The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is a novel by Stephen Crane about a young Union soldier, Henry Fleming, who flees in his first battle of the American Civil War and then seeks to prove his courage. Its focus on the soldier's fear made it a landmark of the modern war novel.
The story
Henry Fleming, a farm boy who enlisted dreaming of glory, waits with his regiment and wonders whether he will run. When the enemy charges a second time in his first battle, he panics and flees.
Wandering behind the lines, ashamed, he sees the wounded and the dying, among them his friend Jim Conklin. Struck on the head by a fleeing comrade, he returns to his regiment with a wound taken for a battle wound, his 'red badge', and fights bravely the next day.
An imagined battle
Crane, born in 1871, had never seen war. He drew on the accounts of veterans and on memoirs published in The Century magazine. The battle, never named, resembles Chancellorsville (1863).
Rather than describing tactics, the novel follows the confused thoughts and feelings of one soldier, in vivid, impressionistic images.
Success
A shortened version was syndicated in newspapers in December 1894, and the full book was published by D. Appleton in 1895. Praised first in Britain, it soon became a best-seller in America.
John Huston filmed it in 1951, with Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of the Second World War, as Henry Fleming.
Anecdotes
Veterans fooled
According to a story often told, some Civil War veterans claimed to remember Crane at Chancellorsville, so real did the novel seem to them.
A badge of shame
The irony of the title is that Henry's 'red badge of courage' comes not from the enemy but from a blow by a panicking Union soldier.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Henry Fleming?
A young Union recruit, 'the youth', who runs away in his first battle and later fights with courage.
Which battle is described?
The battle is not named, but it closely resembles Chancellorsville, fought in Virginia in May 1863.
When was the novel published?
In newspapers in 1894 and as a book in 1895.