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    The Red Badge of Courage
    The Red Badge of Courage
    The Red Badge of Courage
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Red Badge of Courage

    Written by Stephen Crane

    Narrated by Gene Engene

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    This Stephen Crane masterpiece of the Civil War searches the emotions of a raw recruit thrown into battle totally unaware of the ferocity and horror awaiting him. Expecting heroism and glory, he becomes frightened and confused when he finds himself exhibiting cowardice in the face of the enemy. Through a series of events he begins to find his courage, successfully conceals his act of cowardice, and takes his place in the frontlines of battle.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooks in Motion
    Release dateJun 3, 2015
    ISBN9781614537410
    Author

    Stephen Crane

    Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1871. He died in Germany on June 5, 1900.

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    Reviews for The Red Badge of Courage

    3.5/5

    67 ratings58 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A classic of the anti-war genre. Read in HS.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Frank Muller does a good job with the narration of this American Civil War classic.
    • 1/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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)
    • 3/5
      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?
    • 3/5
      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?
    • 1/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      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!
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      A seminal read. Highly recommended. It should be read by every American. It should be required reading in high school.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Written near the end of the 19th Century, this is a classic story of the Civil War. The "youth" leaves his farm and mother as an idealistic soldier wanting to fight the good fight for the Union. War is Hell, especially in the 1860's. But it also means long stretches of boredom. After much waiting around, the Youth's regiment meets the enemy on the battle field. He finds he is overwhelmed and has a crisis of faith and confidence and runs away, a coward. He eventually returns to his unit, after much soul searching, the next day, crisis resolved, determined to become a good soldier.This war story is, perhaps, the prototypical war story. I recognized many tropes of modern war stories (both in film and books). The unsure, untested youth, who rises to be a hero. The gruff veteran leader who cajoles and inspires his troops to fight on to victory.A classic story that is engrossing, despite being almost 125 years old. Despite being that old, the language wasn't that dated, and very readable."In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tongued fear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly about their country's business. He admitted that he would not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his body would be an ear to hear the voices, while other men would remain stolid and deaf.""In the present, he declared to himself that it was only the doomed and the damned that roared with sincerity at circumstance.... A man with a full stomach and the respect of his fellows had no business to scold about anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the universe, or even with the ways of society."8/10S: 1/7/17 - F:1/15/17 (9 Days)
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      I read this book a long time ago and just reread it. The author describes a young recruit in the Federal Army during the civil war. We are told of his actions and thoughts. He begins with cowardice and later acts with courage. The story is a reminder that war is a stupid way of resolving conflict. It is difficult to see why this book has been forced on students for many years other than it is short and teaches some history. There is nothing really interesting about the book.
    • 4/5
      This book was required reading when I was a freshman in highschool. However, I enjoyed reading it because I felt like I was watching a movie in my head.

      I love how the author describes the sun as an orange wafer in the sky, at the end of the book. Maybe it was red, I forget.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      One of my all time favorite books!
    • 2/5
      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?
    • 1/5
      I love Crane's use for metaphors in this book, because they completely make sense with war and everything that's going on.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Another one from the Guardian's top 100 books list. Hard to read in that it was depicting such traumatic events and also the language was so vividly descriptive it became a bit dense for me. I was relieved it was short! Modernist text that depicts the confusion and horror of the battlefield.
    • 1/5
      Painful to read. I know it's a classic. I know it is historically relevant. I still think it sucks.
    • 4/5
      A lot of people seem to dislike this tale, but I enjoyed it. Really set the stage for thinking about the Civil War.
    • 3/5
      Somehow over the years I had missed reading this classic. It is well-done, and the dialogue is especially well-done. My only criticism is that the transition from battle-to-non-battle and back, and from chapter-to-chapter often lacked a certain expected continuity.
    • 3/5
      Of all the novels I was forced to read as a junior high/high school student, this stand out as my favorite. I am not a fan of this type of literature, but was drawn in by Crane's story of a Civil War soldier and the emotional and psychological tole the war took on him.
    • 1/5
      Summary: I am sure that I'm just to much of a girl to appreciate the wonder of this book. War, war, war and the suffering of young boys is all around us. I imagine my boys will glory in it, now if I can just get through it again...