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Stephen Crane, before dying of tuberculosis at age 29, published several essays, novels, and even a volume of poetry. He also worked as a newspaper journalist for several different publications, including for William Randolph Hearst. Crane published his most famous novel about the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage, in 1985. At the time, Crane had had no true war experience, but this changed in the later stages of his life. The book traces the effects of war on a Union soldier, Henry Fleming, from his dreams of soldiering, to his actual enlistment, and through several battles of the Civil War. Stephen Crane develops four major themes in The Red Badge of Courage, and these themes exist in his personal experiences.
The central theme of the book is courage. When the book opens, Henry Fleming thinks storybook heroes, the knights and Greek warriors he read about in school display courage. Despite his mother's warning that he can't fight the whole war alone, Henry thinks he will. That is what courage means to him.
Once he joins the army, and sees how horrible war is, he becomes terribly frightened. He worries that he will be a coward. "The red badge of courage" referred to in the title is a wound. It is ironic, of course, a retreating Union soldier wound Henry rather than a Confederate one wounding him. His wound is really a badge of shame, not of courage. But he and the other soldiers treat it as if it is a wound honestly received and perhaps, in a way, it was. Henry's experiences during this first flight from battle eventually teach him a great deal about life and death.
When Henry shows real courage in the second day's fighting, he is not wounded. A number of other characters in the novel show various types of courage. Hasbrouck, the young lieutenant, is always brave, always urging his men forward, and always sticking up for them. Jim Conklin, Henry's friend, is calm and collected, follows orders, and faces death with matter-of-fact dignity. Henry's mother shows courage, too, when she sends Henry off to war even though she loves him and needs his help on the farm, saying, "The Lord's will be done" (Crane 15). And the tattered man, who is kind and uncomplaining despite his wounds, also shows a kind of courage.
But the courage that is prized in this book is courage in battle. Crane describes it as unthinking, savage, and almost more animal than human. "It is a temporary but sublime absence of selfishness" (Crane 76). By the second day of battle Henry and Wilson have achieved this kind of courage, as has the rest of the regiment. The theme of war becomes a prominent theme also. Crane describes war with a realism unusual for his time (Delbanco 34). He gives us the boredom and mud of camp life, the repetitiveness of soldiers' conversations, the arrogance of the officers, the constant thunder of the guns.
He also shows us war in its almost surrealistic horror, He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war (Crane 102). We see the dreadful deaths of Jim Conklin, Jimmie Rogers, and many unnamed men.
Again and again we see bodies twisted into unbelievable positions. And we see the terrible randomness of war. There is no reason why a bullet strikes one man and not another. When the novel opens, Henry has a romantic view of war, which events quickly poke holes in.
Even at his most heroic, when he picks up the falling Union flag, there is a gruesome detail in which he has to pry the flagpole out of the dying color bearer's hands. War turns out to be much grimmer than Henry ever imagined, just as courage turns out to be matter of animal instinct rather than individual grace. Still, Crane seems to accept Henry's view that war takes the measure of a man, and he certainly believed that in his own life. After the publication of The Red Badge of Courage Crane was approached with better reporting assignments and he sought experiences as a war correspondent in combat areas.
Crane travelled to Greece, Cuba, Texas and Mexico, reporting mostly on war events. In Greece Crane wrote about the Greco-Turkish War, settling in 1898 to Sussex, England, where he lived with the author Cora Taylor, who was proprietress of a well-known Jacksonville brothel (Stallman NA). During these restless years Crane refined his use of realism to expose social ills, as in Georges Mother (1896), which explored life in the Bowery. In 1899 appeared Active Service, which was based on the Greco-Turkish War. In 1899 Crane returned to Cuba, to cover the Spanish-American War. Due to poor health he was obliged to return to England.
Crane died on June 5, 1900 at Badenweiler in Germany of tuberculosis, that was worsened by malarial fever he had caught in Cuba. His publications include the sketches and stories from his life as a correspondent in Whilmoville Stories (Stallman NA). Individuality in society is a less important but still recognizable, theme in The Red Badge of Courage. Again and again Henry has to be told, "You can't fight this war alone" (Crane 119). He imagines turning back a hordes of gray soldiers alone, and he always knows better than the generals.
Becoming a real hero, for Henry, requires becoming a better member of the group. He learns to follow orders without complaining, and he begins to feel like part of the regiment. When Henry was concerned about saving himself, he ran away. Only when he learns that he's one man among many is it possible for him to show courage. Crane believes that as an individual in society one cannot do much to make a difference (Hungerford 68). Being in a family of 14, this is easily accounted for.
While Crane grew up, he dealt with the death of his father which also can have an affect on the way one thinks of the value of the individual. Ironically, as an individual, Crane became famous for The Red Badge of Courage at the age of 24 and was known for his originality (Manyard NA). In the course of The Red Badge of Courage Henry Fleming does a lot of growing up. Crane writes, The youth seemed to grow into a matured man right in front of the eyes of the regiment (Crane 156). The generalized setting and Crane's habit of not using the soldiers' names makes this a story about the effect of war on young men, not just about the effect of the Civil War on a few individuals. But in some ways the story is even more general than that.
It is about overcoming fear, and learning to be brave, and its about giving up romantic dreams, and looking at the world as it really is. In this way The Red Badge of Courage is not just the story of how Henry Fleming became a man, but a story about growing up. Crane also grows up in his own life. He starts out as a penniless boy who I moved all over the place with his family (NA).
He never cared for school, going to Syracuse University and being mainly known for his baseball playing abilities. Crane lived the down-and-out life of a poor artist who became well known as a poet, journalist, social critic, and a realist. He even found the time to find a female companion named Cora Taylor, an intelligent woman with literary inclinations several years his senior, who was operating a house of assignation in Jacksonville, Florida (Longman NA). Crane's few remaining years were chaotic and personally disastrous. His unconventionality and his sympathy for the downtrodden aroused malicious gossip and false charges of drug addiction and Satanism that disgusted the fastidious author (Gain NA). These things included with his war correspondent experiences show how Crane has matured over time and gained the full meaning of life.
In conclusion, The four themes courage, war, individual in society, and growth are both found in The Red Badge of Courage and the experiences of Stephen Crane. Many authors choose to display themselves and their views and occurrences in life throughout their works rather than plainly stating it. It is evident that the life of Stephen Crane can be paralleled to what he displays in novels. Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Themes Of The Red Badge Courage
