Once upon a time never comes again

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.