Stephen Crane – from The Red Badge of Courage

This work is a very emotional work that can leave the reader with mixed feelings. This work is about a man while he is at war and how he is feeling while he is under fire (Crane). It is about a man that is furious about his inadequacies and the things that he can not do against the other men (Crane). In this work it describes that the man is not furious about the fact that there at men rushing at him in the smoke, but that he is furious about the rage and the feelings that are suffocating him (Crane). This work can show many different things about people, and it is very enlightening for people that are not in the military. People can take this different ways, because it shows a different side to people that is not normally shown when one reads works. This work fits in the Realism period, because it is realistic and shows how the man is feeling in the moment (Crane). It shows what he is thinking right now, instead of in the past or in the future (Crane). This work is somewhat Naturalistic, because of how this man is compared to so many different things (Crane). He is compared to things like subjects of scientific studies are compared to things, so that one can understand the relation (Crane). It is almost studying his feelings and what he wants to do to kill all of the men around him (Crane). It is studying him in a certain setting to see how he reacts and to see if the researchers could find that all people react in the same way to certain situations (Crane). This work is not Regionalistic, becuase it has nothing about certain places or how they are better than others (Crane). It is not a promotional work for a certain region (Crane). This work reflects society at that time period not very well (Crane). It shows that they were beginning to have a greater interest in science and how the human brain works, but it does not show current events, political issues, or opinions on global issues (Crane). It does not show what people were thinking. There was nothing about religion, government, or nature, but there is some about human nature (Crane). This work shows how frustrated humans get about their inadequacies (Crane). It shows the human nature behind the desire to be happy and not worried (Crane). There is not really anything about the American Dream, because this man is not getting anywhere in the world, and there is also not figurative language (Crane). Lastly, while there is no mention of a Hero, this man's Hero would be the perfect person that would not have dark clouds hanging over him and would have a gun that could do more than just one shot at a time before reloading (Crane). Crane wrote an interesting piece when he wrote this work, and there were mixed feelings over it. People were not sure how they should take it, and Stephen Crane may have hoped for that when he was writing it. He could have wanted it to be a work that made people think, and could have provoked a wide variety of emotions from a number of people.

Crane, Stephen. "From "The Red Badge of Courage"" American Literature. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly A. Chin, and Jacqueline J. Royster. Columbus: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 493. Print.