The Red Badge of Courage: An
Episode of the American Civil War by
Stephen Crane
A Search For Identity In A "Sultry Nightmare"
Stephen Cranes classic work
Personal Review: The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the
American Civil War by Stephen Crane
Although the setting of the novel is the civil war, the true storyline takes
place within Henry. The story centers on the dissonances between his
childlike perceptions of war based on Greek epics of Homer and his self
preservation in the face of death. The story starts with Henry's misguided
presumptions of war. He is vain and hypersensitive. He wants to be a hero
and he sees war and his best bet is to get off the farm. In the end, he
develops a new view of war as well as his place in the world. His path of
transformation takes him through the nameless faceless ranks of the army.
Few fellow soldiers are identified by name. Rather, brief encounters
describe such soldiers as an unnamed mysterious advocate who comforts
him when he is lost and "tattered man."
Henry's delusional "Homeric" ideals of war come crashing down through a
myriad of emotions including fear, hopelessness, insecurity and anger.
Crane depicts several situations that are intimately human. With a few
words of conversation, he conveys volumes of emotion. For example,
when Henry tells his mother that he has enlisted, he is forced to listen to
her unexpected harangue. He anticipated a hero's send-off and imagined
a salutation such as "returning with his shield or on it (p. 5)." However, his
mother lectures him about manners and falling into bad repute. After
which, Crane describes Henry's reaction as "He had, of course, been
impatient under the ordeal of this speech. It had not been quite what he
expected, and he had borne it with an air of irritation. He departed felling
vague relief (p.7)."
Crane intentionally loses the reader's orientation to time and place. He is
clearly not trying to retell the specific historical events of a battle. He is
creating the inner battle of young boy who has built up aspirations of
heroics in his mind fall like a house of cards in the realties of war. Henry's
Self preservation usurps his heroic intentions:
"In his flight the sound of these following footsteps gave him his one
meager relief. He felt vaguely that death must make a first choice of men
who were nearest; the initial morsels for the dragons would be then those
who were following him. So he deployed the zeal of an insane sprinter in
this purpose to keep them I the rear. There was a race (p.50)."
After being detached from his regiment, the hypersensitive Henry
ruminates about his regiment will receive him if her returns. He chances
upon a "Tattered man" who's simple question "Were you hit?" sends Henry
into a tailspin of guilt and shame. He actually started to look at injured
soldiers with envy:
"At time he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He
conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished he,
too, had a wound, a red badge of courage (p. 66)."
After returning to his unit, he is accepted and eventually does achieve a
certain level of heroism and notoriety. However, in the end, Henry finds
inner peace by realizing there is a larger context to which he humbly
belongs:
"The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered
and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's
thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks - an
existence of soft and eternal peace (p. 166)."
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