Alright. The story of the desertion of a boy when 1st going into battle during the American Civil War and his redemption. ( )

Young Henry Fleming had always dreamed of performing heroic deeds in battle. But as a raw recruit in the American Civil War, Henry experiences both fear and self-doubt. Will war make him a coward--or a hero?

Good tale of a youth, Henry Fleming, and his exploits in the American Civil War. Followed by a short story called 'The Veteran', about Henry as an old man. ( )

[The Red Badge of Courage] was an introspective examination of himself by a soldier facing action in a realistically portrayed battle of the Civil War. His thoughts range from glory to shame to a worn pride. ( )

The Red Badge of Courage assails from the very first line – "The cold passed reluctantly from the earth" – and doesn't let up until the sun appears through cloud on the final page, two days of battle later. Short on character and short on plot, author Stephen Crane's obsession here is with the sensory experience of battle, told from the perspective of a young American Civil War soldier about to fight his first action.

This it does very well. The young Crane didn't have any experience of battle (he wrote the novel at 24 and died of tuberculosis at 28) but you wouldn't know it from The Red Badge of Courage. He is excellent at portraying the thoughts a young man can spin for himself, as his protagonist, Henry Fleming, ties himself in knots and becomes his own worst enemy, rationalises his fears and his actions, and emerges from the emotional wringer altered in some unquantifiable ways. For all that Crane had no war experience – and was criticised for this from other writers of his time, including Civil War veterans – it is a very honest book. One can imagine the book as a thought experiment, with Crane imagining: 'How would it feel if I, green as I am, were to find myself in a battle? Would I stand it, or would I run?'

Crane must've had a very vivid imagination to be able to concoct this so successfully, and he grants this dubious boon to his protagonist. It is Henry's active imagination which encourages him to enlist – he has naïve, romantic dreams of glory and is disappointed when his crying mother says "nothing whatever about returning with his shield or on it", in the manner of the Spartan three hundred (pg. 13). It is this same imagination which unmans him when he's stood there, cold and afraid, facing powder and shot and the rebel yell. Crane is particularly good at the chaos of fighting, and the effects this has on the men fighting it. An exhausting march discourages the ranks of soldiers more than an enemy artillery barrage; a large part of young Henry's struggle is against the dangerous thoughts which intrude upon him in the moments of frenzied anticipation before battle even begins.

It is this lack of agency, not only for Henry but for the rest of the rank-and-file, which makes the war so hellish for them, and The Red Badge of Courage an early anti-war novel of the modern sensibility. The men are pushed from field to field, hill to hill, skirmish to skirmish, not knowing what they are meant to be doing – still less why – and this drains their courage. "It had begun to seem to them that events were trying to prove that they were impotent" (pg. 135). Ironically, it is only when they are cornered and have no options that they – both the protagonist and the soldiers as a unit – launch a successful charge and perform a collective heroic feat. In this ramshackle hell, this confusing "land of strange, squalling upheavals" (pg. 155) where officers are trying to impose some sort of order like "shepherds struggling with sheep" (pg. 123), we see the baldness of battlefield courage: too often, you didn't know what you were doing, and heroism or cowardice was only a label you could apply afterwards. If you survived.

Despite this success, Crane's book can be said to hinder itself by focusing so completely on this one aspect of writing. Though short, the book feels long and draining, as it is almost entirely descriptive writing with little in the way of plot and character. The absence of plot is forgivable, considering the nature of the piece. And our protagonist, Henry, gets some character development, of course – how could he not, when we are privy to his every thought and emotional response? – but his comrades do not. The moments when other soldiers die, or crawl away injured, should carry more emotional weight than they do, even as pen-portraits. For all his savant-like success in depicting battle, Crane's writing does have this noticeable imbalance of the inexperienced writer. Its descriptive writing is often good, but without economy: Crane catalogues each and every sensation, and won't move on from one sensation to another until he has described it in half-a-dozen ways. Nevertheless, it would be hard for even a supremely experienced writer to balance all this in a battle scenario, where chaos is the norm and a "number of emotions and events [are] crowded into such little space" (pg. 137). The book gets its intensity from this confined, bottle-like pressure, and to appreciate a book like this one you have to accept there are some things the author chooses not to do.

It is the emotional maelstrom, completely devoid of romance, combined with the general sensory experience of battle – its colours, its smoke and error, its fatigue – which is the greatest success of The Red Badge of Courage. But there are also other whispers of what would become the modern anti-war novel: the senior officer who glibly orders the men into an almost-certain-death manoeuvre as a mere feint, "speaking of the regiment as if he referred to a broom" (pg. 122), or the awareness of the battle's ultimate futility: "Individuals must have supposed that they were cutting the letters of their names deep into everlasting tablets or brass, or enshrining their reputations forever in the hearts of their countrymen, while, as to fact, the affair would appear in printed reports under a meek and immaterial title" (pg. 62). But in Crane's hands the title is far from meek and immaterial, and his prototypical success could be said to pave the way for modern war novelists like Remarque, Hemingway and the English war poets. Not bad for a 24-year-old New Yorker with no experience of battle. ( )

Courageousness story

It's no Joseph Conrand but still a frantic little novel you can read in a sitting that is decent in getting its point across. ( )

All I can remember now is it was about the Civil War and some deserter but it was really an antiwar novel. I always associated most antiwar novels from this era with hippies, or at least hippie-like teachers, which I associated with the antiwar movement. I didn't much like the 60s or the early 70s or the antiwar movement unless it meant keeping my worthless ass out of the draft somehow since I'm basically a coward. ( )

Stephen Crane's use of words is devastating. He puts words together in ways that you didn't think possible. 'Tattered soldier' and 'youthful summer' are just two of the many examples. His effective writing brings to life the atmosphere of the battlefield. You can almost hear all the bombing and gunshots as you read the book. Crane also depicts Henry's frame of mind well - fear, relief, pride, and condescension, and how all these states could change so rapidly depending on external circumstances. You will notice that at the end of several chapters, Crane always ends with the sun shining through. Even on a battlefield, there is always hope and cheer. ( )

I feel like I haven't much to say about this one, which makes me sorry for generations of students who studied it and had to squeeze this novel dry of whatever juice they could find. Stephen Crane spends all of it inside of Henry Fleming's head, a young man on the Union side of the American Civil War as he is thrust through multiple phases: from the excitement of enlistment to the boredom of encampment, to the clinical self-study of preparation and finally to the fearful experience of battle - fearful enough that he mindlessly runs away. For years the title has been a curiosity to me, only to discover now that its meaning was obvious all along: "He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage."

It surprises me that the author Stephen Crane had no war experience himself. Some content might be the product of imagination, but I have to assume he talked to some of the war's veterans and read their accounts to uncover this many visceral details about the experience of the front-line. Crane is predominantly focused on the initial terror of war rather than its horror, but with a dash of that too. At the halfway point he turns away from confronting the uselessness of war, as the first half seemed to be steering toward. Henry's focusing on that is regarded as a weakness best forgotten. It is subsumed by a portrayal of the strengthening element of personal glory to be won through heroism, fear replaced by anger and pride as the key to a soldier's survival and maturation. Whether war makes any kind of sense is left as an exercise for subsequent authors to tackle. ( )

Stephen Crane's classic highlights the psychology of a young man facing the reality of war. Set in the United States Civil War it is amazing in that Crane had no experience in battles of any kind. It made his name as an author and has been a favorite of mine since my days in high school. ( )

4/25/22

I read this as a teen and didn’t like it. I remember that the main character struck me as immature and frustrating. He is still that way, but thirty years make a big difference in my perspective. The writing is lush and gorgeous, and the technical choices wowed me. The way that no one is named, yet their names are known, creates such a subtle this-could-be-anyone dynamic. I can now respect this book as a psychological study of a soldier at war. ( )

I first read this book in my sophomore English class, too many years ago. Having reread it I can take away a better appreciation for its greatness. As a novel of the Civil War it remains a powerful example of a young man in the frays of battle. While subtitled "An Episode of the American Civil War" it has few specifics in the narrative that would suggest that this is any different from other mid-century wars in the Nineteenth Century. Thus it becomes timeless and takes on the patina of myth in some small way. The result is a classic worth rereading. ( )

Henry Fleming is a teenager that is out of his mind because one day he decided to go into war thinking it was going to be his personal la-la land. Bu then once he actually faces the threat of battle, he gets all nervous and realizes that he isn't a god. Wait, he actually thinks he's a god by running away. Never mind-wait, he thinks he's a god since he lied his way back to his regiment. And in the final chapters of the book, he magically goes into his la-la land and transforms into a Lawful Good Half-Orc Barbarian. ( )

An excellent read, depicting the horrors of the American Civil War in a coming of age story, revealing the fickle nature of bravery. ( )

I read this book a long time ago and just reread it. The author describes a young recruit in the Federal Army during the civil war. We are told of his actions and thoughts. He begins with cowardice and later acts with courage. The story is a reminder that war is a stupid way of resolving conflict. It is difficult to see why this book has been forced on students for many years other than it is short and teaches some history. There is nothing really interesting about the book. ( )

I read this in 7th Grade English Class. I remember that year as the "year of war" since most of the books we read seemed to be set in times of war. This was one of the better books from those we were required to read. ( )

A classic of the anti-war genre. Read in HS. ( )

This short novel recounts a young farm boy's first battle as a Union soldier and his internal struggles with cowardice. Scholars believe the action is meant to take place at Chancellorsville.

Henry Fleming enlists against his mother's wishes. Like many naive youngsters, he thinks battle will be glorious, but instead his group is kept in camp for a lengthy period, bored and uninformed of what is planned for them. When they are finally called to action, he sees little purpose to what they do against a seemingly invincible enemy, and he runs away from the battle. Later in the day he makes his way back to try to find a way to feel good about himself.

I found the book generally unsatisfying. Henry's internal monologue taken as a whole is thought-provoking, but it's difficult to relate to his reasoning and actions. This may be because I have no experiences by which to judge his, but I think it goes deeper. Henry's not particularly likable (and apparently wasn't to Crane, either). There's something in his manner and speech (and in those of his fellow soldiers), that made me think of the three escaped prisoners in the movie "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" In other words, bumbling and not-too-bright fools. However, many people thought it was so spot-on that he must have been at war himself, so the book obviously resonated with many at the time it was published. ( )

What just happened?! I literally have no clue what the main theme of this was supposed to be about. I thought it was supposed to be courage and standing strong, and while that is in this story, most of the book seemed clouded and confused by the main character's thoughts.
Oh. He himself was an awful person. He's one of those self-satisfied people who, if they do one thing right, are hopelessly balloon headed about it, and doesn't care about other people. I wanted to punch him through most of this book.
Overall thoughts: confused narrative (that may be a purposeful thing, since the book is narrated in the limited omniscient, so everything we know is what the idiot of a main character knows), poorly explained battle scenes (once again, may be on purpose, but I hope not!), but an interesting premise. ( )

Having read the book for myself, I can understand both those who loved it and those who hated it. I actually read The Red Badge of Courage with a group of friends, which I think really spiced up the reading experience for me and made me enjoy the book tremendously. Had I not read with a group, I'm not sure what my overall feelings would be concerning the novel but I believe I still would have liked it.

In truth, the novel can be very boring at times. It will drone on and on with absolutely nothing happening, nearly putting the reader to sleep. However, as boring as this may be to read, it really is a realistic depiction of war. Its almost as if half the story the novel depicts is not just told by the collection of ink and pages but rather the experience (sometimes boring, sometimes exciting) the story involuntarily invokes. Its like the reader can experience the waiting game the soldiers partake in before the break of battle. Perhaps I'm the only one who found it this way, but even so, I believe its interesting. So while it was boring sometimes, it had its purposes. ( )

Anthony Heald does a fantastic job in his audio reading of this classic novel. ( )

Today's book is a classic that I have wanted to read for quite some time but never got around to...until now. Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage covers the American Civil War from the point of view of a Union soldier. It's the gritty portrayal of life at the front and just what it's like to lay down your life for a cause that you don't fully understand. In fact, our protagonist has almost no clue what it is that he's fighting for or against. He joined up because it was the done thing which seems to be the case for the rest of his regiment as well. There are those that brag about their bravado but when the time comes for the bullets to fly they are the first to turn and run. At first, our soldier is condescending towards these 'cowards' as he sees them but he very quickly sees the futility of their regiment's actions as they seem to be merely feinting and arbitrarily gaining and losing ground. It is a gritty, raw description of battle and defeat which is undercut with confusion and fear. These are children playacting warfare but the injuries and death are very real. Crane's insistence on not holding back lends a realistic, deadening of the senses feel to what it's like on the battlefield when you are surrounded by death and horror at every turn. He was making a commentary on the futility of war and how those who are a part of the 'war machine' are generally lost as to the meaning of why and who they are fighting. I am immensely glad that I finally picked this book up and gave it a read. I encourage ya'll to do the same. It's a slim volume and will take no time at all (though I don't promise you'll want a break every now and again from the bloodshed). 9/10 ( )

A young man moves from cowardice to courage, doubt to self-confidence, and youth to manhood in this classic Civil War novel.

Between the conversations in dialect and the chaotic battle scenes, I found this novel hard to follow but rewarding. I particularly liked Crane's use of color imagery. Recommended for Civil War buffs. ( )