Facets and Artifices of War: A Historical Reading of “The Warrior’s Soul” by Joseph Conrad

Abstract

This paper closely observes the code of conduct of the war actors engaged in a Napoleonic war. In “The Warrior’s Soul”, the latter, as a palimpsest, is reminiscent of no other crisis than the Grand Army’s invasion of Tsar Alexander’s Russia in 1812. Narrowing down its attack and occupation field in this short-story under our study, this history-based conflict unfolds to show a manifest Franco-Russian opposition if we consider Moscow and Paris metropolis as a space-time. In the second and final phase of the short-story, what we find as the Moscow narration, the story on the war bends exclusively over the military herds which are depicted from a battlefield equally chaotic and horrific. In such apocalyptic disorder, the patriotic and conservative will of the Russian adjutant and Officer is put in competition with a heroic altruism we relate to the Tomassov-De Castel case. By looking deeper and deeper into the story of experience marked with the Russian pride and patriotism and that of the Franco-Russian duo, our analysis of “The Warrior’s Soul” as a polemic and historic writing further exposes the horrors and illusions of a war to better exalt honour, ethics and dignity within humans