Red Badge of Courage, The, ranks among the greatest war novels in American literature. It was written by Stephen Crane and published in 1895. A shorter version ran in serial form in several newspapers in late 1894. Its full title is The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War.
Crane described his novel as a psychological study of fear. The story follows a young Union soldier named Henry Fleming as he experiences his first battle during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Fleming enters the battle with romantic notions of being a hero. However, on the first day of fighting he panics at the violence and confusion around him and flees in terror. Fleming then witnesses the horrifying death of a friend and becomes outraged at the injustice of war. Nevertheless, he returns to his regiment. On the next day of the battle, he fights with bravery and courage, but without his previous illusions about the glories of warfare.
The Red Badge of Courage has been praised for its realistic portrayal of war, even though Crane had never seen an actual battle when he wrote his novel. He based his work on conversations with combat veterans, works of fiction, histories of military campaigns, and his own imagination.
Crane’s novel was one of the first to portray war from the viewpoint of the common soldier. The story concentrates on Fleming’s feverish mind. The novel depicts the soldier’s battlefield experiences through a sequence of fragmentary mental images—colors, sounds, parts of landscapes, and bodies of dead soldiers. The book’s title comes from a slight head wound Fleming suffers during a struggle with a retreating Union infantryman during the first day of battle.
See also Crane, Stephen; Naturalism; Realism.
