Male-Female Relationships

There are no successful relationships between men and women in Barthelme's short story, even between the narrator and his girlfriend Sylvia. The ground between men and women in the story reflects the ongoing battle between the Comanches and the narrator's troops.

Twice the narrator indicates that he is "getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love," indicating a certain amount of pain surrounding his feelings for Sylvia. In another scene, Block quickly assures the narrator that Sylvia is not in love with Kenneth, highlighting the narrator's anxiety over his and Sylvia's relationship. Sylvia is shown, ultimately, as a deceptive woman, lying to him about which side in the battle she has chosen. When the narrator remembers lying in bed with her at the story's end, he winces over "the sickness of the quarrel" he has had with her, and his fingers touch "white...