The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War

About this book

Henry Fleming, a young farm boy, enlists in the Union army dreaming of glory. On the eve of his first battle he worries whether he will run, and when the fighting comes he does, fleeing into the woods. Among the wounded on the road he longs for a wound of his own, a red badge of courage, and the story follows his shame and his slow, uncertain return to the fight.

Context and significance

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) was born after the Civil War and had never seen a battle when he wrote the novel, which appeared in 1895; veterans praised its truth. It is one of the first great war novels to show fear from the inside. Crane later worked as a war correspondent and died at twenty-eight. Compare An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

About the author