Review of "The Red Badge of Courage"

By Joan Whetzel

I recently began reading the classic novel “The Red Badge of Courage”  by Stephen Crane. I never read it in school and don't know how I got out of having this on any high school or college reading list, but it never showed up. So I read this classic, for the first time, as a grandmother.

"The Red Badge of Courage" follows the journey of a young man from his decision to leave home to fight for the Northern States in the US Civil War, through training, the war, and his return home. Throughout the book the author shows the main character's thought process and emotions when deciding to leave for war, his boredom during the waiting period for his part in the war to begin, his guilt about trying to run when the war got ugly, his anger about the "incompetent" decisions of the officers, his fateful decision to pick up the company flag when the standard bearer died in battle, and his use of anger to fight the good fight.

During the entire book, the protagonist was referred to as "the youth" even though he had a name. The author never referred to any of his characters by their name in fact. The other characters were the only ones using names at all. It made it difficult to keep track of who was who, at least for me.

I'll have to admit that getting started on this book was really difficult for me. It took a long time for the action to get started and so I found it quite boring. I also found the author's use of dialect for everyone's speaking parts tough to wade through.

This is a character driven book not a plot driven book. This may be part of the problem as I prefer plot driven books. However, from a character driven point of view, Crane’s storytelling technique has it’s place. He uses it to show how “the youth” runs away for most of the story, until he picks up that flag. The flag became his personal turning point, leading him to his red badge of courge – the courage to quit running and stand for what he believes in, the courage to stick around and duke it out even when the going gets tough.

This will probably never be one of my favorite books, but it was worth reading at least once. And for those of you like character driven stories, it’s definitely worth the read.