Describe this scene to yourself in your
own words ....
(Editor's Note: Stephen Crane,
who had never been in the military, much less participated in a battle, wrote "The
Red Badge of Courage" in 1894. It soon became recognized as a classic novel
about the American Civil War, noted for its realism and naturalism. It is a
story about a young private in the Union Army, Henry Fleming -- "the youth," who flees the
field during his first skirmish. Overcome with shame for running, he wishes for a
wound, a "red badge of courage," to counteract his cowardice. He
later carries a flag into battle and, by the end of the tale, has found
redemption. What happens between the two events is available to anyone who
chooses to pick up the novel and to read it. I wish you a meaningful Actual Memorial Day ....)
The closing lines
of "The Red Badge of Courage"
by Stephen Crane
For
a time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took all elation from the
youth's veins. He saw his vivid error, and he was afraid that it would stand
before him all his life. He took no share in the chatter of his comrades, nor
did he look at them or know them, save when he felt sudden suspicion that they
were seeing his thoughts and scrutinizing each detail of the scene with the
tattered soldier.
Yet
gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance. And at last his eyes
seemed to open to some new ways. He found that he could look back upon the
brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see them truly. He was gleeful
when he discovered that he now despised them.
With this conviction came a store of
assurance. He felt a quiet manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong
blood. He knew that he would no more quail before his guides wherever they
should point. He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all,
it was but the great death. He was a man.
So it came to pass that as he
trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He came from hot
plowshares to prospects of clover tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares
were not. Scars faded as flowers.
It rained. The procession of weary
soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with
churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet
the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many
discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the
red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an
animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a
lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks -- an
existence of soft and eternal peace.
Over the river a golden ray of sun
came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.
