Onward Christian Soldiers

Onward Christian Soldiers is a Christian hymn that links Carl Henderson’s troubled childhood memory of his mother with a later scene of solitary singing and violent obsession. Its significance lies in that contrast: the song recalls care sustained through poverty, yet in the apartment it precedes Carl’s return to photographs of his victims.

Childhood Memory and Household Song

As a boy, Carl remembers his mother singing while she worked, including songs for laundry and for the hardships that followed his father’s death. She did laundry for wealthy people and was often cheated; Carl sometimes skipped school and hid under the porch to listen to her. The remembered singing belongs to a childhood marked by hunger as well as comfort: he rationed his butter sandwich and drank dirty water from a rusty soup can. The account identifies Bringing in the Sheaves as one of her songs, but it does not specifically say that she sang Onward Christian Soldiers. Instead, that hymn appears in Carl’s adult scene, within the broader memory of his mother’s singing.

Carl’s Singing in the Apartment

In the apartment, Carl paces through the living room singing old religious songs and waving his arms as though leading a choir. He sings for several hours, and Onward Christian Soldiers is the song he is performing when the landlady pounds on the ceiling with a broom handle just before nine o’clock. Carl stops, partly because he is ready to turn to something else and partly because Sandy’s shivering and complaints about the cold have irritated him. The interruption makes the hymn part of an ordinary, tense domestic scene rather than a church service.

From Hymn to Photographs

After stopping his singing, Carl checks that the door is locked, closes the curtains, and retrieves a shoebox from under the bed. In the dark living room, he examines photographs by briefly shining a flashlight on each one, trying first to guess which image he has drawn from the box. More than two hundred photographs are inside; they include bare backs, bloody holes, and Sandy. The sequence places the hymn immediately before Carl’s private viewing ritual. The remembered songs of his mother evoke care and endurance, while his present use of the photographs turns looking into a deliberate, repeated engagement with violence. The text does not present the hymn as an explanation or excuse for his actions; its force comes from the starkness of the juxtaposition.