Some books have to be read more than once and like Kon Tiki, The Three Musketeers, and Sand County Almanac and The Red Badge of Courage is one of them. This is a fascinating and descriptive story of war and the psychological battle that a young man must face – all the contradictions, the strange settings, and the unrealistic expectations are hard to imagine. But imagine is what Crane did. He was never in war, he interviewed men who were and he pieced together the things he learned with such realism that Crane was offered a job as a war correspondent.
The young protagonist does run, he does panic, but circumstances give him a “do over” and he makes the most of it to become an admired warrior – not an unrealistic hero, but a man who overcomes his internal demons and faces the demands of the moment.
It is a book that does not glamorize; it just takes you to the field of combat in the mind of a young man who signed up with dreams of greatness.
Crane died young, only 29 after surviving a ship wreck and four days in a life raft that affected his health. He wrote only two major works, but was dead at age 29 from tuberculosis.
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