The Red Badge of Courage: Heinle Reading Library: Illustrated Classics Collection Paperback – 11 June 2003

Great book! This is not a "kids" book. Stephen Crane is a master story teller!Short book, but long time memories!

a very good book

Acheté pour la Fac d'anglais, je l'ai trouvé d'un ennui extrême. A peine utilisé en cours ce livre à été un vrai achat inutile.

I just read this book at 64 years old to honor my 7th grade teacher who recommended I read it back then. I didn't read it at the time and it really disappointed her. She obviously knew I could do better. It was a powerful, thought provoking and well written book from start to finish. Not a book that necessarily glorifies war, but a powerfully descriptive allegory of a man's inner urges, what means the most to him and what really counts when the real pressure is on. Anyway, Mrs. Paul, this was in your honor and I'm very glad I read the book.

I have no experience of war. I certainly have no experience of fighting in one. However, I have read that the ordinary soldier does not fight for great causes but fights for his buddies, his comrades-in-arms, the soldiers around him. That, I think, is the theme of ‘The Red badge of Courage. It is the story of the transformation of a raw youth into a veteran soldier with all that that means. It is the transformation of the raw individual with dreams of personal glory through fighting to a soldier who has had had a shared experience of fighting and has transcended it into a feeling of brotherhood or comradeship with his fellow soldiers. That, I think, is the essence of what I have heard war veterans say in their remembrances of their experience of war.The Signet Classic Edition that I read of this novel contained the four short stories that were originally published with it – ‘The Upturned Face’, ‘The Open Boat’, The Blue Hotel’ and ‘The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky’. Of the four, the one that stays with me most is ‘The Blue Hotel’. It is an extended metaphor about the origin of violence in society. Violence arises not within the individual but is a behavior that is part of society. A swede comes to the small town of Romper Nebraska and expects to find the wild west that he ahs read about in dime novels. Instead, he finds a peaceful town with law abiding inhabitants. However, his expectation and his behavior set up a sequence of events that results in a fight that comes as part of a masculine honour code. He wins the fight but in his boasting of he attacks a man and as a result is stabbed to death. This violence lies within the peaceful society- in its pulp novels and in tis honor code.