The Red Badge of Courage
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- USD 0.99
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- USD 0.99
Descripción editorial
Young Henry Fleming has the romantic notions of the hero he will be when he enters his first battle, but his illusions are soon destroyed and he turns and runs. Ironically, he receives his ‘red badge’ when a fellow soldier strikes his head with the butt of a gun. He sees a friend die and tries to find security in a secluded spot in the forest...and so begins the true battle of the story, the one that rages inside's the hero's soul.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This 1895 tale of young soldier Henry Fleming's initial experiences in combat during the Civil War still startles. Artist Vansant captures Fleming's uncertainty and fear quite well, sometimes through effectively understated facial expressions. Yet this adaptation oversimplifies Crane's portrayal of Fleming, ignoring or de-emphasizing the character's other failings: his egotism, his talent for self-justification and the "wild battle madness" underlying much of his later heroism. In Crane's book, Fleming is haunted by his desertion of the dying "tattered man"; in Vansant's version, Fleming forgets him. Though Crane's book is a landmark in realism, the author's symbolic writing turned Fleming's battlefield into a mythic realm. Vansant's conventionally realistic artwork, on the other hand, is more prosaic than Crane's brilliantly descriptive captions. This adaptation faithfully introduces the plot, characters and primary themes of Red Badge to readers unfamiliar with the original book without penetrating the full depths of Crane's masterwork.
