The Red Badge of Courage

by Stephen Crane

  Much as Crane demythologized the West in “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” and “The Blue Hotel,” his sketch “A Self-Made Man” (1899) inaugurated a minor tradition of satirical treatments of the Horatio Alger success story that would include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Vegetable, or From President to Postman (1923), Nathanael West’s A Cool Million (1934), and William Gaddis’s JR. (1975). Crane was probably familiar with Alger’s work: during the 1890s both lived in New York and for a time they even shared a common publisher, Frank Leslie. For the record, moreover, Crane’s sketch likely parodied a specific Alger novel, Tom Tracy, or the Trials of a New York Newsboy (1887). Certainly the structure of Crane’s sketch inverts the Alger formula: the ironic hero Tom, a ne’er-do-well who exhibits neither luck, pluck, nor a single virtue, meets his ironic patron, an illiterate old man who made a fortune selling worthless land in the West. Together they put the screws on the old man’s snobbish son, who has been robbing him. The snob, who protests he was “only borrowin’ ” the money, makes restitution to the old man, who moves into the same boarding house as the hero. Tom gets the reputation, utterly undeserved, of one who “carved his way to fortune with no help but his undaunted pluck, his tireless energy, and his sterling integrity.” Just as Alger’s typical hero adopts his Christian name as a badge of his respectability by the end of the novel, moreover, Tom becomes Thomas G. Somebody in the final paragraphs of Crane’s sketch. Much as nineteenth-century reviewers often criticized Alger’s juvenile stories for their improbability and emphasis on luck, Crane satirized Alger simply by telescoping formulaic events and exaggerating the glaring defects in his fiction.

  In “The Open Boat,” based upon Crane’s own ordeal after the sinking of the Commodore off the Florida coast in 1897, four characters adrift in a lifeboat are in danger of drowning. The story is nearly flawless in its naturalism, its depiction of their struggle for existence against the forces of an indifferent if not hostile Nature. As in The Red Badge of Courage, values exist only insofar as they are willed or created by the characters. This company of unpretentious men—a cook, a correspondent, the captain, and the oiler—willingly discharge their duties, particularly by taking turns at rowing the boat, and they share cigars and water. The correspondent—another Crane persona—though “taught to be cynical of men” realized it “was the best experience of his life.”

  Like the soldiers in The Red Badge of Courage, the four men cooperate in order to increase their chances of mutual survival in the face of a common predicament. “The obligation of the man at the oars was to keep the boat headed so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize her.” “It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas.” They were “friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common.” Under the circumstances, the “ethics of their condition” was “decidedly against any open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.” To increase their “common safety,” to maximize their chances at survival, each of the men must practice the power of positive thinking. At the edge of annihilation, moreover, the “distinction between right and wrong seems absurdly clear” and the correspondent “understands that if he were given another opportunity he would mend his conduct and his words, and be better and brighter during an introduction or at a tea.” In context, the “distinction between right and wrong” to a person at risk of dying is nothing more than a code of polite conduct.

  The first sentence of the tale—“None of them knew the color of the sky”—underscores the epistemological uncertainties of the men. They know neither exactly where they are nor the exact nature of the threats they face between the sharks and the elements. Their refrain (“funny they don’t see us”) and their disjointed conversation in section IV epitomize the vagaries and incomprehensibility of their world. Their attempts to signal people on shore consist of a series of tragic-comical misunderstandings as they mistake a beachcomber playfully waving his arms for a rescuer, for example, and a tourist bus for a boat they expect to be launched from a lifeguard station. This part of the story, with its non-referential dialogue, reads like a modern absurdist drama. Much as Fleming senses his unimportance in battle in The Red Badge of Courage, the men in “The Open Boat” confront an indifferent universe, best represented by the “high cold star on a winter’s night” that afflicts the correspondent with a cosmic chill and the abandoned wind tower that stands “with its back to the plight of the ants.” Nature “did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent.” Only in its final sentence, with three of the men safe ashore, does the story open the possibility of genuine communication: “they felt that they then could be interpreters.”

  But, in a final irony, only three of the four men reach shore safely. As they maneuver the boat toward shore and it capsizes in the surf, the “oiler was ahead in the race” as the men swim to the beach. That is, he is among the “fittest” who ought to survive according to the Darwinian paradigm. Crane’s own Darwinian beliefs are nowhere more evident than in his poem “The Trees in the Garden Rained Flowers” (1899), a parable in which those who gather “great heaps—/ Having opportunity and skill” are “Stronger, bolder, shrewder” than the feeble, who gather only “chance blossoms.” Ironically, however, there seem to be exceptions to Darwinian “law.” The oiler is the only one who dies in the surf while trying to reach shore. He dies, as Solomon suggests, “because he did not retain the lesson of the sea that he learned while in the boat—the value of group action—and because, obeying his own hubris, he deserted the group at the end.”26 Or perhaps he is simply unlucky, a chance victim struck by the dinghy when it is flung ashore by a wave.

  More than any other American writer of his generation, Stephen Crane pointed in the direction of literary modernism. What other author before the turn of the twentieth century would have depicted the men in the open boat from a point of view above them on the open sea? Yet Crane adopts precisely that perspective at one moment in the story: “Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtless have been weirdly picturesque.” The modulation in point of view stuns the reader, much as Hemingway would surprise his audience when, in the middle of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (1936), the narrative abruptly shifts to the point of view of a lion. Little wonder that Hemingway considered Crane the author of two great short stories, “The Open Boat” and “The Blue Hotel.” Hemingway also reprinted The Red Badge of Courage in its entirety in his anthology Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time (1942) because he thought it “one of the finest books of our literature.”27 Little wonder, too, that the modernist poet John Berryman published one of the first Crane biographies in 1950. Stephen Crane’s best writing appeals to a modern sensibility and, like vintage wine or choice brandy, it seems to grow more subtle the longer it ages.

  NOTES

  1 . The Correspondence of Stephen Crane, ed. Stanley Wertheim and Paul Sorrentino (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 323.

  2 . Correspondence, p. 99.

  3 . W. D. Howells, “Life and Letters,” Harper’s Weekly, 8 June 1895, pp. 532-33; Hamlin Garland, “Books of the Day,” Arena 8 (June 1893), pp. xi-xii.

  4 . The Crane Log: A Documentary Life of Stephen Crane 1871-1900, ed. Stanley Wertheim and Paul Sorrentino (New York: Hall, 1994), pp. 91-92.

  5 . George Wyndham, “A Remarkable Book,” New Review 14 (January 1896), pp. 30-40; [Edward Marshall,] New York Press, 13 October 1895, V, p. 5; Harold Frederic, “Stephen Crane’s Triumph,” New York Times, 26 January 1896, p. 22.

  6 . Correspondence, pp. 207, 249, 214.

  7 . Edwin Oviatt, “J. W. De Forest in New Haven,” New York Times Saturday Review, 17 December 1898, p. 856.

  8 . Correspondence, p. 322.

  9 . “The Best Recent Novels,” New York Independent, 21 November 1895, p. 1579; William M. Payne, “Recent Fiction,” Dial, 1 February 1896, p. 80; A. C. McClurg, “The Red Badge of Hysteria,” D
ial, 16 April 1896, pp. 227-28.

  10 . A. C. Sedgwick, Nation, 2 July 1896, p. 15.

  11 . Ernest Hemingway, The Green Hills of Africa (New York: Scribner’s, 1935), p. 16.

  12 . Correspondence, p. 161.

  13 . Charles C. Walcutt, American Literary Realism: A Divided Stream (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956), pp. 79, 81, 82.

  14 . Milne Holton, Cylinder of Vision: The Fiction and Journalistic Writing of Stephen Crane (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972), p. 100.

  15 . John Condor, Naturalism in American Fiction: The Classic Phase (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), p. 63.

  16 . Sergio Perosa, “Naturalism and Impressionism in Stephen Crane’s Fiction,” in Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Maurice Bassan (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), p. 88.

  17 . James Nagel, Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1980), p. 60.

  18 . Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters, ed. George Jean-Aubry (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1927), pp. 211-12.

  19 .Ørm Øverland, “The Impressionism of Stephen Crane: A Study in Style and Technique,” in Americana Norvegica, ed. Sigmund Skard and Henry H. Wasser (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), I, p. 248.

  20 . Eric Solomon, Stephen Crane: From Parody to Realism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 76.

  21 . Thomas L. Kent, “The Problem of Knowledge in ‘The Open Boat’ and ‘The Blue Hotel,’ ” American Literary Realism 14 (Autumn 1981), pp. 262-68.

  22 . Correspondence, p. 566.

  23 . James Ellis, “The Game of High-Five in ‘The Blue Hotel,’ ” American Literature 49 (November 1977), p. 440.

  24 . W. D. Howells, The Minister’s Charge (Boston: Ticknor and Co., 1887), p. 458.

  25 . Correspondence, p. 63.

  26 . Solomon, p. 174.

  27 . Ernest Hemingway, Men at War (New York: Bramhill, 1942), p. xvii.

  Suggestions for Further Readings

  GENERAL STUDIES

  Greenfield, Stanley B. “The Unmistakable Stephen Crane,” PMLA 73 (December 1958): 562-72.

  Holton, Milne. Cylinder of Vision: The Fiction and Journalistic Writing of Stephen Crane. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972.

  Monteiro, George. Stephen Crane’s Blue Badge of Courage. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

  Nagel, James. Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1980.

  Rogers, Rodney O. “Stephen Crane and Impressionism,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 24 (1969): 292-304.

  Solomon, Eric. Stephen Crane: From Parody to Realism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966.

  Wertheim, Stanley. “Unveiling the Humanist: Stephen Crane and Ethnic Minorities,” American Literary Realism 30 (Spring 1998): 65-75.

  BIOGRAPHICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES

  The Correspondence of Stephen Crane. Stanley Wertheim and Paul Sorrentino, eds. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

  The Crane Log: A Documentary Life of Stephen Crane 1871-1900. Stanley Wertheim and Paul Sorrentino, eds. New York: Hall, 1994.

  Dooley, Patrick. Stephen Crane: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Scholarship. New York: Hall, 1992.

  Stallman, R. W. Stephen Crane: A Critical Bibliography. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1972.

  Stephen Crane: The Critical Heritage. Richard M. Weatherford, ed. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.

  READINGS ON THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE

  Cox, James T. “The Imagery of The Red Badge of Courage,” Modern Fiction Studies 5 (Autumn 1959): 209-19.

  Critical Essays on The Red Badge of Courage. Donald Pizer, ed. Boston: Hall, 1990.

  Curran, John E., Jr. “ ‘Nobody Seems to Know Where We Go’: Uncertainty, History, and Irony in The Red Badge of Courage,” American Literary Realism 26 (Fall 1993): 1-12.

  Hungerford, Harold R. “ ‘That Was at Chancellorsville’: The Factual Framework of The Red Badge of Courage,” American Literature 34 (1963): 520-31.

  Kent, Thomas L. “Epistemological Uncertainty in The Red Badge of Courage,” Modern Fiction Studies 27 (Winter 1981-82): 621-28.

  McDermott, John J. “Symbolism and Psychological Realism in The Red Badge of Courage,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 23 (1968): 324-31.

  New Essays on The Red Badge of Courage. Lee Clark Mitchell, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

  Rechnitz, Robert M. “Depersonalization and the Dream in The Red Badge of Courage,” Studies in the Novel 6 (Spring 1974): 76-87.

  Reynolds, Kirk M. “The Red Badge of Courage: Private Henry’s Mind as Sole Point of View,” South Atlantic Review 52 (1987): 59-69.

  Satterfield, Ben. “From Romance to Reality: The Accomplishment of Private Fleming,” CLA Journal 24 (1980-81): 451-64.

  Schneider, Michael. “Monomyth Structure in The Red Badge of Courage,” American Literary Realism 20 (Fall 1987): 45-55.

  Shaw, Mary Neff. “Henry Fleming’s Heroics in The Red Badge of Courage,” Studies in the Novel 22 (1990): 418-28.

  READINGS ON CRANE’S SHORT FICTION

  Autrey, Max L. “The Word Out of the Sea: A View of Crane’s ‘The Open Boat,’ ” Arizona Quarterly 30 (1974): 101-10.

  Billingslea, Oliver. “Why Does the Oiler Drown? Perception and Cosmic Chill in ‘The Open Boat,’ ” American Literary Realism 27 (Fall 1994): 23-41.

  Brown, Bill. “Interlude: The Agony of Play in ‘The Open Boat,’ ” Arizona Quarterly 45 (Autumn 1989): 23-46.

  Ditsky, John. “The Music in ‘The Open Boat,’ ” North Dakota Quarterly 56 (Winter 1988): 119-30.

  Dudley, John. “ ‘Subtle Brotherhood’ in Stephen Crane’s Tales of Adventure: Alienation, Anxiety, and the Rites of Motherhood,” American Literary Realism 34 (Winter 2002): 95-118.

  Eye, Stefanie Bates. “Fact, Not Fiction: Questioning Our Assumptions About Crane’s ‘The Open Boat,’ ” Studies in Short Fiction 35 (Winter 1998): 65-76.

  Feaster, John. “Violence and the Ideology of Capitalism: A Reconsideration of Crane’s ‘The Blue Hotel,’ ” American Literary Realism 25 (Fall 1992): 74-94.

  Kimball, Sue L. “Circles and Squares: The Designs of Stephen Crane’s ‘The Blue Hotel,’” Studies in Short Fiction 17 (1980): 425-30.

  Metress, Christopher. “From Indifference to Anxiety: Knowledge and the Reader in ‘The Open Boat,’ ” Studies in Short Fiction 28 (1991): 47-53.

  Monteiro, George. “Text and Picture in ‘The Open Boat,’ ” Journal of Modern Literature 11 (July 1984): 307-11.

  Petite, Joseph. “Expressionism and Stephen Crane’s ‘The Blue Hotel,’ ” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 10 (August 1989): 322-27.

  Schirmer, Gregory A. “Becoming Interpreters: The Importance of Tone in Crane’s ‘The Open Boat,’ ” American Literary Realism 15 (Autumn 1982): 221-31.

  Schulman, Robert. “Community, Perception and the Development of Stephen Crane: From Red Badge to ‘Open Boat,’ ” American Literature 50 (November 1978): 441-60.

  Vorpahl, Ben Merchant. “Murder by the Minute: Old and New in ‘The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,’ ” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 26 (September 1971): 196-218.

  Wolford, Chester L. Stephen Crane: A Study of the Short Fiction . Boston: Twayne, 1989.

  Wolter, Jurgen. “Drinking, Gambling, Fighting, Paying: Structure and Determinism in ‘The Blue Hotel,’ ” American Literary Realism 12 (1979): 285-98.

  Zanger, Jules. “Stephen Crane’s ‘Bride’ as Countermyth of the West,” Great Plains Quarterly 11 (Summer 1991): 157-65.

  READINGS ON CRANE’S POETRY

  Basye, Robert C. “Color Imagery in Stephen Crane’s Poetry,” American Literary Realism 13 (1980): 122-31.

  Blair, John. “The Posture of a Bohemian in the Poetry of Stephen Crane,” American Literature 61 (May 1989): 215-29.

  Hoffman, Daniel G. The Poetry of Ste
phen Crane. New York: Columbia University Press, 1957.

  Westbrook, Max. “Stephen Crane’s Poetry: Perspective and Arrogance,” Bucknell Review 11 (December 1963): 24-34.

  A Note on the Texts

  Three distinct versions of The Red Badge of Courage exist: the truncated newspaper serialization, an incomplete manuscript version, and the edition published the first week in October 1895 by D. Appleton and Company of New York. Despite the debate over the past few years about which is the “authentic” Red Badge, like most editors I have chosen to reproduce the Appleton edition, the final version of the novel Crane revised in proof and supervised through the press, emended for consistency in minor typographical matters.

  “The Veteran” is reprinted from the D. Appleton edition of The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War (New York: Appleton, 1896); “The Open Boat” and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” from The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure (New York: Doubleday, 1899); and “The Blue Hotel” from The Monster and Other Stories (New York: Harper & Bros., 1899). “A Self-Made Man” is reprinted from its first publication in Cornhill Magazine, ns 6 (March 1899), pp. 324-29.

  “The Black Riders” verses III, VI, and XXIV are reprinted from Crane’s The Black Riders and Other Lines (Boston: Copeland and Day, 1895); and “A Newspaper is a Collection of Half-Injustices,” “Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War is Kind,” and “The Trees in the Garden Rained Flowers” are reprinted from Crane’s War is Kind (New York: Stokes, 1899).

  THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE

  AN EPISODE OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

  CHAPTER I