Stephen Crane - The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Short Fiction

Table of Contents

FROM THE PAGES OF THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE and Selected Short Fiction

As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 3)

At nightfall the column broke into regimental pieces, and the fragments went into the fields to camp. Tents sprang up like strange plants. Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 17)

The youth had been taught that a man became another thing in a battle. He saw his salvation in such a change.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 26)

Another, the commander of the brigade, was galloping about bawling. His hat was gone and his clothes were awry. He resembled a man who has come from bed to go to a fire. The hoofs of his horse often threatened the heads of the running men, but they scampered with singular fortune.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 31 )

The men dropped here and there like bundles.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 36)

They were continually bending in coaxing postures over the guns. They seemed to be patting them on the back and encouraging them with words. The guns, stolid and undaunted, spoke with dogged valor.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 54)

At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 54)

The fight was lost. The dragons were coming with invincible strides. The army, helpless in the matted thickets and blinded by the overhanging night, was going to be swallowed. War, the red animal, war, the blood-swollen god, would have bloated fill.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 69)

He believed for an instant that he was in the house of the dead, and he did not dare to move lest these corpses start up, squalling and squawking. In a second, however, he achieved his proper mind. He swore a complicated oath at himself. He saw that this somber picture was not a fact of the present, but a mere prophecy.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 80)

It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 93)

These incidents made the youth ponder. It was revealed to him that he had been a barbarian, a beast. He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion. Regarding it, he saw that it was fine, wild, and, in some ways, easy. He had been a tremendous figure, no doubt. By this struggle he had overcome obstacles which he had admitted to be mountains. They had fallen like paper peaks, and he was now what he called a hero. And he had not been aware of the process. He had slept and, awakening, found himself a knight.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 96)

The youth kept the bright colors to the front. He was waving his free arm in furious circles, the while shrieking mad calls and appeals, urging on those that did not need to be urged, for it seemed that the mob of blue men hurling themselves on the dangerous group of rifles were again grown suddenly wild with an enthusiasm of unselfishness.

(from The Red Badge of Courage, page 122)

It is fair to say here that there was not a lifesaving station within twenty miles in either direction; but the men did not know this fact, and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning the eyesight of the nations lifesavers.

(from The Open Boat, page 141 )

During the afternoon of the storm, the whirling snows acted as drivers, as men with whips, and at half-past three the walk before the dosed doors of the house was covered with wanderers of the street, waiting.

(from The Men in the Storm, page 168)

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The Red Badge of Courage was serialized in 1894 and published in book form in 1895.
The Open Boat was first published in 1897. TheVeteran in 1896,
and The Men in the Storm in 1894.

Published in 2004 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction,
Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions,
and For Further Reading.

Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

Copyright 2003 by Richard Fusco.

Note on Stephen Crane, The World of Stephen Crane and The Red Badge of Courage,
Inspired by The Red Badge of Courage , and Comments & Questions
Copyright 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Short Fiction

ISBN 1-59308-119-7

eISBN : 978-1-411-43302-1

LC Control Number 2004102192

Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

Printed in the United States of America
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FIRST EDITION

STEPHEN CRANE

Stephen Crane was born on November 1, 1871, the fourteenth and last child of the Reverend Jonathan Townley Crane and Mary Helen Peck, a Methodist missionary. Stephens interest in war and the military developed early, and he convinced his mother to enroll him in the Hudson River Institute, a semi-military school in upstate New York. On the advice of a professor who urged him to pursue a more practical career than the army, Stephen transferred to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, to study mining engineering; however, he seldom attended class and failed a theme writing course because of poor attendance. His formal education ended after one semester at Syracuse University, where he was known on campus for his baseball skills. Despite his unimpressive academic performance, he wrote regularly while he was a student.

Stephen Crane became a prolific writerof journalism and novels, short stories and poetry. By age twenty-three he had completed two major novels marked by an impressionism and a psychological realism that anticipated the new fiction of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner. His writing of fiction is informed by the keen, precise observation that also made him a journalist; for Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), he shadowed a New York prostitute for weeks. Crane was born after the Civil War, and he relied on secondary sources and his own intuition and emotional insights in creating The Red Badge of Courage (1895), the story of a young recruits experiences during one key battle. The book is often cited as the first modern novel.

While on assignment to cover the Cuban-Spanish conflict that preceded the Spanish-American War, Crane met his life-long companion, Cora Stewart, a well-read daughter of old money who owned a brothel in Jacksonville, Florida. Crane and Stewart later lived in England, where they socialized with Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Ford Madox Ford, who admired Cranes unique writing style. The young American continued to publish novels, stories, and articles for journals, which solidified his reputation.