Essay about Stephen Crane and The Civil War - 895 Words

Stephen Crane and The Civil War One year after the publication of The Red Badge of Courage Crane released a continuation to the narrative in the form of a short story. â€Å"The Veteran† characterizes an elderly Henry Fleming who recalls his first exposure to the experience of war. Of the battle he remembers, â€Å"That was at Chancellorsville† (Crane 529-531). While Crane never explicitly states the name of the battle in The Red Badge, the incidents mentioned in â€Å"The Veteran† indicate that the protagonist of each is one in the same (website). Memories of his reasons for flight and sad recollections of the memory of Jim Conklin, the â€Å"tall soldier,† mirror the episodes mentioned in Crane’s second novel. Studies have shown that the source†¦show more content†¦Many of the men who witnessed the events that occurred on this battlefield came from this town and served as sources of inspiration for Crane’s final draft (website). Despite his evident utilizat ion of these sources, Crane purposefully failed to mention the actual battle in his publication of The Red Badge of Courage. As a novel that aspired to be a psychological portrayal of fear, neglecting the historical framework became an intentional stylistic technique without which the underlined theme would inherently have been lost. Had Crane concretized Henry’s experience with a named battle, the reactions to the novel would have altered considerably. Inevitably people would associate imagery from the actual battle with The Red Badge of Courage, a process that would ultimately shift the perspective from Henry’s experience to the war itself. Crane avoided these types of reactions by allowing the battle to remain nameless in the narrative. The website quotes a more practical reason stating, none of the characters in the novel—certainly not lowly privates like Henry Fleming—would have known that the battle they were fighting in was to be called Chance llorsville. Civil War reports and memoirs reveal that the men fighting the war very seldom knew where they were, as they often fought on unfamiliar territory and had infrequent communication with field commanders. (As in Red Badge, the regiments often knew only rumors.) By keeping the battle anonymousShow MoreRelatedEssay about Stephen Crane and The Civil War1780 Words   |  8 PagesStephen Crane and The Civil War   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   While merely speculative, some biographers claim that Crane began The Red Badge of Courage in response to a challenge made by an acquaintance urging him to write a war novel that exceeded the quality of Emile Zola’s Le dà ©bà ¢cle.   Crane, shortly thereafter, undertook the task and researched various articles in Century magazine on battles and leaders in the Civil War.   In several personal letters he writes of the process he underwent in producing the narrativeRead MoreInfluences on Stephen Cranes The Red Badge of Courage1445 Words   |  6 Pageshave on the world. Stephen Crane was greatly impacted by the time period in which he lived. One such influence was the popular literary style of Realism. 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