"Cliff Notes - Red Badge of Courage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

At Claverack Stephen practiced military drills. And in the
evenings, around tables in the dining hall, the teachers, former
soldiers, sometimes reminisced about their experiences in the
Civil War. Stephen's favorite, General John Bullock Van Petten,
had fought at Antietam, which the battle described in The Red
Badge of Courage resembles in some ways (although it is closer
to the battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863). Some of the
stories that showed up in The Red Badge of Courage may have been
planted in Stephen's head by General Van Petten's tales.

But in the end, Stephen Crane's ability to describe war and
to get inside soldiers' heads probably came from the kind of
person he was, and the way he had grown up. Stephen Crane was a
minister's son--and a minister's grandson and nephew, too--and
like at least some other boys in that position, he wanted to
show people that he was a regular guy. That need may have led
Stephen to a career in journalism (although both of his parents
also wrote, as did two of his brothers), and to a desire to
shock more respectable people.

The struggle to find out what he was really made of, and to
test his courage in battle, was as important to Stephen Crane as
it was to Henry Fleming. After The Red Badge of Courage was
published he traveled as a journalist to Cuba, then fighting for
its independence from Spain, and to Europe, where he eventually
settled in England. He became a respected war correspondent for
several newspapers, showing a great deal of bravery, and he
continued to write stories, novels, and poems. Like Henry,
Stephen could have said that "He had been to touch the great
death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death.
He was a man." Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis on June 5,
1900, five months before his 29th birthday. If he had lived,
would he have, as Henry did, "rid himself of the red sickness of
battle" and "turned... with a lover's thirst to images of
tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks"? It is hard to
know. It's almost impossible to imagine Stephen Crane as an old
man.

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THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE: THE PLOT

The Red Badge of Courage describes how Henry Fleming, a young
soldier from New York State, first experiences fighting at the
Battle of Chancellorsville during the American Civil War. At
first Henry is nervous, and even runs away after one of the
first skirmishes, but eventually he returns to his regiment and
fights bravely. By the battle's end, Henry has learned a lot
about himself and the meaning of courage. He has grown up, and
so have many of his fellow soldiers.