The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
After reading AB Guthrie’s The Big Sky and Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I’ve found that fiction can be a great supplement to the non-fiction works that I’ve been reading. Good historical fiction really allows the reader to experience what the era’s participants must have felt as they traversed America’s growing landscape, fought in its wars, and lived through its dynamic social and cultural upheavals.
When considering novels of the Civil War era, one has an abundance of well-regarded material to choose from. Classic works set in the period include Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels (I’ll be reading that one), Gone With the Wind, Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain (on my list), The March by E.L. Doctorow and many many more. But as any high school student could tell you, often accompanied with a groan, Stephen Crane’s short 1895 novel, The Red Badge of Courage is perhaps the most ubiquitous.
Incredibly, Crane wrote his impressionistic, psychological masterpiece when he was only 24 years-old. Though he had no battle experience, he was able to put himself in the shoes of his young protagonist, Private Henry Fleming, after having devoured accounts of the war in Century Magazine. Frustrated by the dry material, Crane apparently stated, "I wonder that some of those fellows don't tell how they felt in those scraps. They spout enough of what they did, but they're as emotionless as rocks."
And so he set out to do just that. Of course, now it seems absolutely obvious that a writer of fiction would research his subject and then create a narrative from the perspective of an event’s imaginary participant, but in 1895, this was relatively new. Crane subsequently became the recipient of criticism from both veterans and critics alike for his, as one veteran put it, “vicious satire upon American soldiers and American armies.”
Nevertheless, Crane’s work became a literary classic. Hemingway called it, “one of the finest books of our literature” and it is generally considered today to be one of the most realistic depictions of war ever written. You can still feel Crane’s influence in the war films of Terrence Malick and in the pages of modernist novels like The Naked and the Dead and Catch-22.
Personally, I was swept up in Crane’s cinematic, lyrical prose. Consider descriptions like this of a nocturnal moment of solitude:
“Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night.”
or
“It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible.”
But Crane’s writing really shines when he’s inside the head of his hero. Vacillating constantly between unbridled fear and redoubtable courage, Crane beautifully conjures up vast landscapes inside Fleming’s mind as he marches inexorably toward his fate:
“…he instantly saw that it would be impossible for him to escape from the regiment. It inclosed him. And there were iron laws of tradition and law on four sides. He was in a moving box”
After reading James McPherson’s descriptions of many of the major conflicts of the war, it was fascinating to step into the frontlines with Crane’s terrified young soldier. And it was inspiring to see him find his courage even as he became disillusioned with any notion of the glory of battle. It’s a harrowing, disorienting, deeply moving read, and one that will stick with me for a long time. I really enjoyed this one.