June's Book: The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

War (1895 - 79 pp.)

In The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane tells a quintessential story about 18-year-old Henry Fielding,  a fresh recruit in the Union army in the Civil War. Crane was born in 1871, too late to serve in the Civil War, although he conducted an impressive dive into archival war research. He later served as a war correspondent in Greece during the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, a conflict perhaps best known in the United States for being covered by Crane. His other experiences include being stranded in a dinghy for 30 hours.* After all this, Crane died at age 28 in a sanatorium in the Black Forest. I rarely discuss authors' lives in such detail on here, typically preferring intrinsic analysis, but Crane's life is asking for a biopic. How I had somehow managed to read so much literature without encountering his work is a mystery to me, especially considering I have completed a course on American literature up to 1900.

The Red Badge of Courage is reminiscent of other turn-of-the-century** American adventure stories like White Fang and "A Resumed Identity", in terms of pulpy style and boundless optimism. Crane lived and wrote in arguably the most wide-eyed, forward-thinking era in American history, which shows in his use of the Civil War as a backdrop for camaraderie, wit, and the ability for a young man to learn how to take charge. Later Civil War stories showcase the war's brutality, such as in Bring the Jubilee, but Crane is content to have his teenage soldiers learn militaristic values. Fielding and his friend Wilson are shuttled around to different battlefields, at times carrying rifles or bearing standards. In a Looney Tunes-esque series of incidents, Fielding is whacked with a rifle, shot in the head just enough for it to hurt, and taken aback at how new some of the Confederate uniforms are.^ 

Crane's writing is fast-paced and magazine-like, with plenty of imagery. An early example of a battle scene could have been used as a US Army recruitment ad:^^

Bullets began to whistle among the branches of the trees. Showers of pine needles and pieces of wood came falling down. It was as if a thousand axes were being used.

The lieutenant of the youth’s regiment was shot in the hand. He began to curse so magnificently that a nervous laugh went through the regiment. It relieved the tightened senses of the men. (60)

The Red Badge of Courage is such an easy read, especially by the standards of often dense 19th-century fiction, I am stunned it is not in more educational curricula. That said, I have only ever attended high school in Ontario, where those inhabitants who do ever think about the US Civil War look on in horrified apoplexy. The phrase "Civil War" is just as likely to refer to the English Civil War here, or to the Guns 'N' Roses song.

Crane may be a difficult author to explain, values-wise. Before World War I, heroism in battle was so vaunted that soldiers would invite their own wounds: "At times he wished he were wounded. He believed persons with torn bodies were unusually happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound—a red badge of courage." (77) Although honour and duty are likely not completely expired virtues, it is difficult to identify with someone who sees the world the way Fielding sees it. Now, of course, veneration of 1890s-era values is confined to memorabilia collections. Perhaps an Art Nouveau revival is in order.

Thanks to the magic of the public domain, the book is available in its entirety here.

Ease of Reading: 9

Educational Content: 3

*Back in 2018, I was trapped in an elevator for an hour. This is the closest I have come to such a predicament. I also had a phone on me, which, suffice to say, someone in the 1890s decidedly did not.

**It never ceases to amaze me that, even after another century has turned, we still use the phrase "turn of the century" to describe the period surrounding the year 1900.

^It is unclear whether Crane's depiction of jaunty new Confederate uniforms (114) belies a lack of understanding of just how ragged Confederate uniforms tended to be, or whether Fielding lucks out by seeing what few new uniforms there were.

^^The Spanish-American War was fought three years after The Red Badge of Courage's release, and was portrayed using some of the same types of images. Teddy Roosevelt's charge up San Juan Hill could have been devised by Crane as a plot point.