The Red Badge of Courage

Author: Stephen Crane
Publishing Info: Originally published in 1894 by D. Appleton and Company
Suggested Reading Level: Grades 9 and up

Synopsis:
Henry is a young man who is taken in by the romanticism of war. He wants to go to war and be a hero and have parades thrown in his honor when he comes back. What he gets is quite different. The book starts out showing us his impressions of his troop and the restlessness they feel at not being deployed yet. They’ve been camped for weeks in the same place and keep getting told they will move, but it turns out to be a fluke. Soon, the company moves and is heading toward war. Henry’s biggest fear comes to the forefront as he marches: will he run and be a coward when he is faced with being killed? The troops finally get to the battlefront and Henry sticks around for the first attack, but after a short lull the enemy troops come again and Henry runs. He thinks that the entire troop is abandoning and once he realizes they are not, he feels foolish in going back and even begins to resent them for not seeing the wisdom in running when your life is forfeit if you don’t. Henry wanders around in the forest for a while, running into a squirrel, a dead man, and other things that force his thoughts in multiple directions. Eventually he comes upon a group of wounded men making their way away from the fighting and he lets them think he is wounded, too, and just keeps going. Just before he is about to bolt so no one finds out his a woundless coward, he comes upon one of the men from his troop who is like a walking zombie. He tries to help his friend but ends up just being a witness to his gruesome death. Haunted by this, he heads in the direction of the fighting, but looses his nerve before he gets there. While he is debating what to do, a retreating troop overtakes him and when he grabs one of the soldiers to ask what is happening, that soldier hits Henry on the head with his gun, giving Henry the wound he needs to feel justified in leaving his troop earlier in the day. With the help of a nice soldier who also got separated from his company, he finds his troop again, and they hail him as a wounded hero. The next day, they are to fight again, and this time Henry doesn’t run. He gets caught up in the fight and ends up being a real hero of the day, even though he doesn’t feel like one. At the end of the novel, Henry concludes that his soul has changed and he understands the world a little better now. He finds romance in the sun and rain and wet hills rather than in war.

Analysis:
This is a classic that I only read excerpts from in high school. I like Crane’s impressionistic writing style, even though it makes for a long book about a very short period of time. Although it is an important novel in American Literature, I’m not sure the topic or the experience that Henry has is something that high school or junior high students can relate to. I’m not sure I would pick this novel to teach over something else for that reason. It does pose the question of courage and shows impressionistic and naturalistic writing extremely well, but I think it could be taught as I was taught – in excerpts. There are some slightly gory elements to the book, but nothing worse than kids would see on television or movies these days, so I don’t think that would be a problem. Other than that, I don’t see any objectionable material in the book.