, I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating” (Twain, 2004). This light note conveys both the humorous tone of the story as well as the lightheaded whimsy of the narrator. This line conveys the resignation to the realities of war while mocking the narrator’s own insignificant part in any cause. The glimpse of war he had gotten was minimal and much lighter than the realities that are shown to young men in the real military, who are sent overseas and are shown much worse, with no ability to turn around and change their course.

The twenty four year old leader who serves as the narrator of this story. In his various descriptions, the reader is made aware of the Marion Rangers’ shortcomings almost immediately while the narrator remains blissfully ignorant:“As for myself, I was full of unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four in the morning, for a while grateful to have a change, new scenes, new occupations, a new interest” (Twain, 2004).Blind to the groups inadequacies and obvious inexperience, the leader depicts his own cowardice and blatant inexperience. Though Twain had a real and personal experience in the military, this story depicts youthful, wannabes, desperate to experience their romantic notions of war while unwilling to taste any of its bitter truths. Twain’s fictionalized account – though resembling a memoir – is clearly a work that doesn’t follow any real person’s experiences. Drawing on his own experience, Twain writes a piece that seems genuinely autobiographical. Only after  some brief fact-checking is is made clear that Twain’s story was one purely of fiction (online-literature.com, 2002). The group of young boys are likely a representation of some of the boys Twain knew, who were not of age to actually join the military, and who romanticized war and military life due to inexperience. The men clearly knew nothing of the tremendous gravity of real war, battle and the grim realities of death.

The collective character of the entire group of Marion Rangers can be summed up in the character of Ed Stevens. The narrator at one point describes him: “There was nothing serious in life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of ours was simply a holiday” (Twain, 2004). In this description it can clearly seen that the militia boys are whimsical in their ideas and that their devotion to the cause fell quite short of legitimate military men, who fight with a direct and distinct purpose. The aloofness of the character of Ed shows the stark contrast between the delusions of the boys’ certainty of their own importance and the true nature of their devotion to any particular cause. Most of the boys, while stuffed with self-aggrandizing ideas, were uncaring and unaware that they were fighting for anything in particular.

In conclusion, the Marion Rangers were a small group of men who trivialized the realities of war. War is not glamorous and in most idealized versions conceived by naïve young men, death does not enter into the imagination. Rather there is the nobility of fighting for a cause and the truth of injuries, casualties and mortality never dampen the illusion. This is partly the propaganda of military recruiters, which purposefully leave out the harsh realities in favor of glamorized victories; the reasons for this are obvious as seeking recruits is easier without showing the grim harshness of real wartime and its casualties. Through humor, Twain is able to convey the sick realities of war that are only made apparent to boys once something drastic has destroyed the illusory wall of self-importance.

References

Rachels, D. Mark Twain’s Civil War. University of Kentucky Press, 2007.

“Mark Twain – Samuel Langhorne Clemens”. 2002. Retrieved on July 18, 2011 from online-literature.com: http://www.online-literature.com/twain/

Twain, M. 2004. The Private History of a Campaign that Failed. Retrieved from EastOfTheWeb.com: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/PriHis.shtml