Description

The Red Badge of Courage is Stephen Crane's 1895 novel of a boy taking part in the American Civil War. Young and unsure of himself, Henry Fleming is overwhelmed by the wild violence of battle. He flees his unit when the chaos and strife become too much for him. To his dismay, when he returns to his company after the fight is over, a wound he has suffered in a chance accident is mistaken by his fellow troops as a heroic battle scar. Can Henry tell them the truth about what he has done? As bullets continue to fly and blood is shed, Henry experiences a painful inner turmoil over his desertion and over his part in the overall conflict. Henry's battle with himself is at the heart of this moving novel, one that gives us a surprisingly rich and intimate perspective on one individual's experience of a terrible conflict whose toll was measured in the thousands.

About the Author

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was born to a devoutly religious family in New Jersey. He grew up among several siblings, seemingly unsure of what he wanted in life. As a young man Crane drifted from one college to another, eventually deciding to drop out in order to become a journalist in New York. His keen observations of the harrowing lives of those in some of New York's poorest neighborhoods led to his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, in 1893. Finding inspiration in an altogether different time and place, Crane went on to write movingly of the American Civil War in his most famous work, The Red Badge of Courage. It was this later novel that brought Crane critical praise and financial success as a writer. He returned to his journalistic roots, commanding a stellar salary as a war correspondent in Cuba and Greece. Crane settled in England after his years as a reporter, but died of tuberculosis at the young age of twenty-eight.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

CHAPTER I.
THE cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which ...