Stephen Crane – The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage was quite the descriptive excerpt. Crane was extremely forward and bold about his emotions and the way he felt about the war, even in a four paragraph passage. From those four paragraphs I gathered that Crane was angry, and not only at others, but at himself as well. I got the impression that this story was probably written more for the men of the generation, as opposed to the women like Kate Chopin wrote. Even from such a short little blurb, Crane definitely got his point across, and after I was done reading it, I had to stop and think about what Stephen really meant. Because, not only is Crane mad at the men he is fighting, but also at himself, which is what I was trying to figure out. Why? Then, I figured it out, or so I think. The character in the story is mad because he is having to fight the men, which is a given, but the character is being pushed and pulled every which way fighting his morals between which is right, and which is wrong. He does not know what the right thing to do is. For one, the men he is supposed to be shooting at are the "bad guys" and are trying to kill him. But at the same time, most people grow up learning that shooting and violence are not the answer, and will only cause pain, grief, and suffering. Crane says, "Buried in the smoke of many rifles his anger was directed not so much against the men whom he knew were rushing toward him as against the swirling battle phantoms which were choking him, stuffing their smoke robes down his parched throat" (Crane 493). That sentence can be taken two different ways, figuratively, or literally. The literal meaning is somewhat easy to understand. Because, here is this guy on the battlefield and is surrounded by death, and all the smoke from the fires and guns could be getting stuck in his throat and lungs. That is the literal meaning. Figuratively, the meaning is quite different. When reading that sentence, I thought of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings in a sort of mix matched deathly hallows and land of the dead from Lord of the Rings. The character is having to face death, and when Crane mentions the phantoms, I automatically thought of dead green ghosts in a graveyard with the dark mark up in the sky. The guy has killed so many people, that all of those phantoms are coming back to haunt him, and he cannot quite muster what exactly he has done, so he is mad at himself. Much like Voldemort's wand showing the images of who he killed with his wand. Although Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and all that came much later, that is what came to mind while reading this short four paragraph story. I thought of fictional instances, and used them to try and explain what exactly I was thinking. Now, whether it worked or not, I have no idea.

Works Cited:

Crane, Stephen. "from The Red Badge of Courage." American Literature Textbook. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 493. Print.