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RED BADGE OF COURAGE At the end of every era there is a pivotal piece of work that makes the transition into the next era. The Red Badge of Courage is the pivotal American piece of literature that divides the nineteenth and twentieth centuries yet at the same times bridges the gap between the eras. The Red Badge of Courage was published in 1895, just thirty years after the Civil War. Much conflict and duress still lay throughout the country and Stephen Crane took all that in and wrote a book about it. An early English critic, Sydney Brooks, was totally convinced by Cranes depictions of combat, and assumed that Crane had fought in the Civil War. If Red Badge of Courage were altogether a work of the imagination, unbiased on personal experience, its realism would be nothing short of a miracle, said Brooks. (Allred, p. 142) Crane was able to create vivid battle scenes from everything to the accurate sound of cannons and guns shots, to the thoughts that a soldier went through.
At that moment, rapid firing in the distance sent shock waves through the troops. Flashes of enemy musket and rifle fire scattered the skirmishers advancing ahead of them. Then and explosion from a Confederate cannon landed on the regiment in front of the 304 th and sent bodies flying (Crane, p. 46). Cranes imaginative effort remains a marvel.
Many have sought after him with the question of how he was able to so flawlessly depict vivid battle scenes when he was born after the Civil War was already over. Crane claimed that his source was the football field. In college Crane was distinguished for his exceptional ability on the baseball diamond and the football field. Crane took his experiences as an athlete, the adrenaline rushes, the fights, the victories, the defeats and channeled them to make a war novel. Much of the impact of Red Badge at the time arose from its powerful pictures of war, the powerful and involving images that leapt off the page into the mind of the reader. Screaming shells were whizzing into the grove, sending branches and leaves down on the heads of the regiment hiding there (Crane, p. 49).
Phillip Barrish said it best when he said On re-reading Red Badge, I am more than ever struck by the genius with which Crane in imagination pierced to the essentials of war; without any experience of the time, Crane was essentially true to the psychological core of war- if not to actualities. (Barrish, p. 64) Crane drew his inspirations from the football field in his vivid descriptions of the actualities and psychological aspects of war. Crane was able to successfully publish an accurate Civil War novel based on a sport he played in college. Cranes prowess on the football field, a non academic activity, ironically earned him worldwide critical acclaim. The relation of humankind to nature is a frequent and prominent aspect of Cranes writing. This common occurrence is not entirely surprising taking into consideration the extent to which nineteenth-century American literature covered the issue.
Stylistically Cranes novel contains elements of both Impressionism and Symbolism. Impressionism evolved greatly during Cranes time into a literary style characterized by the use of details and mental images rather than the re-creation of objective reality. Crane used many vivid descriptions of not only the battle but also of the thoughts in Henrys mind. Chester Wolford said it perfectly when he said, The Red Badge demonstrated what a twentieth-century consciousness feels like, in its depiction of two minds, two consciousnesses focused upon experience- one Henry Flemings, the other the narrators, both struggling to make sense out of things. (Wolford, p. 117) It was a totally new approach to a novel and that is one reason why it was a success.
Crane always did things out of the ordinary. Crane was influenced by William Dean Howells theory of Realism and by Hamlin Garlands Veritism, Crane utilized his keen observations, as well as personal experiences, to achieve a narrative vividness and sense of immediacy. (Kim, p. 96) This narratives vividness is a huge part of the story and is best explained in this next passage. Henrys face was dripping with perspiration, which he nervously wiped with his coat sleeve. When the Fire!
order finally came he raised his rifle and wildly fired into the distance (Crane, p. 56). This vivid description by the narrator draws the reader deep into the story to the point that if the reader outstretched his arm he would feel that he could touch Henry Fleming himself. Robert Lee said, The world of Red Badge is not a world where conflict simply occurs; rather, it seems that conflict is necessary to the very operation of the world. (Lee, p. 61) A world where conflict was a way of life is what Stephen Crane tried to write about, and succeeded. A persons influence can come from many different things, but if traced far enough back it leads to home. Crane was born in 1871 in Newark, New Jersey.
Born the youngest of fourteen children to a Methodist Minister and a devout religious woman, Stephen was surrounded by writing early. Both of his parents wrote religious articles, and two of his brothers grew up to be journalists. In 1888 Crane enrolled at Hudson River Institute and Claverick College, a military school which nurtured his interest in Civil War studies and military training. After that he spent two indifferent semesters at Lafayette College and Syracuse University where he became distinguished for his ability on the baseball diamond and the football field rather than for mental prowess. During this time he kept busy writing as encouraged by his family. In 1891, Crane decided that humanity was a more interesting study than the college curriculum and left school.
He worked full time as a reporter with his brother and part time for the New York Tribune. While in New York he became well acquainted with life in the Bowery and lived in a Bohemian existence among local artists. One of the most notable features on Red Badge of Courage's reception in America was the controversy of Cranes patriotism that raged in the pages of the Dial, a magazine owned by the conservative General Alexander C. McClurg.
The outspoken McClurg, who had risen to the rank of Brigadier-General, attacked Red Badge for portraying a Union Soldier as a coward. The men were listening intently, hoping the colonel would come to their defense, to explain that the regiment was not made up of mud diggers, but courageous fighting men. But he didnt (Crane, p. 210). While Red Badge was under fire in America, English critics tended to take the book more seriously, pointing out its affinities with works by Tolstoy, Zola, Kipling, and the battle scenes of the Russian realist painter Verestschagin. (Horsford, p. 133) All these critical acclaims came to a man who in college would rather play football than study and had never been to war, quite a remarkable accomplishment.
Crane did what most strived to do; he wrote the perfect Civil War novel and didnt step one foot on a battlefield. Red Badge of Courage has still yet to go out of print and has been through over twenty different editions. The popularity of Red Badge of Courage has never dwindled since its publication in 1895. Commonly considered Stephen Cranes greatest accomplishment, Red Badge ranks among the foremost literary achievements of the modern era. Throughout the story Crane employs many different meanings and lessons.
At one point in the novel the Narrator says, He had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man. (Crane, p. 64) This theory of heroism and cowardice is rampant in the story, and in the end we learn that heroism and cowardice go hand in hand, and you cant be heroic without being a coward. One piece of information that is very fascinating is that while Cranes early critics were unable to identify the battle that takes place, many today and unanimously agreed that it is in fact the Battle of Chancellorsville, and subsequent scholarly inquiry has backed this up. (Richards, p. 75) Red Badge of Courage was published over one-hundred years ago and is still being taught, admired, and read throughout the world. Once you find the formula for the perfect novel, not even time can change it. The most amusing thing about the novel is that Crane was able to write it so well although he was born after the Civil War was already over. Words Count: 1, 423. Bibliography: Allred, Randal Wayne. "Writing the Civil War: Cultural Myth and War Narrative in De Forest, Bierce, and Crane. " University of California Los Angeles, 1994.
Barrish, Phillip J. "Literary Intellectuals and Discourses of Materiality: James, Crane, and Cahan. " Cornell University, 1992. Cover, James. "Crane, Hitchcock, and the Binder Edition of the Red Badge of Courage. " Critical Essays on Stephen Crane's the Red Badge of Courage. Ed. Donald Power. Boston: Hall, 1990. Center, John J.
Naturalism in American Fiction: The Classic Phase. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1984. Horsford, Howard C. "'He Was a Man'. " New Essays on the Red Badge of Courage. Ed.
Lee Clark Mitchell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. Kim, Martha Virginia Yeager. "The Style of Stephen Crane's the Red Badge of Courage and Other Works: A Linguistic Analysis. " New York: Harper Collins, 1983. Lee, Robert A. "Stephen Crane's the Red Badge of Courage: The Novella as 'Moving Box'. " Ed.
A. Robert Lee. New York: St. Martin's, 1989. Richards, Gloria Ellen. "The Impressionism of Crane and Conrad. " New York: Random House, 1985. Schnitzer, Deborah.
The Pictorial in Modernist Fiction from Stephen Crane to Hemingway. Ann Arbor: Univ. Microfilms International Research Press, 1988. Wolford, Chester L. The Anger of Stephen Crane: Fiction and the Epic Tradition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
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Research essay sample on Red Badge Of Courage
