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The Red Badge of Courage is Stephen Crane’s second book, notable for its realism and the fact that Crane had never personally experienced battle. Crane drew heavy inspiration from Century Magazine, a periodical known for its articles about the American Civil War. However, he criticized the articles for their lack of emotional depth and decided to write a war novel of his own. The manuscript was first serialized in December 1894 by The Philadelphia Press and quickly won Crane international acclaim before he died in June 1900 at the age of 28.
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I read this novel for the first time in 2019 and didn't give it much thought because I was busy working on my Master dissertation. It was a fun read and that was the end of it. Now (Dec 2025) that I'm pursuing a PhD in the same field of anglophone literature, I grabbed the book again and sat down to reread it. I was surprised at how much the first time didn't give it justice. Maybe it was the haste and maybe my empathy levels have matured since then, but now I see it for what it truly is: not merely a rendition of war times in America but a clever commentary on the will to power and its annihilation at the hands of government, sovereign, captains... in short, anyone who is in a position of power. Henry Fleming is unsure about his willingness to die in battle, he even turns his back to the absurd fight but the battle fought in his psyche is way more savage and debilitating. On his own, he faces the reprimands of societal norms, the values that taught generations of men like himself that dying for your land is heroic when in truth it is only absurdly suicidal. From a Nietzschean perspective, at least, it is. Because the will to power is the will to live, and death is all that's in store for Henry in the battleground, a meaningless death too, celebrated to prompt men like him to give their lives willingly when in truth their superiors see them as nothing more than tools to accomplish personal glory. For the concerned individual, namely Henry himself, that death or even it's acceptance is the end of his desire and essence to live and to be powerful.At the end, Henry survives his trial but his will to power does not. It is entirely annihilated under the social conditioning of his peers so much so that death for his colors become acceptable and even noble.