Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: I cannot understand why Stephen Crane wrote the Red Badge of Courage. The main character, Henry Fleming, was not effectively described. I could not see him in my mind's eye. Also, I could not see other characters such as Tall Soldier or Wilson. The plot was basically the same as another Civil War novel, Across Five Aprils. The battles were poorly described. The author wrote as though he was not sure what would happen next making the story choppy. This novel was confusing. In summary I think this novel was poorly written although many consider it a classic.
Rating:
Summary: awful
Review: i had to read this in high school. it was the only book that year that i truly hated. it's boring and it glorifies war.
Rating:
Summary: GAG ME!
Review: Ugh, I am still heaving up chunks of puke from reading this book. It was nauseating. Not that it was particularly gruesome, or anything---just SO BORING.Easy on the description already, Crane! It's not a capital crime to insert some dialogue in every now and then. Honestly, this book is 98% long paragraphs, 2% short dialogue. Supposedly it paved the way for the "modern American novel," but thank goodness we've evolved over time! I shudder to imagine current novels resembling this book. Granted, the book made me think. How would I react if I was in the main character's place, my life constantly in jeopardy? It's a frightening, thought-provoking concept, sure. But said concept shouldn't be completely BUTCHERED by having a boring book devoted to it! All I have to say is, I'm sorry if you're required to read this for an English class.
Rating: 
Summary: good book
Review: this book is about the civil war, i would recomend it to someone who is looking for a nice short novle about the interamerican war.--Henry Fleming had no idea how horrible war really was. attacks come from all sides, bullets fly,bombs crash. men everywhere are wounded, bleeding, and dying. now , Henry's fighting for his life and he is scared.-- that was one paragraph from the summary on the back of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Not your typical book
Review: I thought this book had an excellent plot, excellent writing style, and was overall a good depiction of an actual historical event. However, I was taken by surprise. In most books, the reader comes to sympathize with the main character. Yet I found myself hating the character at times--for being cowardly and un-patriotic, as well as his selfishness. For this reason, "Red Badge of Courage" is definitely an atypical book and a great discussion piece. I would recommend it to most people as a good source of historical fiction. I would not recommend it to anyone who gets queasy in gory war stories. Overall, I felt that this book is definitely a winner!
Rating: 
Summary: WoW
Review: Wow this book was wonderful! What with death and distruction it really gave me my good happies for the day. I mean normally me and letters are unmixy things but with this book all my bloody tendencies all come together. Thank you so much Steven Crane
Love
Mrs. Wiliam the Bloody
Rating:
Summary: The Epitome of the American Experience
Review: The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane is a timeless struggle of a boy's fears of war and how he chooses to deal with them. Throughout the course of the story, the protagonist Billy Fleming, encounters many obstacles including the death of his good friend, the decision whether to run from battle or not and countless moments of true wartime danger.
This novel, written entirely from hindsight by Stephen Crane is more of a pyscological analysis of war ethics and honor instead of an action or dramatic novel. The struggles the main character faces in this novel closely if not completely parallel those of a modern day soldier, granting this story the timeless power it has over literature.
Rating:
Summary: The Red Badge of Courage
Review: The battle has ceased. The enemy has fled. Yet one soldier continues to fire at the absent presence of the enemy, with the most savage appearance. Like a man-killing machine, he strives at nothing. The other soldiers stand awestruck at his persistence toward the enemy. Would you believe that same soldier fled from the scene of his first battle? Henry Fleming is that soldier in which the book, "The Red Badge of Courage", by Stephen Crane, is based upon. When Fleming entered the Civil War, he was like a young pup, helpless, weak, and frightened. As he grew, his fight was not on the battlefield of war, but under his bullet-prone chest, the heart. He continued to battle internal struggles from the shame of running from battle. Providence led him back to his regiment and after overcoming his fear, he turned into a ravenous wolf, in his aspiration to become a man. Crane desired to portray war as it actually happened. "Stephen Crane is credited with the introduction of social realism into American literature". There is also color symbolism throughout the book pertaining to the colors red and yellow, which usually represent death. "He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a column-like tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that once had been blue but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was opened. Its red had been changed to an appalling yellow. Over the grey skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of a bundle along the upper lip." This exquisitely depicts his "realist" writing style and also contains color symbolism. Crane's writing style can be hard to understand and get in depth at times, but even the below-average-reader can enjoy this book. If you are looking for a good Civil War novel that describes a soldier's fear and feelings in a precise way, this is definitely the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: War in the eye of the beholder
Review: This is war like you've never seen it before. In a time when war novels were being written with glorified battles and heroic deeds, when the Civil War had been romanticized to the point that the true effects of the war had been forgotten, and when war had once again come to be considered a noble art, this book came along and destroyed all of that. The book, of course, is set in the Civil War, and the hero is a young private eager to test his manhood in battle. The war itself, however, plays a very limited role in the action--though there is violence, and though the whole of the plot hinges on a battle in the war, it is not this which is important. The battle is not named. There is never any reference given to where it takes place geographically, and the book makes not one single mention of a real person or event in the Civil War. So why is this book heralded a classic Civil War novel? The answer lies in the fact that the conflict of the book (the real one) takes place entirely inside Henry's (the main character) head. Rather than focus on the violence, the bloodshed and carnage, the deeds of men in war, Crane chose to focus on the psychological effect of war, and at this he was very successful. The hero comes to be haunted--haunted by the memory that his acts of cowardice are never discovered and that his reputation is instead built on his public acts of bravery. This was one of the first novels to focus on the real side of war--the side without all the hype and glory. After WWI, this novel fit nicely as a sort of predecessor to modernist writing. This book is a great way to realize what war MIGHT really be like. Crane's genius lies in the fact that, at age 21, he could write such a novel about the horrors of war without ever setting foot on a battlefield (by that time, at least). The value of this novel is in the message about war, not in its portrayal of war itself, and for this the book is rightly considered a classic.
Rating:
Summary: so important
Review: this is a canonical story that you need to read in order to understanbt later literature imagine what you've been missing...--
|
