The Red Badge of Courage (A Graphic Novel Audio): Illustrated Classics

Henry Fleming is a young Union soldier of the 304th Regiment from New York, fighting his first battle in Virginia, when he becomes frightened and flees. As he runs, he observes many other areas of the battle and witnesses many of the horrors of war. He becomes injured when another Union soldier hits him over the head with his gun. Embarrassed and injured, he returns to his regiment late that night, where his friend takes care of him. The next day they fight in a major battle, the Battle of Chancellorsville, where he and his friend redeem themselves with their courage and hard fighting.

I found it very hard to keep my attention focused on it, and half the time I honestly had no idea what was going on. But, since I really wasn't interested, I never could take the time to go back and find the context.I can kind of see why this book has become such a classic, but I have to say that it's just not for me.

This book has been considered a classic, but I never considered reading it until this year: I am trying to read many of those classics that I neglected during my childhood.The story is told through the perspective of 'the youth', aka 'Henry'. He is a raw recruit in the Union Army, during the American Civil War, actual year is not mentioned. Henry dreams of glory until his first real battle. He survives, but has conflicting emotions, which continue to haunt him until the next battle.I did have some difficulty with this book, especially concentrating during occasional musings by Henry. However, I did get a better sense of what the young soldiers must have experienced.I'm glad I finally read it, but am unsure of a reread in the future.

In keeping with his other works of realism, Crane's seminal book portrays the experiences of a young Federal soldier in the Civil War. There are many positives, including the accurate depiction of warfare from a soldier's viewpoint. There is no fame and glory- war from the private's perspective is little more than din of battle, confusion and fear. I thought Crane's depiction of the soldier's struggle to rationalize the shame felt from fleeing the initial encounter was fascinating. For all its good points, there were times when it seemed the work dragged on. But for that, I would rated this work higher. In any case, a recommended read.

I think that there are some very telling moments in this novel, and I think there are some beautiful metaphors, but there was something about it that just did not draw me in. I can't quite put my finger on it, but something was missing.

About a young union soldier who ran from battle during the civil war. This book taught me the importance of forgiving yourself and others.

A searing tale of fear and courage, set during the Civil War, but more powerful today than ever. A young man enlists in the Union Army, but nervously wonders how he will react to the blood, violence, and death of a real battle. When that terrible day arrives, he flees the fighting in terror. But his cowardly behavior gnaws at his conscience, and he searches for redemption for what he has done.

Almost impossible to tell who is speaking, thinking, etc. Had to re-read many passages to attribute it to an individual. I kept reading because it is a "classic" and in theory it would get good. I was disappointed. Good thing it was a "short" classic. Why IS this a classic?

This book didn't really grab me. It was just ok.

Frank Muller does a good job with the narration of this American Civil War classic.

I believe I was introduced to the book first, not the Audie Murphy movie based on it. I don't remember as many of the details as I'd like, but it's good as far as Civil War novels go. I remember how he got his "red badge of courage", his conversation across a river with a Confederate, and one poor bastard who insisted on dying in a particular spot (as he was dying anyway).

While I read this in high school I remembered almost nothing. The prose of the novel is beautiful and Crane highlights the ugliness of the war with the nature images that exist in the midst. Henry (or "the youth") is not a very likeable character - he is deluded about a great many things, including his very own character. He successfully faces his fears and develops courage, but it's questionable if he succeeds in facing his self-delusions. The chaos and incomprehensibility of war are so successfully captured in this short novel so that the reader can imagine just what it was like.

My last status update on this book may have confused a great deal of those following along with me. The four-out-of-five star rating was probably even more of a shocker for those of you watching me rant and rave, practically frothing and foaming at the mouth with madness as I slung curses like weapons--desiring and willing to accept nothing short of our main character's, Henry's, death and destruction. There is validity in this! Since we first meet Henry, this kid who wants to become a soldier for the glory's sake along with every other wrong reason you can contrive, I didn't like him. He was a self-serving, fame-seeking kid (again, I emphasize) who didn't give a rip about his mother's concern for his safety, and only the admiration of absolutely everyone around him. He goes behind her back, joins the army, and is disappointed when a "poetic" and beautifully scripted farewell scene isn't given the chance to play out because his mom is too busy lecturing him about the various dangers and giving him advice on how to SURVIVE before he goes! Yeesh what a prick!

But oh no, that's not the reason I hate him. No, that comes almost instantly afterwards and for the next SEVENTY PAGES. Considering the book is about 100pgs long? That means he spends more than half the time being a complete JACKWAGON. D8< *Mild loss of temper* But how do I mean this? What do I base it off of? Well, perhaps that he thinks poorly of everyone around him, calling them far more stupid and saying he's the more superior and perceptive, when all the little brat has done is this: nothing. NOTHING!!! He RAN AWAY when the fighting got tough! He got injured because he was holding onto a retreating soldier, babbling like an idiot, and then got whacked in the head with the butt of his rifle! Then he has the AUDACITY to walk into camp and say he was SHOT in the HEAD. And he LIVES IT UP too! Taking advantage of the guy treating him! But hey, before he gets THAT "battle scar" he's complaining about how his body aches and how hungry he is and how his feet hurt. You little inconsiderate! There are men DEAD everywhere AROUND YOU. And others who are ALIVE and SUFFERING. And you have the GALL to tell me that you can barely STAND?! What type of nonsense is this!?!?!?!

And it goes ON, as I said, for the next TWO THIRDS of the book! GAH! I wanted to smack him and strangle him and MORE. At every--single--TURN he's doing something new that makes me want to throttle the living daylights out of him!!! And man, does he pull some incredible stunts of asininity. -__- Seriously, how far up your own butt do you have to be to think that highly of yourself? What a prick!!!

So why, you ask, did I give this book a four out of five? Well, because around the late 60 to early 70 page mark, I made an update saying that for once... Henry was acting the part of a man. There was a large gap after that one status update, where I had no further comments until I reached the end of the book. It was in those last thirty or so pages that something unexpected happened--what I had hoped would happen throughout most of the story: Henry became a man. There was no more of his philosophy, no more comparing himself to the other men around him. It was just a burning desire to enact what he had to; to get the task at hand done, and to do it with every fiber of his being. When he stopped thinking about himself, about some falsely claimed or obtained glory, and just did what needed to be done... when he didn't realize he was throwing himself right past the front lines, fully capable of being shot and killed at any moment... when he had no hesitance to run forth right into the bullets and try to claim the victory...! Those are the moments where he changed. Where, suddenly, he wasn't the little boy anxious for poetic depictions of battle and glory and praise. He was the man, throwing himself out there, regardless of the circumstances or the possible danger, the horrible outcomes, and growing up through those actions.

What's more that finally settled my mind about this? ...he admitted how ashamed he was. And... that he hated the thoughts of himself, when he looked back on how he had been when he first started out. Is there a fine line that's being trod here? Is the change too abrupt? ...perhaps, perhaps not.

Either way... it was stunning to see, and it... surprised me in a good way. It took me aback and... it made me realize that he did change. Those actions--they spoke louder than any words he ever uttered. And he uttered less and less of them the more he grew towards the end. I feel that, if only because of the ending, it was worthwhile. Boys go into wars and come out men. And... perhaps this is one of the best examples of that transformation, and how suddenly, how amazingly... it happens, without us even knowing it.

It's a truly amazing book in a way. I would definitely recommend it to be read. It was enjoyable, even if for the greatest part of it, I was a lunatic desiring our main character's death. *Chuckles* But hey... people change. And that's what is so fascinating and interesting about this book. That this kid who I thought for certain was going to be a stupid prick to the very end... ended up changing like that. Definitely read it, at some point or another. If you don't want to risk it, then take it out of a library or get it secondhand, but at the very least, it's a book that's worth a shot.

Could this guy be any more annoying? He runs away, he comes back, runs away, comes back. Make up your mind. I know this is supposed to be a classic, but there really are better "classics" out there.

Almost impossible to tell who is speaking, thinking, etc. Had to re-read many passages to attribute it to an individual. I kept reading because it is a "classic" and in theory it would get good. I was disappointed. Good thing it was a "short" classic. Why IS this a classic?

Crane's poetic realism makes us see war and the fear inspired by it as something we would have to experience in order to understand. If we'd been in his place, would we have run too? And how many battles do we have to fight before we realize that the true war is with ourselves?

Red Badge of Courage is a descriptive narration of one youth's first battle experience during the Civil War. This book deals with a dark time in American History and the writer treats it as such. The detail is stark, bleak and Crane doesn't sugar coat anything. I'm not disappointed that I finally picked this up and read it. It is a very short novel and doesn't take much of a time commitment to read. I did however find it dragging in parts and it took me a while to get into it. Henry, the youth, of the novel is a fairly simple individual who is shown the ugly face of war and his reactions to his first experiences are what the book is about. All in all, this is a good book, but nowhere near great. I'm not a big fan of Crane's style in his storytelling, however he does paint a vivid picture and the reader gets a clear idea of what it may have been like to be an unwitting youth going into battle for the first time with little training or warning of what to expect.

It's a bit of a boring slog, but taken in short bits, the language was rather interesting (aside from a few gems like this, "He puckered his lips into a pucker"...*facepalm*).Update: Ok, it took me a while to figure out why this book bored me so much. Think about a battle scene from any war movie. Now, imagine that that was just about all the movie was. No matter how good it was (and let's face this, this book is no Battle of Helm's Deep), it can't be all there is! Fight, trudge to next fight. Fight, trudge to next fight. Henry has friends, but there's no character development or interesting interactions. He has issues with some of his superiors, but he's such a personality-less blah, that no conflict develops with them. This is (IMO) one of the most fascinating wars character-wise, but the characters were just so damn flat and boring!

Stephen Crane first published Red Badge in a local Philadelphia magazine when he was 23 years old. It is a short work because Crane found other popular realists like Zola ("Germinal") and Toltstoy to be tiresome, saying of "War and Peace" - "He could have done the whole business in one third the time and made it just as wonderful". He even criticized his own "Red Badge of Courage" as being too long. Crane was a rebel and non-conformist, essentially without any formal education, he disliked anything that was considered popular.Crane was aiming for photographic documentation, but the work is also richly symbolic, with a series of episodic scenes juxtaposed like a French impressionist painting forming contrasts. Thus he is able to capture the ironic and contradictory nature of war, swinging from elation to fear, pride to humbleness, love to anger .. time and geography are lost, what is right becomes wrong and what is wrong becomes right. The book has no real plot, and is morally ambiguous, one leaves it feeling a bit disheveled wondering exactly what happened, but with certain scenes forever etched in your memory. Probably one of the best artistic representations of the experience of combat.

Since I didn't remember reading this book as a kid, I thought I'd read it when my daughter had to read it for summer reading. The Red Badge was typical of the classics written in the 1800's. Florid, flowery language, certainly a book of great impact for the time it was written. That said though, as a reader, I mean....as a person who really loves the written word, and wants nothing more than to see kids grow up with that same love, it seems to me to be almost counter intuitive to teach a novel like this to a group of 13 year olds. Its a difficult book to read, archaic language, obscure phraseology, yet with themes that are pertinent today. I guess I feel that its important to appreciate classic literature, but on a very basic level it feels more important to me to foster a love of reading. I'm not sure that a book such as this will encourage kids to read. I don't know that a 13 year old can appreciate this book and will simply write it off as a boring dusty old book that a teacher crammed down his/her throat. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that Junior High kids should be reading only Teen People, Star, XMen and the like, but I think the books we direct them to should be more engaging.

Crane, Stephen: The Red Badge of CourageI'm not sure how I managed to miss reading this for so many years because it is one of the most well known American classics about the Civil War. It was never a reading assignment for me in school for which I am now glad because I'm sure I enjoyed it more as an adult than I would have as a student.This is an "interior" novel that emphasizes the thoughts and emotions of a young, idealistic boy who enlists in the Union army against his mother's advice and prayers. He goes off with ideas of the glory of battle after reading such classic accounts of war for which the ancient Greeks were renowned. He quickly learns that the reality is nothing like the ideal of the classic wars. Crane does a good job of giving us the ups and downs of the daily life of a foot soldier and excellent descriptions of battles. However, the focus of the novel is Henry Fielding's (often referred to merely as "the youth") adolescent perceptions and reactions to the daily grind of the soldier and to his concerns about how he appears to the other soldiers. This is a coming of age novel that takes place in the hellish conditions of armed conflict. It deserves its classic designation but if it is assigned to students it should be read and discussed in small doses. There is essentially no plot to keep a young person's interest but it could make a great discussion book about dealing with the ups and downs of adolescent emotions.While reading this book I also started reading a book of Walt Whitman's Complete Poems. I know he had written poems about the Civil War so I looked up some of them. After reading this very realistic novel most of them seemed to me to be a too romanticized look at the war. However, one of them captured well the feel of a scene described by Crane early in the book. I know Crane never witnessed anything of the civil War; I wonder if Whitman did.CALVALRY CROSSING A FORDA line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun-hark to the musical clank,Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loiteringstop to drink,Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person apicture, the negligent rest on the saddles,Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just enteringthe ford-while,Scarlet and blue and snowy white,The guidon flags flutter gaily in the wind.(Walt Whitman)

This is among the very worst books I've ever read! I absolutely hated it! In my eighth grade journal (we read it in eighth grade), I nicknamed it The Red Book of Boredom. It was simply atrociously awful, and it went on and on and on. I remember no merits or saving graces in this one. To be kept in mind- I like most books in general, even books I don't especially LIKE, I feel friendly towards and am generally amicable towards. This book sucked.

The Red Badge of Courage is yet another book that has been praised so much I thought I should read it. While I can't say that I enjoyed it, or even appreciated it, I can say I'm not sorry I read it. But into the Give Away pile it goes.

To say that Red Badge of Courage is about a young man in combat during the Civil War sells the story short. Henry is a young man facing many things for the first time in his life and throughout battle he struggles with all of it. It's a historical snapshot of the psychology of war. It goes beyond whether Henry can be brave or not. Whether he is a true soldier or not.

The Red Badge of Courage is an American Civil War story masterfully written by a guy who never had an war experience. I regrettably felt a lot of connection to the protagonist. I also noticed familiar themes of incompetence in military leadership. Unsettling to think that little has changed in common observations made by enlisted men of their officers. This, too, was an unabridged audiobook expertly read by one of the most gutturally pleasant voices I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

Another book that I no doubt should have read as a child, but never got to (not being American). Very fast read. I finished the entire thing in about an hour. While it is a classic study of the horrors gripping a young soldier on his first trip to the battlefield and influential in its time, the book didn't really grab me. This is probably due to the use of theme as plot in a fairly short novel so I never really became attached to Henry.

For Christmas, I ordered an mp3 player (Library of Classics) that was pre-loaded with 100 works of classic literature in an audio format. Each work is in the public domain and is read by amateurs, so the quality of the presentation is hit or miss. This was the fifth novel I’ve completed and, like the first four, the reader did not detract from the experience, and was in fact quite good.The Red Badge of Courage is subtitled “An Episode of the American Civil War”. It follows a callow, young Union soldier named Henry Fleming, as he enlists and sees his first action against the Confederate Army. At times, the story is very engaging, however very long stretches are taken up with the thoughts and imaginings of young Fleming that grind the story to an agonizing halt. It is no secret that Fleming runs from his first encounter with battle, whereupon numerous chapters are consumed with his rationalizations and recriminations as he wanders the rear, seeing injured soldiers and advancing and withdrawing units, before he returns to his squad with a mysterious head wound which covers his cowardice.Subsequent skirmishes take place in which the author uses every florid adjective in the English language to describe Fleming’s actions, thoughts and impressions. The final several chapters are so absurd in their tortured use of descriptive words and phrases that I was left shaking my head. As bad as the audio version was, I can only imagine having to read the book. Avoid at all costs.

Crane's work, an early entry in the pantheon of American literature, can be read as either an anti-war polemic, or a pro-war piece of propaganda. Certainly the main character, who goes through a personal crisis when faced with battle, swings like a pendulum between the two extremes, and it is unclear by the end which side he settles on. For instance, is it good to fight the good fight because it is good, or because it is necessary?

A seminal read. Highly recommended. It should be read by every American. It should be required reading in high school.

Rite of passage? Ideal v. reality? Historical fiction? This novella has all of those. Stephen Crane wrote this story in 1895 without ever having fought in battle. Somehow he still creates this vivid account of young Henry as he arrives to fight for the first time in the American Civil War. Powerful story.