The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Short Fiction (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

2 (p. 3) an army stretched out on the hills: The time is late April 1863, on the eve of the Battle of Chancellorsville. The Army of the Potomac occupies the north bank of the Rappahannock River near Falmouth, Virginia, where it has been encamped since its defeat in the Battle of Fredericksburg the previous December. Abraham Lincoln has just placed Major General Joseph (“Fighting Joe”) Hooker in command. The Union’s opponent during the battle is the Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of Robert E. Lee. Hooker’s forces total about 135,000; Lee‘s, about 59,000.

3 (p. 3) tall soldier: One of Crane’s more significant manuscript revisions prior to publication involved replacing names of significant characters with epithets (characteristic words or phrases), a choice that reinforces the imagistic qualities of the novel and the universality of its characters. Here he substitutes “tall soldier” for Jim Conklin. Other significant epithets at the onset include “the youth” for Henry Fleming and “the loud soldier” for Wilson.

4 (p. 3) division headquarters: During the battle for Chancellorsville, the Union command structure was organized as follows: Hooker’s Army of the Potomac consisted of seven infantry corps, each commanded by a major general, and one cavalry corps. Each infantry corps was subdivided into three divisions, usually commanded by a brigadier general. Each division had three or four brigades, commanded by a , colonel or a brigadier general, along with artillery support. The brigade had from four to six regiments, each headed by a colonel or lieutenant colonel. At the beginning of the Civil War, each regiment was designed to have 1,000 men divided into ten companies, each with a captain in charge; in later years, however, new recruits were formed into new regiments rather than sent to existing regiments as replacements for men lost in battle and for other reasons. Because of such organizational peculiarities, historians estimate that by May 1863 the average size of a Union regiment had fallen to 530. Nevertheless, since Fleming’s regiment consists of recruits, it likely is manned at full strength, with approximately 100 men in his company, about 80 of them privates.

5 . (p. 5) a Greeklike struggle: Fleming’s initial misconceptions about war are formed in part from a romantic misreading of The Iliad, by Homer.

6 (p. 8) conversed across the stream: Because the Confederate Army had occupied positions just south of the Rappahannock since January, friendly exchanges between opposing sentries were common.

7 (p. 10) the cavalry: Two weeks prior to the battle, Hooker dispatched most of his cavalry corps on an independent mission to disrupt Confederate communication lines, a move that most historians agree was a tactical blunder.

8 (p. 13) a blue demonstration: Crane repeats this phrase several times in the novel, changing its implied meaning in each occurrence. Here it obviously represents Fleming’s frustration with pointless parading. Later the phrase suggests more ominous symbolic consequences for the “mob” of men that he must move with.

9 (p. 14) the colonel on a gigantic horse: This officer is likely the commander of Fleming’s regiment. The image Crane creates is reminiscent of an image Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) describes in “A Horseman in the Sky,” a story in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891).

10 (p. 16) come around in behind the enemy: Hooker’s plan called for a “double envelopment,” dividing his infantry forces into two wings that would attack Lee’s army from different directions. The right wing was to cross the river 20 miles west of Falmouth and then head back east to flank the Confederates, a 40-mile forced march in all. The left wing crossed the Rappahannock near Fredericksburg. Both groups were to converge on Chancellorsville.

11 (p. 18) “they’ve licked us”:The Confederacy had won the majority of battles up to this point, including the Union’s humiliating defeat at Fredericksburg in December 1862. Lee, however, did not have the men or resources to exploit these victories.

12 (p. 19) Napoleon Bonaparte: In the middle of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte represented to the average American soldier not only military genius but also complete mastery of the battlefield. Here Crane highlights how little an infantryman knows about the tactics and strategy of a campaign.

13 (p. 20) “I’ll bid five.... Seven goes”: The men are probably playing a version of the card game whist. Bidding “seven” means the speaker will try to take all thirteen tricks.

14 (p. 21) very good shirts: Remember the care Fleming’s mother put into the making of his shirts. Their discarding here symbolically refutes her vision of what war demands of soldiers, which had previously helped to shape her son’s erroneous conceptions. Crane imitates a long literary tradition of veterans confronting a civilian reader with his or her misconceptions about combat.

15 (p. 22) not a brigade: The length of the regiment’s column not only indicates its inefficiency and inexperience but also symbolizes the disunity among the men, thus rendering the “blue demonstration” a mob.

16 (p. 23) skirmishers: Skirmishers moved in advance of the main body of troops to scout out enemy positions and strength.

17 (p. 25) “No skulking’ll do here”: Note how Fleming’s psychological skulking here goes against his mother’s admonitions about “shirking.”

18 (p. 25) cathedral light of a forest: This is the initial image that reflects Crane’s fusing of nature and spirituality in the novel. It anticipates the secluded grove that the deserting Fleming comes upon in chapter VII, “a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel.” Chapter VIII opens with trees as they “began ... to sing a hymn of twilight.”

19 (p. 29) ’G’ Company: Companies in a normal regiment were designated by letters from A through K, skipping over the letter J.

20 (p. 29) “Hannises’ batt‘ry is took”: Each Union infantry division had from two to four artillery batteries in support.

21 (p. 29) “when we go inteh action”: The date for the 304th’s first experience under enemy fire is May 2, 1863.The “304th New York” is Crane’s invention. The highest-numbered regiment from New York that participated in the battle of Chancellorsville was the 157th. The 304th’s battle episodes correspond to events experienced by several actual regiments, suggesting that Crane conflated a number of accounts into one cohesive narrative. We learn from the “cheery” soldier in chapter XII that Fleming’s regiment is “in th’ center,” which suggests that it belonged to either the Third Corps under the command of Major General Daniel E. Sickles or the Twelfth Corps under Major General Henry W Slocum. The 304th’s forced march up to this point is consistent with Slocum’s orders for his troops. Its redeployment in chapter XVI, however, corresponds with Sickles’s attempt to shore up the right wing on May 3. In chapter V, Fleming hears a battle raging to his left; on May 2, Slocum’s division was positioned to the left of Sickles’s. In “The Veteran,” a short story that chronicles Fleming as an old man, Crane uses the suggestive phrase “Sickles’s colt.” Crane would have been very familiar with the long, colorful career of the notorious New York politician and Civil War hero Dan Sickles.

In the Third Corps, the Second Brigade of the Second Division was composed of five New York veteran and new regiments. The Second Division’s leader, Major General Hiram G. Berry, was killed, similar to what is reported about the fictional 304th’s division commander in chapter XXI. Another interesting point that Crane knew about from articles in the Century was that Hooker had ordered that corps badges be worn on all uniforms. The badge worn by the First Division of the Third Corps was suggestively a red diamond. (The Second Division wore white diamond badges.) Given all this, it is possible that Crane came up with the number 304 by adding the numbers of four New York regiments in the Third Corps (the 40th, the 70th, the 74th, and the 120th; or the 40th, the 71st, the 73rd, and the 120th), which would numerically symbolize the cumula tion of the infantry’s experience during the battle. In chapter XXI, we learn that the name of the colonel in charge of the 304th is MacChesnay.

For a different assessment of how occurrences in the novel correspond to events at Chancellorsville, see Harold R. Hungerford, “ ‘That Was at Chancellorsville’ : The Factual Framework of The Red Badge of Courage,” American Literature 34 (1963), pp. 520-531.

22 (p. 33) “You’ve got to hold ’em back!”: In a bold, calculated stratagem, Lee had dispatched the bulk of his troops under the command of Lieutenant General Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson on a daring maneuver to surprise Union forces from the west—in essence, outflanking Hooker’s flanking maneuver. To divert attention from Jackson’s clandestine deployment, the remaining Confederate forces under Lee periodically engaged the Union center on May 2, where the fictional 304th had been deployed. Thus, despite the regimental commander’s histrionics here, this initial confrontation was only a diversionary action and was not where the brunt of the battle was to be fought that day.

23 (p. 34) the question of his piece being loaded: Fleming and his regiment were armed with muskets, probably either the Model 1861 Springfield (manufactured in the United States) or the Enfield (imported from England). An experienced infantryman could reload and fire within thirty seconds.

24 (p. 43) a general of division: Quite possibly “Grandpa Henderson,” the division general later reported killed in chapter XXI.

25 (p. 51 ) imitative of some sublime drum major: Each Union regiment was allotted two musicians. Among other functions, a drummer would beat a tattoo to set the pace for an advance. Here Crane emphasizes one of a drum major’s noncombative roles—to strut before a band in parade.

26 (p. 51) “Sing a song ... pie”: Crane rewords the Mother Goose rhyme: “Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye; four and twenty black-birds baked in a pie....” The alteration of the number to “five an’ twenty” may have been intended to correspond with the number of chapters in the original manuscript.

27 (p. 51) the specter of a soldier: Crane changes Conklin’s epithet from “the tall soldier” to “the specter” and later the “spectral soldier.” Fleming’s initial inability to recognize Conklin resembles an incident in Ambrose Bierce’s tale “One of the Missing” (published in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians), in which horror so disfigures an infantryman’s face that his own brother does not recognize him.

28 (p. 52) a tattered man: This is perhaps the most interesting of Crane’s epithets. Note how Crane avoids calling him a “soldier,” a term that associates an individual with an organization. The word “man” sets him apart from the army that surrounds him and thus emphasizes how war has broken him physically and psychologically and sent him into isolation.

29 (p. 58) like a wafer: Critics have long debated how much of a religious dimension Crane intended in this concluding image. Some maintain that the spectral soldier’s death parallels Christ’s crucifixion. Jim Conklin shares initials with Jesus Christ. Both had wounds in their sides. The “wafer” may symbolize a secular Eucharist, Crane’s homage to the price ordinary men had to pay for the sins of their country. Biographer Robert Stallman traces the image to Rudyard Kipling’s The Light That Failed (1890), a novel known to have had a significant impact upon Crane’s self-image as an artist.

30 (p. 68) He was a slang phrase: Many alterations and excisions of text occurred between the various manuscripts and the first printing of the book. At this point, for instance, Crane discarded his original chapter XII, reducing the novel from twenty-five to twenty-four chapters. As with many of the other passages he eliminated, the chapter explored Fleming’s philosophical musings of the moment: “He was unfit, then. He did not come into the scheme of further life. His tiny part had been done and he must go. There was no room for him.”

31 (p. 69) they charged down upon him: We began to see the signs of the collapse of the Union right wing in the previous chapter. Stonewall Jackson’s flanking maneuver succeeded spectacularly. The Union’s Eleventh Corps, commanded by Major General Oliver O. Howard, panicked and fled in disarray, thus nullifying Hooker’s strategy and threatening his army with immediate defeat. In chapter XII, Fleming confronts the most chaotic point in the battle. That night, after reconnoitering the Union position, Jackson was accidentally shot by his own troops; he died on May 10, 1863.

32 (p. 69) “Where de plank road?”: Built to transport tobacco to market, the strategically important plank road extended more than 11 miles from Wilderness Church in the west to Fredericksburg in the east. It had been constructed by abutting and fastening 2-inch-thick planks transversely laid across the road surface and was now in poor condition.

33 (p. 70) It crushed upon the youth’s head: Many scholars agree that this incident marks the “turning point” in the novel. Ironically, Fleming’s “red badge of courage” comes at the end of a Union rifle butt held by a psychological mirror image of the man he had been when he fled in chapter VI. As employed by Dante Alighieri in The Inferno, Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene, and many other major writers, such turning points are accompanied by a period of unconsciousness for the protagonist.

34 (p. 72) a cheery voice near his shoulder: Some scholars suggest that this scene parallels the parable about the Good Samaritan in the Bible, Luke 10:29-37.

35 (p. 76) his friend: Note how Wilson’s epithet has changed from “loud soldier” to “friend.”

36 (p. 77) “Yeh’ve been grazed by a ball”: This incident typifies Crane’s contrasting the truth of perception with the fallacy of human reasoning. The corporal here dismisses what he sees despite the evidence. Remember that in a parallel situation the company lieutenant tried to stop Fleming from skedaddling in chapter VI, but the officer either does not remember or chooses not to do anything about the desertion in the second half of the novel.

37 (p. 84) “Jest like you done”: This is tacit evidence that the panic that had seized Fleming had been more common among his peers than he realizes.

38 (p. 88) to relieve a command: The 304th’s movement parallels the redeployment of the Third Corps on May 3 to reinforce the right wing of the Union line.

39 (p. 89) “More than one feller has said that t‘-day”: Fleming’s attitude was common among Union soldiers. Most Union generals paled when compared to the tactical brilliance of Robert E. Lee. Abraham Lincoln’s firing of ineffective generals probably reinforced the infantrymen’s distrust of their military leadership.

40 (p. 90) the brigadier: This is probably the brigade commander.

41 (p. 95) “Oh,” he said, comprehending: Fleming’s unease when he realizes that others notice his actions under fire ironically anticipates an incident that occurred later when Crane was a war correspondent in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898. In the company of the Rough Riders, who at one point were pinned down by enemy fire, Crane needlessly and nonchalantly strolled along a ridge in his white rain slicker, smoking his pipe and inviting a hail of Spanish bullets. He ignored the orders of an American colonel and others to regain cover until fellow correspondent and fiction writer Richard Harding Davis commented, “You’re not impressing anyone by doing that, Crane,” at which point a self-conscious, embarrassed Crane ended his show of bravado and rejoined the entrenched troops.

42 (p. 100) th’ 12th ... th’ 76th ... th’ 304th: The officer’s omission of state names before regimental numbers may be because all are from New York, as was the case for the actual Second Brigade of the Second Division in the Third Corps.

43 (p. 114) Whiterside: This is probably a commander of another brigade in Fleming’s division.

44 (p. 117) a house: This is possibly the Bullock house, a structure that stood near a strategic crossroads just north of Chancellorsville.

45 (p. 122) “We must charge’m!”: A “charge” is among the more desperate of military tactics. It concedes that a sizable percentage of a regiment will become casualties while traversing open ground, yet presumes that the size of the advancing force will not be depleted by gunfire before overrunning the enemy’s position and that its survivors will overwhelm the defending force and take the position. History is replete with examples of commanders who miscalculated the strength of their own and opposing forces.

46 (p. 129) “we got a dum good lickin‘”: Although some historians argue that Hooker still had enough forces in reserve to win the battle, his decision to withdraw iced the cake of the Confederate victory. Union casualties for the battle totaled 17,304 killed, wounded, and missing; Confederate casualties totaled 13,460 killed, wounded, and missing. The next major battle in the East would come two months later at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

47 (p. 130) as if hot plowshares: The metaphor comes from the popular religious symbol taken from the Bible, Isaiah 2:4: “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares.”

1 (p. 131) The Open Boat: In November 1896, Crane traveled to Jacksonville, Florida, employed as a correspondent by a newspaper syndicate. He had been assigned to cover the Cuban insurrection against Spanish authority and so tried to secure passage on any available “filibuster” vessel, one that would run the blockade of the island to transport supplies and personnel. This was the only way an American reporter could make his way to the fighting. After a month of intrigue and frustration, on January 1, 1897, he embarked on the steamer Commodore, which was to convey weapons, supplies, and rebel troops to Cuba. Under mysterious circumstances, the vessel sank rapidly in the open ocean on January 2, drowning many crew members and passengers. Crane and three others escaped certain death in a small, precarious dinghy and rowed their way back to Florida’s east coast, where they landed near Daytona Beach on the morning of January 3. William Higgins, an oilman, was killed after the boat capsized in the surf On January 7 Crane published in the New York Press a news account of his experience that focuses on events involving the sinking and almost entirely ignores the thirty hours spent in the dinghy. During the following months, while recuperating in Jacksonville, he composed “The Open Boat,” which reverses the focus in the newspaper article. He first published the story in the June 1897 issue of Scribner’s Magazine and later collected it in The Open Boat and Other Stories (1898).

2 (pp. 133—34) the cook ... the oiler ... the correspondent ... the captain: The captain’s name was Edward Murphy, the oilman’s William Higgins, and the cook’s Charles Montgomery; the correspondent represents Crane himself. As he did in The Red Badge of Courage, Crane transforms names in the short story to occupational epithets, suggesting the characters’ symbolic significance and enhancing the universal aspect of their collective plight.

3 (p. 135) the Mosquito Inlet Light: The name Mosquito Coast Inlet was changed to Ponce Inlet in 1927. Located approximately 11 miles south-southeast from the center of Daytona Beach, Florida, this lighthouse went into service in 1887. Located in a region known for shipwrecks since the sixteenth century, it radiated a beam of light visible 20 miles out at sea.

4 (p. 142) the seven mad gods: Critics have advanced several possibilities about the gods Crane had in mind. Most believe that one of the seven was the Olympian god Poseidon (Neptune in Roman mythology) and that the other six were compilations of the many sea deities from Greek myth. Crane may have considered Pontos, the most ancient of Greek sea gods, and his children Phorkos, Thaumas, Nereus, Eurybia, Keto, and Aigaion. Robert Stallman suggests that Crane chose their number to correspond to the seven men stranded on the deck of the sinking Commodore.

5 (p. 146) a pale star appeared: Given that Crane saw this celestial object near the eastern horizon, it was most likely Betelgeuse. Less likely possibilities include Aldebaran and the planet Mars.

6 (p. 148) two points off the port bow: There are thirty-two points on a mariner’s compass; here the captain orders the oiler to angle the boat 22.5 degrees off the port bow to compensate for the current.

7 (p. 150) “I never more shall see my own, my native land”: This line is from the opening stanza of British poet Caroline Norton’s “Bingen on the Rhine,” which was often included in poetry anthologies of the period.

8 (p. 154) hanging with his one good hand: The captain’s calculation causes him to violate his own advice. His broken arm compels him to hang on to the surf-tossed boat in order to increase his chances for survival.

9 (p. 155) a scene from Brittany or Algiers: Brittany is a former province in northwestern France; Algiers is the capital of Algeria, which France had occupied in 1830 and annexed in 1848. Many nineteenth-century French artists, especially Impressionists and proto-Impressionists, painted landscapes and portraits from these regions.

10 (p. 156) he gave a strong pull: In his dispatch, Crane identifies his rescuer as John Kitchell, a boatyard manager and ferryman from Daytona Beach.

11 (p. 156) face downward, lay the oiler: Although he was likely struck by the dinghy as the surf thrashed it about, the cause for Billy Higgins’s death was never ascertained.

1 (p.157) The Veteran: This story was first published in McClure’s Magazine in June 1896 and was collected later that year in The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War.

2 (p. 159) old Fleming: Crane employs this phrase in contrast with the epithet “youth” in The Red Badge of Courage.

3 . (p. 159) how an orderly sergeant ranked: An orderly sergeant was a position of great trust in a regiment. Toward the end of The Red Badge of Courage Fleming had just begun to earn such recognition—he was praised by his superiors for being a “jimhickey.”

4 (p. 159) little Jim: Another interesting Crane contrast: In The Red Badge of Courage Jim Conklin was called the “tall soldier,” while here his namesake is “little Jim.”

5 (p. 160) Sickles’s colt: This is perhaps an allusion to Daniel Sickles; see note 21 to The Red Badge of Courage regarding Fleming’s possible Corps commander.

6 (p. 163) the genie of fable: This is an allusion to Arabian myths, such as the story of Aladdin.

1 (p. 165) The Men in the Storm: Prior to his success with The Red Badge of Courage, Crane had been making a study of tenement life in New York City while enduring the hardships of poverty himself In late February 1894, the city was experiencing an intense cold snap, with temperatures in the single digits intensified by strong winds. On February 25, as a major snow storm brewed, Crane and a friend dressed in rags and went to the Bowery district. Over the next day, they mingled with homeless men as they waited for free day-old bread from a bakery and then spent the night with them in a flophouse. New York newspapers reported that 14 inches of wind-driven snow had fallen on the city by February 26. Crane’s experiences that night inspired him to compose this story and “An Experiment in Misery” (1894). “The Men in the Storm” was first published in an October 1894 issue of The Arena and later collected in The Open Boat and Other Stories (1898).