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Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in War Horse, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Dignity and Humanity
Hope and Loss
Love and Loyalty
The Horrors of War
Summary
Analysis
Despite the nightmarish conditions of war, Joey and Topthorn pass a pleasant summer on the farm. They become used to the constant shelling and danger. One day, a grateful German soldier bestows an Iron Cross on them—the first and last English to win one in the war—which the orderlies nail outside the stable doors. On the rare days without shelling, recuperating German soldiers wander down to visit the horses, lavishing them with affection and compliments.
The Iron Cross was awarded to German soldiers from the 1870s through the 1940s. It thus gestures toward the immense horror of war—which has devastated lives throughout the sweep of human history. In this moment, it also suggests the humanity of the German soldiers, who cherish and appreciate Joey and Topthorn.
Themes
But Joey most loves the attention he receives from the little girl, Emilie, and her grandfather. The orderlies quickly give the care of Joey and Topthorn to the much more experienced farm family, and Emilie and her grandfather dote on the horses, anticipating and meeting their every need. Emilie talks constantly to the horses about her plans for herself—and them—after the war. But one evening she’s not there to greet them when they return from the front line, and when her grandfather comes to the barn later, he tells them that she’s dangerously ill with pneumonia. He tells the horses that Emilie prays every night for her parents (killed by a shell in the first week of war), her brother (killed in war after volunteering at 17), for the end of the war, and for the horses’ wellbeing. Now he wants the horses to pray for Emilie.
It quickly becomes clear that the real distinction between the Emilie’s care and that of the German orderlies lies in the way that she considers the horses her equals—like Albert, Nicholls, and Warren before her. In doing so, she proves her own deep well of humanity while recognizing the dignity of the animals. Emilie’s difficult recent experiences show how soldiers and civilians alike suffer war’s horrors, and how loss and hardship can sap a person’s strength and will to live. But her relationship with the horses gives her hope for the future and the will to carry on.
Themes
Snow falls heavily that night, and Emilie’s grandfather does not return in the morning before the orderlies hitch Topthorn and Joey to their carts. The horses struggle to pull the carts through the deep snow to the front line, where they find a larger company of casualties than usual, many of whom have been blinded by poison gas. Some of the soldier weep; some sing carols because it’s Christmas morning. That night, the guns fall silent and peace reigns, if only for the holiday. The grandfather gratefully brings Joey and Topthorn extra rations that night—Emilie has miraculously recovered, and he’s sure it’s because the horses prayed to their “horse god.” And in the Grandfather’s words, “All’s well,” for one night, at least.
The cold snowy morning—Christmas morning, in fact—confronts the horses and the soldiers they rescue with the brutality of a war that divides humans by nation rather than uniting them by what they share—like the peace and hope that Christmas should represent. It also offers a glimpse of some of World War I’s particular horrors, especially the novel use of devastating and disfiguring chemical weapons like chlorine and mustard gas. Amid all this suffering, Emilie’s recovery gives her grandfather a reason for hope.
Themes
