#redbadgeofcourage

Stephen Crane's sequel to "Red Badge of Courage" for Veteran's Day. https://americanliterature.com/author/stephen-crane/short-story/the-veteran

Stephen Crane (born today in 1871) story is based on the real-life ordeal Crane endured, when the boat he was taking to Cuba ran aground and sank off the Florida coast. https://americanliterature.com/author/stephen-crane/short-story/the-open-boat

Note on the text: I used Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage as published by Bantam Books in 1983. 

The Red Badge of Courage is about one soldier, Henry, also referred to as “the youth”, and his experience of fighting for the Union in the Civil War. He goes into the war thinking that super bloody wars are a thing of the past. He’s about to find out just how wrong he is.

Like many people, Henry grew up fantasizing about war. He imagined himself fighting bravely alongside people like George Washington or King Arthur. But in his waking moments 

he regarded battles as crimson blotches on the pages of the past. He [thought of them] as things of the bygone [past that belonged] with his thought-images of heavy crowns and high castles. There was a portion of world history which he regarded as the time of wars, but it, he thought, [was] long gone. .  . and had disappeared forever. . . . Such would be no more, he had said. Men were better now, or more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the throat-grappling instinct, or else firm finance had held [the passions in check] (3).  

Henry’s thoughts here are emblematic of the hubris of the modern man. He thinks that man’s violent instincts have now been eradicated. The modern man is too educated and too rich to give up his smart “timidity” which has proven to be so productive. Those uncouth savages of the past were able to wage bloody wars because they didn’t know any better, because they couldn’t control their violent impulses. Although the modern man might know how to “play” at being a warrior, he is not actually capable of being as destructive as his predecessors. 

That same hubris also exhibits itself when he talks about deserters. In his mind, it made sense for people in the past to desert because they were fighting, essentially, against a pack of wolves. And if the “predator” didn’t know how to control his impulses, then it makes sense that the “prey” didn’t know how to control his either. Deserting under those circumstances makes sense in Henry’s mind because the instinct of the deer is to run away from the wolf. But people are civilized now: there are no more wolves and no more deer. He thinks that the modern Union solider is more disciplined than his counterpart from the past and is thus not likely to desert. That’s why it’s not until he is about to enter into actual battle for the first time that it finally occurs to him that “perhaps in battle he might run” (8). Jim, one of Henry’s commanding officers, makes this connection to the past more explicit when Henry asks him if he thinks any of the men will desert: “Oh, there may be a few of ‘em [that] run, but there’s them kind in every regiment, ‘specially when they first go under fire. . . . But you can’t bet on nothing” (10). What he is saying is that every army has it’s deserters and that it is therefore likely that the Union army does too. These men are no different than the ones that came before. Some will choose to desert and others will choose not to. 

The first attack goes well for Henry. He and his regiment are adequately prepared for it and everyone is able to hold their ground with minimal causalities. It is altogether a well-ordered, and not very bloody, affair. The second attack is a different story altogether however. This time Henry and his regiment are caught off guard, and it quickly degenerates into a bloody and chaotic mess, and Henry, in response to all fear and chaos that is surrounding him, decides to run: 

He yelled with great fight and swung about. For a moment he was like [the] proverbial chicken. He lost the direction of safety. Destruction threatened him from all points [and]. . . he ran like a blind man. . . . He dimly saw men on his right and on his left and heard footsteps behind him. He thought [the entire] regiment was fleeing” (40). 

In the aftermath of his desertion, Henry has a lot of time to think about why he did what he did, and he comes to the conclusion that violence is still as devastating as it has ever been. Every being on the planet, including humans, want to live. It’s our nature to want to live and any sort of violence therefore provokes that natural response we have to save ourselves. To prove his point he conducts an experiment of sorts with a squirrel: 

He threw a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and [the squirrel] ran [away] with chattering fear. The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the law, he said. Nature had given him a sign. The squirrel immediately upon recognizing the danger, had taken to his legs without ado. He did not stand stolidly  barring his furry belly to the missile, and die with an upward glance to the sympathetic heavens. On the contrary, he had fled as fast as his legs could carry him; and he was just an ordinary squirrel too- doubtless no philosopher of his race. The youth wended, feeling that Nature was of his mind. She reinforced his arguments with proofs that lived where the sun shone (45).

In talking about nature as he does here, Henry not only connects himself to humans of the past, but to all past living creatures. When he eventually returns to his regiment, he does with a more sober attitude. When he looks around at all his compatriots who are fighting, and suffering, in just the same way that he is, Henry realizes that there is more than one possible response to this situation. That life is somehow bigger than he is, that it can’t all just be about his own survival. That men can also choose to live and die for each other, and for the betterment of the human race. He realizes that the men of his generation are not inherently better than the ones who came before, and that the challenge is that he, just like every other man in history, has to choose to be brave when the time comes. He has to choose to live for something that is worth fighting, and even dying, for. That’s what makes all the heroes heroes, from King Arthur to George Washington: they were willing to fight, and to die, for what was important to them. Henry decides then that the Union’s cause is worth dying for, and when he goes to battle for the third time he is able to die knowing that he fought as hard in defending his own cause as his heroes died defending theirs.