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Chapter 15
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
Joey hears excited chattering and cheers from both sides of no-man’s-land. He smells food cooking somewhere and begins to wander back and forth, looking for a gap in the barbed wire that will allow him to find food and help. He finds a small patch of grass and is eating it when a German soldier waving a small white flag carefully clips his way through the wire. Soon, a khaki-clad British soldier, also holding a truce flag, does the same on the other side of the line. Joey feels drawn to the German first; he reminds the horse of Friedrich with his gentle demeanor, rumpled uniform, and gray hair. But the sound of the British soldier arrests his attention, and he pauses indecisively.
Morning finds Joey literally wandering between the British and German sides along the front lines, again reminding readers that more unites these warring factions of humans than divides them, if only they could see it. In this context, the brutality of their war seems particularly heinous and wasteful. The fact that the soldiers from each side can come together in peace to talk about the fate of the horse that’s miraculously appeared in their midst further suggests that there are other, less violent ways to deal with conflict and disagreement—increasingly, the war itself seems less necessary. And again, Joey responds to kindness from both sides since each soldier reminds him of another man from his past: Friedrich on the one hand and Albert on the other.
Themes
Joey pauses, and both men approach. The British soldier remarks that the question of who gets the horse seems like one for King Solomon to settle, then he babbles on uncertainly, since he doesn’t speak German. But the German soldier speaks enough English to communicate. He slips a rope gently around Joey’s neck while claiming his right to the horse because he got to him first. Silence falls over the troops in both trenches as the two men discuss Joey’s fate. The British soldier—a Welshman, it turns out—knows more about horses than the German. He checks out Joey’s wounded leg and suggests that the horse needs veterinary care soon if he’s to survive. Both sides have veterinarians, but neither man knows how far away they are.
The British soldier references a story from the Bible in which two women come to King Solomon (reputed for his wisdom) when they cannot settle their conflict. They live together and have babies of the same age, and after one baby dies in its sleep, each woman claims the living child as her own. Solomon suggests they cut the babe in half, giving one part to each; the woman who willingly offers to give up her claim so that the child might live reveals herself to be the baby’s true mother, thus settling the conflict. The German and British soldiers, who were no doubt firing on each other’s positions just hours before, show that they can speak civilly to each other and recognize each other’s humanity, thus revealing both their own good characters and offering another reminder of how pointlessly the war destroys the lives of people who could otherwise live together in peace.
Themes
The German soldier digs into his pocket and pulls out a coin. He offers to flip it for the horse and while it’s in the air, the British soldier calls heads. The German soldier stoops to see the face of “[his] Kaiser” looking up unhappily from the muck, but he willingly hands the rope to the British soldier. Remarking on how much suffering could have been avoided if the war could have been settled so amicably and noting that they’ll likely be trying to kill each other within a few hours, the two men bid each other farewell and return to their own trenches. The British soldiers laugh and cheer with delight as their fellow soldier brings Joey back behind their line.
The German soldier’s coin toss represents the clearest instance of the book’s anti-war message. In suggesting that random chance could just as easily settle the conflict, it claims that neither side necessarily has the moral high ground. Indeed, the German and British soldiers have easily put aside their differences and enmity in this encounter. They could just as easily be friends as enemies, but for artificial divisions of humanity into nations, and a tendency to solve conflicts with violence.
Themes
