The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage is regarded by many as one of the finest of all American novels. It tells the story of one soldier's experience of a battle in the American Civil War, and presents warfare in a direct, impressionistic way that was startlingly innovative at the time, and continues to influence writers today. The hero of the tale is Henry Fleming, a youth who has enlisted in the Union army, seduced by dreams of military glory, but who discovers that real warfare is very different from what he has read about in books. From his nervousness before the battle, to the upheavals, terrors and thrills of conflict, we see events through Henry's eyes, thus giving a particularly vivid sense of what a soldier goes through. Long a favourite of school children, The Red Badge of Courage well deserves its status as a classic work of American literature.