Civil Peace

The title of the story, Civil Peace was chosen by the author in order to make a statement about what life is like after a Civil War, which reflects the story in itself. According to merriamwebster.com, civil means "of relating to citizens." Peace is what technically should come after a war. The fight is over, now there can be peace again. But, that has proven to never be the case. There is often a very slow climb until peace is reached once again. So civil peace should really mean, peace of the citizens. This statement is fairly ironic because there is not really peace among all the citizens in the story (note the thieves at the end who take Jonathan's money.) Although Jonathan's friends who greet him by saying, "happy survival," seem to be at peace with one another, there is still not total civil peace in the whole country. I believe this title was selected to make a point about peace after war.