Sometimes I read CliffNotes versions of old classics that I don’t particularly want to slog through, but am curious about. One of those is “The Red Badge of Courage”, written by Stephen Crane in 1895. It’s one of those classics you hear about, but no one you know has read. I left The Killer Angels unfinished so I knew I was going to have problems with this one.
But I didn’t know what kind of problems. I didn’t even like the summary. My biggest beef is the theme — glory and pride comes from war and battle. It sounds like toxic masculinity: violence is a means to an end, being injured is a good thing (that’s what the “red badge” is).
I feel like Hemingway wrote about courage and war better in “Soldier’s Home“. This book was praised for its realism, but I think it’s more realistic to war’s aftermath, trying to find peace with the PTSD. Cause you aren’t who you usually are in a war. And when you come back, you have to make restitution with the things you did.
That’s not to say I don’t believe the contents AREN’T true. The reactions to war and battle seem plausible. The problem is that some of what the protagonist does is unforgivable, like leaving the tattered man to die just to avoid confronting his own cowardice. He spends most of his time feeling guilty. Particularly when he’s resentful of his commander or watching others fight with enthusiasm and thinking “why do they get to fight and not me”. Then he gets hypocritical thinking the men he saw running away were “wild” while himself running away was with dignity. And since no one saw him, he’s still “a man”. Sure, boy. Justify that to yourself however you want.
There’s another element to this theme that a man who volunteers to risk death for a value is brave. Problem is, not all values are worth dying for. Plus, I always remember General Patton who said “The trick is not to die for your country. It’s to make the other bastard die for his.”
The theme would be better if it built on the secondary truism: that men in dangerous situations form close bonds and often act and think as one. That’s why they play so many team sports. My dad stayed friends with everyone he played football with in college. I’m friends with no one because I stopped playing team sports in elementary school. But there have been times when, because a group of us had to suffer together through something, I felt a stronger bond with them. One was the semester-long software engineering project in college. One time, early on, we just played online Yahoo Scrabble, working together, against someone who may have been a ten-year-old girl.
This book is too antiquated to teach in school anymore. It’s got misaligned ideas of what’s bravery and what’s courage. It values the glory of war. And no women whatsoever. I hope this is getting phased out of the curriculum. Besides, we’ve got better media to showcase themes of courage under fire, like “Saving Private Ryan”, “Dunkirk”, and um… well, “Courage Under Fire”.
And IMHO, I’d rather they teach “The Long Walk” by Stephen King. It’s a better book about the will to live in the face of death that doesn’t have the “problems”.
