Stephen Crane is a master of creating well-known realistic scenes of combat and death. Crane was a poor writer, that created some of the greatest novels of all times. Although he lived a short life, he made sure he made something of it. Stephen was a courageous, anti war writer. He used a lot of irony and descriptive pieces in his stories which were influenced by poverty.
Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1891. Crane was the youngest in a family of fourteen. He was among the first writers to rebel against the genteel tradition, with his false romanticism and repression. Crane and some of his contemporaries were learning to mistrust what society had taught and accepted. “Let a thing become a tradition and it becomes half a lie”(Sufrin 5). His desire to write was inspired by his family. In almost three years of poverty, Crane had written four impressive, highly original books: “Maggie,” “The Black Riders,” “The Red Badge of Courage,” and “George’s Mother.” Stephen Crane started out as a comic writer. One of his techniques, which informs all about his best stories and novels, was parody. Crane’s poetry, for the most part, was dedicated to the metaphysical problems raised by man’s relation to his god. His fiction on the other hand, portrayed man struggling to survive in the society. The controlling tone in Crane’s fiction was humorous, ironic,serious, and self conscious. Crane began his higher education in 1888 at Hudson River Institute and Claverack College, a military school which nurtured his interest in “The Red Badge of Courage.” At the end of the first semester Cranes had only received four out of his seven classes, and two of them were failing grades. The other three were not graded because he never attended the...
... middle of paper ...
...play I seem to feel, underneath the mirth and nonsense, a terrible hatred of mass opinion, a fervent faith in the individual's right to live”(Garland 56). “One of America’s most influential writers, Stephen Crane, produced works that have been credited with establishing the foundations of modern American naturalism. His civil war novel, “The Red Badge of Courage,” realistically depicts the psychological complexities of battlefield emotion and has become a classic of American Literature”(“Stephen Crane”
…
).
“At the end of Stephen Crane’s life, literally on his deathbed, he returned to straight parody”(Soloman 12). Crane lived his life in poverty but that didn't stop him from writing. He was a courageous man and his life was strictly about writing. Such an approach to Stephen Crane’s fiction may make him appear to be a negative artist, a critic rather that a creator.
The Red Badge of Courage and The Blue Hotel: The Singular Love of Stephen Crane
Though in his short life Stephen Crane was never a soldier, his novel The Red Badge of Courage was commended by Civil War veterans as well as veterans from more recent wars not only for its historical accuracy but its ability to capture the psychological evolution of those on the field of battle (Heizberg xvi). Walt Whitman, on the other hand, served as a field medic during the Civil War. He was exposed perhaps to the most gruesome aspect of the war on a daily basis: the primitive medical techniques, the wounded, the diseased, the dying and the dead. Out of his experiences grew a collection of poems, "Drum Taps" , describing the horrors he had witnessed and that America suffered. As literary artists, a wide chasm of structure and style separates Crane and Whitman. The common cultural experience, the heritage of the Civil War connects them, throwing a bridge across the darkness, allowing them, unilaterally, to dispel notions of glorious battles and heroic honorable deaths. By examining Crane's Henry Fleming and the wound dresser from 'Whitman's poem of the same name, both fundamental literary differences and essential thematic consistencies emerge.
Crane's story is about a girl named Maggie who grew up in a life that would cause any person with feelings to have the utmost sympathy for her. To explain briefly; her brother was a roughneck in the community, her mother and father were alcoholics, a younger brother died at a young age, and they lived in a tenement building. Crane is described as a "realistic" author because of the way he describes the social environment and the stress of everyday life.
“The Red Badge of Courage” was written by Stephen Crane in 1985 as a fictional tale of a soldier of the Civil War. With its accurate depictions, readers were led to believe that Crane had at one time been a soldier. This was however not the case. Crane has a unique way of using themes and symbols in “The Red badge of Courage” to relay a very realistic portrayal of war.
War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly. In Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He is faced with the hard reality of war and this forces him to readjust his romantic beliefs about war. Through the novel, the reader can trace the growth and development of Henry through these four stages: (1) romanticizing war and the heroic role each soldier plays, (2) facing the realities of war, (3) lying to himself to maintain his self-importance, and (4) realistic awareness of his abilities and place in life. Through Henry’s experiences in his path to self-discovery, he is strongly affected by events that help shape his ideology of war, death, courage, and manhood. The romantic ideologies will be replaced with a more realistic representation.
The poetry of Stephen Crane, at first glance over, might be taken as poetry against religion, depicting the god in a harsh, cold manner. But Stephen Crane does not write his poetry to denounce religion and a god, but he writes it with the mindset to disillusion the fanatics who only see one side of the equation. For Stephen Crane sees more to know better than to just blindly accept the religion he’s a part of, or any predominant religion for that matter, as wholly good and just based solely on the fact that it’s a religion following a god.
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. New York, NY: Pocket of Books, 1895. Print.
	The book Red Badge of Courage is insightful because it gives great detail about the hardship of war, the physical and emotional side of it. It shows how a young solider of the Civil War would have felt and also it shows all his fears. It is not just about war and the fighting, the book gives details about the camp and the other soldiers that Henry Flemmings interacts with. Stephen Crane has a unique writing style because it is very symbolic and it paints a lot of pictures for you. Crane is very imaginative and takes a look from one viewpoint into an isolated person and his relationship with society. I believe the book was well writing at times because some parts could have used more detail. It would have been easier to understand. Some parts of the book I felt like I was really there but others it just felt so distance. This work is important because of its historical value that it has with the Civil War. It tells not just about the war itself and what is going on but the emotional side of a young solider. It tells how soldiers break down in war and that all of them are heroes at sometime in the war. I learned from the book that you must face your fears and that if you run from them once then the next time you must face them.
Stephen Crane's purpose in writing The Red Badge of Courage was to dictate the pressures faced by the prototypical American soldier in the Civil War. His intent was accomplished by making known the horrors and atrocities seen by Unionist Henry Fleming during the Battle of Chancellorsville, and the conflicts within himself.
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, one of the most significant and renowned books in American literature, defies outright classification, showing traits of both the realist and naturalist movements. It is a classic, however, precisely because it does so without sacrificing unity or poignancy. The Red Badge of Courage belongs unequivocally to the naturalist genre, but realism is also present and used to great effect. The conflict between these styles mirrors the bloody clash of the war described in the book – and the eternal struggle between good and evil in human nature.
Stephen Crane was a realistic, American author. He also wrote little bits of Naturalism and Impressionism. As a child, Crane was constantly sick. In fact, he was so sick that his parents worried he would not make it. After losing four children before Crane was born, Crane’s parents had reason to worry about losing him. Despite his unhealthy nature, Stephen taught himself to read by the age of four. Crane is seen as the most groundbreaking writer of his generation by many modern day authors. A major theme that is seen throughout Stephen Crane’s writing is the sense of ideal life versus reality. Crane’s poetry differed from other poets during his time because most of his poems were narratives. In his poem “In the Desert,” Crane illustrates that even though a person might not seem human because of their mistakes, the ability to overcome that emotion and not allow the negative aspects of life to consume the positive aspects is what considers a person human (Stephen Crane).
Stephen Crane, author of The Red Badge of Courage, in regards to the American Civil War once despondently wrote, “It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws” (Crane). Such describes the desperate and harrowing atmosphere of the time during which Abraham Lincoln was president of the United States. As Abraham Lincoln once perspicaciously reflected upon the significance of the Civil War, "The struggle of today is not altogether for today — it is for a vast future also" meaning that the war was paramount to the survival of the union and thus, one of the most momentous occurrences of American history (Lincoln). Nathaniel Hawthorne, a transcendentalist and author of The Scarlet Letter, cogitated upon the significance of having Lincoln as president during the Civil War while simultaneously conveying the idea that he deeply venerated president Lincoln for his strength of character in times of dire crisis. Hawthorne employs the use of vivid imagery, scintillating diction, striking juxtaposition as well as a reverent tone to effectively accomplish his purpose of conveying the fact that while Lincoln is superficially unprepossessing, his approachable attitude and his insightful nature make him an excellent president.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Stephan Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. New Yourk: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
If it was not for Stephen Crane and his visionary work than American Realism would not have taken hold of the United States during the eighteen hundreds. During the years following the Civil War America was a melting pot of many different writing styles. Many scholars argue that at this time there was still no definite American author or technique. Up to this point authors in the Americas simply copied techniques that were popular in regions of Europe. Stephen Crane came onto the scene with a very different approach to many of his contemporaries. He was a realist, and being such he described actions in a true, unadorned way that portrayed situations in the manner that they actually occurred (Kaplan). He had numerous admired pieces but his most famous work was the Red Badge of Courage (Bentley 103). In this novel he illustrates the accounts of a Union soldier named Henry Fleming. At first the writing was considered too graphic and many people did not buy the book. Eventually the American people changed their opinions and began to gravitate towards Crane’s work. The readers were fascinated by the realistic environment he creates even though he himself had never fought in a war (Bentley 103). By spreading the influence of realistic writing Crane has come to be known as the first American Realist.
...ern Critical Interpretations: Stephan Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. New Yourk: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.