The Red Badge of Courage

Henry Fleming runs from his first battle, is knocked on the head in the retreat, and spends the rest of the novel trying to convert that accidental wound into the standing he thinks it should confer. Crane was born six years after Appomattox and had never seen combat when he wrote it; he built the book out of reading, veterans’ accounts and guesswork, and its accuracy surprised the men who had been there.

In a curriculum meant to form citizens it is the anti-heroic counterweight: the subject is not valour but the gap between how a man behaves under fire and the story he tells afterwards.

Context: Stephen Crane (1871-1900) published the novel at 23. He later reported from the Greco-Turkish and Spanish-American wars, and said afterwards that the fighting had confirmed what he had already written.

Connections

• Stephen Crane — the author.
• The Complete Short Stories of Stephen Crane — his short fiction, also on this list.
• War
• Literature