The Red Badge of Courage :: essays research papers

Unique in style and content, the novel explores the emotions of a young Civil War recruit named Henry Fleming. What is most remarkable about this unmixed is that the twenty-four-year-old author had never witnessed war in his life before writing this book. Cranes story developed to some degree out of his reading of war stories by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and the popular memoirs of Civil War veterans, yet he also deviated from these influences in his depiction of wars horror. Critics have noted that his portrait of war is an intensely psychological one, blending elements of naturalism, impressionism, and symbolism. Indeed, he broke away from his American realist contemporaries, including his mentor William Dean Howells, in his naturalistic treatment of man as an amoral creature in a deterministic world.For this reason, critical reactions to the The Red Badge of Courage in 1895 were mixed some disapproved of Cranes use of the vernacularthe common slang of everyday kindred and sol diersand the impressionistic technique. Crane also experimented with psychological realism, and his venture into the realm of the human psyche radically changed the common perception of the novel in America. As he faces combat for the first time, Henry experiences an intense array of emotions courage, anxiety, self-confidence, fear, and egotistic zeal. Interestingly enough, the naturalistic flavor of the work operates against this serf-important ego. The individual is not of primary importance, as is evidence time and again in the words of Henrys mother, fellow soldiers, and officers. Henry is often referred to quite impersonally as "the youth." The men, untried and untested, are treated like panicky animals against the backdrop of inimitable Nature and War. Crane also used color imagery, both vibrant and subtle, to describe war. He describes a skirmish as sound like a "crimson roar," for example, and writes of war as "the red animal." Cranes sense of colo r pervades the work note his description of the sky, which remains "fairy blue" during the day, as if to underscore the indifference of nature to the carnage taking place.