Stephen Crane and Red Badge of Courage essays

Stephen Crane and Red Badge of Courage essays Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1871. He was the fourteenth Child of a Methodist Priest. Unfortunately, Cranes father died when he was only nine. In his youth, Crane never cared for schooling, and basically, he slacked off at his college, Syracuse University. He only stayed one semester and became well renowned on the baseball field rather than for academics. He lived a callous and penniless life on the streets, although he became known as a critic, dramatist, journalist, poet and a realist. One of the most important novel that Stephen Crane wrote, The Red Badge of Courage An Episode of the American Civil War, demonstrates Cranes fascination with human psychological struggles. At twenty, in 1891, he started writing and quit going to college. Once out of College he moved to New York and wrote free hand, a style of writing gifted in Crane, in which he embellished fact with fiction. After four years at the tribune, Crane then wrote one of Americas best war novels: The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War. Stephen Crane grew fascinated with war. When writing Red Badge, he had no actual war experience, however, he later did become a foreign war correspondent. Stephen Crane portrays Henry, the protagonist in the book, as a lover of war like Crane himself. Crane utilizes Psychological Realism, a genre of writing that emphasizes the internal mental struggle of a character, to depict Henrys transformation from the youth to a man. With vague names, such as the youth, the tall one, and loud one, Crane brings the reader into the Civil War. The use of vague names suggests that Henry is synonymous to other youths, which means that Henrys psychological battle to face fear is universal, shared by all youths. Thus, Crane depicts each persons individual psychological war as of a greater importance to an...