Chapter 1

This forum is for the discussion of Stephen Crane's, The Red Badge of Courage, Chapter 1.

Read the introduction and the first chapter. This book seemed to be over-analysed.

Maybe there will be a reason I can find after I read the book.

The book starts out introducing us to Henry who was a teenager who has this illusion of heroic proportion of fighting in the Civil War. Of course his mother tries to stop him. When leaving his little town he is looked up upon but when he gets to his troop he is the greenhorn or fresh fish.

I guess some of the teenagers in the past look at war differently. Our teenagers can see the war in movies and on television. In The 19th century they just had stories to listen to. They wanted to see it first hand.

The author also touches upon anticipation of war and needless gossip from boredom.

Heny went to war with a romantic idea of how and what it was. When the time gets close to actually go to battle he questions his ability. I think this rings very true with what happened after 9/11. i knew lots of young kids who joined up immediately thinking they were going to whup some ass, only to be scared to death in the real mcCoy. This happened during WW II as with you grandpa, Brienne, and with my grandpa in WW I. their entire college classes joined up as a lark, with the promise they could all stay together in one unit. Little did either of them know that less than 1/4 of those units would make it back.