The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories by
Stephen Crane
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
Classic but ....I read the Red Badge of Courage back when just about every school kid in America does. Didn't make much of an impression on me then and, after reading it as an adult, not much has changed. I can appreciate the use of imagery and language but the story is claustrophobic and the dialog is dated. The addition in this volume of the very short sketch of the protagonist of Red Badge set when he is an old man (a kind of sequel) actually makes the story better.
However, I got this volume really to read the Blue Hotel and the Open Boat, both of which appear on Hemingway's reading list (Hemingway also loved Red Badge as noted in the introduction to this penguin volume). Also included in this book is another short story, the Bride Comes to Yellow Sky. Yellow sky and Blue Hotel are an answer to the mythical American west. They don't go as you may expect, but Crane drags you down that well known path only to give you a unique, and probably more realistic, conclusion.
I thought storywise, Open Boat was the best of the bunch. Very modern telling of four shipwreck men in a small boat. Turns out it's actually based off a real event. Shame Crane died young. The genius of red badge is its realism but it's storytelling is not great. But, the later short stories are much better at storytelling and the use of images and perspective is really well done. If he had lived we might have gotten something very good.
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