Rating: 
Summary: Complete waste of time
Review: I don't feel that I can adequately express my disdain for this book. I would rate it as one of the worst books that I have ever read. The main plot and theme of the novel would normally make for a good read: A youth hurt in the civil war matures after rationally evaluating his perceptions of the war. Stephen Crane, however, has taken this idea and gives the impression that he has somehow infused an unwieldy verbosity to the main character, and the book drags unnecessarily.
Rating: 
Summary: CRANE'S CIVIL WAR CLASSIC
Review: Before my debut mystery novel came into current release, I taught high school American Literature for fifteen years. Stephen Crane's RED BADGE OF COURAGE was a standard part of my course's curriculum every year. It is a classic, and it deserves to be one. It tells the tale of The Youth who goes off to war imagining war to be a glorious encounter with nobility on all sides. As he endures his first battle, he learns otherwise. There has never been a better book written about the American Civil War, or was that war called (as my mother, an Alabama girl, referred to it) The War of Northern Aggression.
Rating:
Summary: THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
Review: You may think that a red badge of courage is some high medal of honor for a great accomplishment or deed, but it isn't. It is an injury or wound. Sure some people wanted to have a red badge because they where honored to die for their country, but not all people wanted one. The Red Badge of Courage is a book about a young man named Henry in the Civil War. When he was a child he dreamed of battle and fighting, but when the first real battle came he wasn't so sure he liked it anymore. He saw his friend die. He saw many people die. Then he got his own red badge. He was hit on the side of his head with a strong blow from a fellow member's musket of his own regiment when he was retreating from battle. He wanders into the woods lost and confused. Can Henry prove himself during the war? Can he find his way back to his regiment? Can he stay alive? To find out you'll have to read it yourself! I liked this book because it was a story of great courage and bravery. Henry was around the age I am, and I could relate to how he was feeling very easily. I enjoy books about history and wars and this was an excellent example of one. I think others will like this book because they too can probably relate to how Henry is feeling in the book. This is an exciting book that I think will please all types of book lovers. It has action, suspense, danger, and adventure. I hope others will read this book because I don't know how they could miss it.
Rating:
Summary: perhaps the finest psychological novel written
Review: One of Crane's fictional masterpieces (see "the Open Boat" for the other), the Red Badge of Courage is less a novel about a boy going to war than it is about passing out of youth. Henry Fleming is lost in a world of monotony, where he lacks the signifigant challenge that would allow him to assume his role as a man. for that challenge he seeks out war, with the romantic notion of returning "with his shield or on it" in his head. When he finally encounters war, he discovers much to his discomfort that he might in fact be a coward. He continually tries to justify cowardice to fulfill an egotistical need to exert control in order to achieve manhood. Thus the symbolism of the false wound, ect.I disagree with a previous reviewer who points to Crane's verbosity and imagery with annoyance. This is not a realist's novel, and Crane was certainly no realist. The novel centers around Fleming's perception of the world around him and thus we read from an altered perception that cannot fully accept a world that he has no conscious control over. I think that it could be a fair reading that his acceptance of his own helplessness earns his true badge of courage and completes his passage to manhood.
Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly Simplistic
Review: This is a different book than the one I read as a youth. Then, it seemed to plumb the depths of a youthful soul confronting his own fears, probing his insecurities, and testing his courage. Now it seems like an over-written book from the pen of someone who wasn't in a war. The three days of the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville is the unnamed backdrop to the story. Crane wrote it when he himself was only 22 years old, but that was thirty years after the battle. His prose is the complicated verbosity of a young man with more vocabulary than ideas to fill it. He goes on and on about things he knows nothing about and misses what he should have seen. Had Crane been in combat, he would have found a way to articulate the inchoate images, disconnected flashes, the panicked silences shot through with deafening thunders. He also would have captured the heart-pounding immediacy of chaos. Instead, Henry Fleming thinks through his choices and then thinks them through again. He rationalizes his cowardice in long complicated self-examinations. Crane's battles are coherent things, described in orderly detail by one who has read of them and imagined them, but not experienced them. The battle is marginal to Fleming's passage. Had Crane been in battle he would have recognized that courage often has less to do with self-examination or a sudden passage to manhood than it does with camaraderie. It is often a simple disinclination to let one's friends down. In the story, Fleming only makes the acquaintance of two or three other soldiers, none by name. His passage to courage is entirely anomic, individual, and alienated from the rest of his unit. The traditional interpretation of these characters as 'any men' populating the universe of Fleming's 'any youth' is disingenuous. Youths have friends, soldiers have comrades. These define the subject as surely as his own introspection, and they do so in individualized detail. Fleming's understandable fear in his first battle is somehow belittled by the extravagant cowardice of his wordy explanations. He is a selfish whiner who, at one point, hopes the battle will be lost and justify his cowardice. Crane no doubt chose to portray Fleming's boyish fear in stark and easy labels, so that his later passage to courage would be the more striking. But rather than a dramatic effect, the story is merely simplistic. The conclusion is fable-like, not credible, and therefore not of great interest to adults. Combat fear doesn't fade in three days, it goes on forever. This isn't a bad book, just a simple one. It is the story of a boy who learns to be brave. Perhaps it's not nearly as interesting to an adult as to a teenager grappling with the same issues, but as a nineteenth century fairy tale, it may be instructive to youths.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible never sticks with one point
Review: Red badge of courage is a book about a young boy named Henry who goes off to war. This book has so much figurative language you forget the point of the book by page 50 you're trying to figure what the hell Henry has to do with the stupid Squirrel. Then you here about the Red Badge of courage Henry wants to get hurt or shot or something so he can have a red badge of courage or what the common person would call bad luck. But Henry wants glory and how is he going to get it unless he gets hurt. Crane has the tendency to compare everything with everything whether it's necessary or not. Then another thing is crane refers to Henry as the youth, which annoys me to no end. Why give the character a name if you're going to spend the entire book calling hem "the Youth".
Rating:
Summary: The Red Badge
Review: When I bought this book to read, I was expecting a shoot 'em up bang bang thing. But as I read the first paragraph, I seemed to be taken aback. That for me set the mood for the entire novel. A mind twister and masterpiece of it's time, I believe it to be one of the most real accounts of Civil War that I have read. And I find that many people overlook it. Though Crane wrote it before he had even seen war, he took what he knew (from Matthew Brady's photographs, and real accounts he had heard from old soldiers) he was able to produce one of the best mind war novels in American Literature.
Rating:
Summary: An underappreciated masterpiece
Review: This novel, though quite short, painted and incredibly dark and gripping picture of what the Civil War was like for those unfortunate souls who had to fight in it. At first the book seems somewhat crazy, but as you read on you find that it is only brought on by the madness of the war itself. A great work that I would highly recommend to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Exquisite
Review: The basic plot of this story seems to be war. But as you delve deeper into the book you realize it's not just about war, it's about all the fears, hopes, and dreams of a boy caught up in a war. This boy, Henry Fleming, is a young Union army recruit who enters the war for the wrong reasons. He joins because of the glory and respect that comes with putting on that uniform. Eager to prove himself to the veterans and the other recruits, he begins to visualize what will happen during his first battle. He pictures many things, some of glory, some of failure, but the worst thing that he envisioned is him running from a battle. This is considered one of the most cowardly things that can be done. During his first battle, his worst dream comes true as he flees from the battle and gets separated from his regiment. As Henry finds himself lost in the nightmare of war he bumps into a hospital camp and talks to men who re-energize his confidence. He proves them right as he goes back to his regiment and earns his badge of honor by doing one of the most courageous acts of bravery that can be done. The formation of identity in this book is basically after Henry runs from the battle. He regains his confidence and composure and does what is right, proving his bravery with a true act of courage. How this is a formation of identity is that Henry basically starts out as a boy in the book, but ends as a man, making his mistakes seem so much less important than they really are. As you read you see his progression from the insecure boy to the courageous man he becomes. This was one of the best books I have read in a long time. The detail that Crane uses is exquisite and absolutely draws you farther into the book as you follow Henry Fleming on his way to becoming a man. I believe that this book is a must read for all juniors and seniors in high school.
Rating:
Summary: This book stinks
Review: I don't like any thing about this book except for the title. I can't even tell who is talking or what is happening.I didn't even know the main character's name until I read the back. It seemed like the author was reading a dictionary while writing this. I had to read it although I lost interest on the first page. It may be easier for older peaple to read, but I don't think any kid would enjoy this.
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