The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is an impressionistic novel by American author Stephen Crane. The narrator tells about a young, 19-year-old boy named Henry Fleming, a recruit in the American Civil War. The story is about the meaning of courage. Although Crane was born after the war and had never seen battle himself, the novel is one of the most influential American stories of the character of the American fighting spirit and the ultimate source of bravery, written by an American author. Crane met and spoke with a number of veterans as a student and he created what is widely regarded as an unusually realistic depiction of a young man in battle.