The Red Badge of Courage

Since it was first published in 1895, Stephen Conrad’s classic Civil War novel of a young man’s redemption from an earlier act of cowardice has never gone out of print and has become standard reading for generations of American students. An overnight success, H.G. Wells described the early enthusiasm for the novel as “an orgy of praise”. In addition to its vivid accounts of the true horrors of battle, Crane focuses on the inward struggle of a young man trying to rise above his own fear. Yet his full maturity is perhaps best reflected in the closing lines of the novel, “He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks—an existence of soft and eternal peace.”