Life and Death in The Red Badge of Courage
by Robert W. Watson
(18 December 1999)

The best definition of war comes from the mind of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who remarked, "War means fighting, and fighting means killing." Forrest was feared and respected, because he did not fight a gentleman's war. He brought war down to its bare essential--killing. The Biblical definition of war is the judgement of sin on earth, because "the wages of sin is death." Since Stephen Crane had a preoccupation with war, and therefore with death, no one should be surprised that he would write the definitive novel about war. Reportedly, Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage on a bet. He wagered that he could write a war story better than Zola's La Debacle. Even though he never witnessed battle at this time (he was twenty-one), Crane did interview many Confederate veterans in Virginia, and owned a copy of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. The full version of Red Badge was published in 1895, and in a single year, the book was reprinted nine times. The critics were generally favourable, and Crane had become famous.

What makes The Red Badge of Courage revolutionary as literature is that the environment is no longer a thing to be examined externally, but rather it is perceived in the mind of Henry Fleming. The horrors of warfare help reveal the inner conflict raging within Fleming, who is trying to reconcile his illusions of glory with his fears and failings. Yet, Fleming's thoughts defy coherence and clarity. It is not the reader who must struggle with Fleming's character, but rather Fleming himself. Much like a painting by Claude Monet, or the faces likened to "Petals on a wet, black bough" in Ezra Pound's two-line poem, Crane creates a world of vague illusions, shallow excuses, and dark shadows in the mind of "the youth."

This impressionistic style is found during Fleming's flight from his first engagement in battle. In a panic, Fleming runs away from the battle as fast as he can: "As he ran on he mingled with others. He dimly saw men on his right and on his left, and he heard footsteps behind him." Indeed, Fleming imagined that the entire regiment had turned tail and left. It did not, but the sights and sounds were vague. As he ran, Fleming finds himself in the middle of an artillery barrage: "[The shells] hurtled over his head with long wild screams. As he listened he imagined them to have rows of cruel teeth that grinned at him." His running away from battle was justified by his thinking that it was not natural to die. In Chapter 7, Fleming ends his flight in a woods, and here he seems to console himself by thinking "…Nature to be a woman with a deep aversion to tragedy." The youth congratulates himself for his wisdom of fleeing, until he learns that the regiment did not follow his lead, but stayed its ground and held the line.

Further into the woods Fleming walks while praising himself for his saving a part of the army. After all, if every part was killed then who would fight in the next round of battle? Yet he realised that his comrades would not understand his superior wisdom: "He wondered what they would remark when later he appeared in camp. His mind heard howls of derision. Their destiny would not enable them to understand his sharper point of view." To prove his point, Fleming throws a pinecone at a squirrel, which promptly runs up a tree. The squirrel did not bravely face the obstacle, but "he had fled as fast as his legs could carry him." At this point, Fleming enters into an area of the woods, which Crane describes as a chapel. It was to be a place of peace, but not in the way Fleming thought. Instead of a place of life, the youth finds a place of death: "He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree." The dead man's eyes were no longer filled with life, but had a "dull hue" like the colour of a dead fish. In "a religious half light," though shocked at first, Henry realises that the dead body covered with ants harmonised with Nature. Man cannot live by Nature's law, because Nature's way is toward disintegration, decay, and death. What used to be a living blue colour, a symbol for human life, had become a "melancholy shade of green," the colour for Nature.

Now understanding the law of Nature, Fleming vaguely hears the sounds of battle. To stay in Nature would mean death. So ironically, Fleming heads toward the battle again away from Nature: "His mind flew in all directions. He conceived the two armies to be at each other panther fashion." His mind told him "that if the earth and the moon were about to clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision." In short, Fleming imagines his being curious and that is all. But eventually, Fleming faces the reality of death, not in the abstract form in "the chapel," but by witnessing the death of his friend, Jim Conklin. Here Conklin's death is like a "solemn ceremony" and "something rite-like." This is overstating the case, because Conklin's death is grotesque as "[his] tall figure stretched itself to its full height. There was a slight rending sound. Then it began to swing forward, slow and straight, in the manner of a falling tree." It seems that Nature now is chasing Fleming. Nature is a charlatan by deluding men to think there is glory in war. In reality, the blood-letting and carnage are the manifestations of men operating according to their baser selves. Regardless whether men convince themselves that they fight for honour and glory, the end result is suffering and death. This is Nature's way.

All of this would be bleak indeed except for one thing. The natural life-death cycle exists only in the physical world. Strangely, with his being continuously preoccupied about metaphysical ideas like fear, embarrassment, and heroism, Fleming pays scant attention to spiritual values. With death so prominent, one would think that thoughts of God and the afterlife would flood the mind. Yet, Fleming does not even curse God. The best Fleming can do when Conklin dies is to curse the battlefield. In spite of his being a coward and a liar, Fleming concludes at the end of the novel that "[he] saw that he was good." What alters his opinion of himself is that his momentary insanity rallied his regiment to advance against the enemy with success: "the youth, regarding his procession of memory, felt gleeful and unregretting, for in it his public deeds were paraded in great and shining prominence." In the eyes of his comrades, Fleming was a hero. Here is a good example of men looking upon the outward appearance. Yet it is God that looks upon the heart. In Fleming's heart was no courage, no bravery, and no devotion to duty. And he knew it.

There will always be wars and rumours of wars. Wars are initiated by corrupt men, who intend to gain power and fortune. The aggressor is always a self-proclaimed kingdom builder like Oliver Cromwell, Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Stalin, or Adolf Hitler. But men have demonstrated that they can peacefully coexist whenever they submit themselves to the authority of the Bible. It is not the men who are able to self-govern themselves that wage war with their neighbours. Those who wish to be merely left alone must always be plagued by those who want to force on them their version of the good life, even if it means killing the opposition. Fleming is typical of the deluded do-gooder who is at war with nature, with his neighbours, with himself, and ultimately with God. Thus, The Red Badge of Courage is an excellent study of the unregenerate mind as it perceives war, not just against flesh and blood, but against all things noble and holy.