The Red Badge of Courage

In 1895, Stephen Crane shocked the literary world with the publication of his revolutionary novel, The Red Badge of Courage, reverberations of which are still being felt today. This novel was so unlike its predecessors in both style and content that it literally baffled critics, and made finding a viable chain of influences a difficult task. Harold Frederick, an English critic, expressed this frustration in his 1896 essay: "If there were in existence any books of similar character, one could start confidently by saying that it was the best of its kind. But it has no fellows. It is a book outside all classification" (116).

For want of a better heritage, many critics halfheartedly mentioned Tolstoi's War and Peace and Zola's La Debacle as possible sources for inspiration, but most concurred that although they may each rival The Red Badge in individual battle scenes, they both lacked the same powerful conveyance of emotions of the book as a whole. Frederic had recognized this unique quality of the novel early, and foretold its literary eminence: "It seems almost certain that it will be kept alive, as one of the deathless books which must be read by everybody who desires to be, or to seem a connoisseur of modern fiction" (116).

Forty years later, the influence of The Red Badge on literature was extremely evident. Another English critic, Ford Madax Ford, explains in his 1936 essay, "it is as if you heard a number o

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e for this the apparent deadness of Crane's later writings during his journalistic coverage of the Greco-Turkish War. In order to understand the immense popularity of The Red Badge, critics were forced to look beyond its superficial flaws. Otherwise, the atrocious grammar would have overshadowed Crane's deeper symbolic meaning and the excessive use of color imagery in phrases such as "crimson roar" (Red Badge 82), "yellow light thrown upon the color of his ambitions" (6) and "black oaths" (201) would have become aggravating. Crane's sporadic style and colorful imagery have often been compared to that of an impressionist painter. Critics tended to agree that, on the surface, the book was "essentially plotless" and somewhat "episodic," but when examined more closely its freshness and vigor more than compensate. One factor that contributed immensely to the success of the book was the universality of the story. Critics tended to believe that in using physical details and descriptions sparingly and in distinguishing the main characters mostly by general appearances or actions (i.e., the youth, the tall soldier, the loud soldier), Crane gave his story the timelessness that has allowed it to span generations. Others, however, fo
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Approximate Word count = 2002
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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