ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Isolation Videos 22 videos
This video discusses the major ideas of the satirical American war novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. The horror of war meets…absurdity and humor?...
The Great Gatsby is set in and around New York City and Long Island. On the big L.I., there are two areas known as "West Egg" and "East Egg." East...
The Red Badge of Courage 9071 Views
Share It!
Description:
Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage about the Civil War not long after the war had ended. And get this: he didn't even fight in the war. What gives?
Transcript
- 00:05
Red Badge of Courage, a la Shmoop. Classic literature has the power to make you
- 00:13
feel like you are… there.
- 00:15
There could be anywhere from the 1920s South…[old truck drives past old barn]
- 00:18
…to a barn full of talking, communistic animals…[communist pigs fire missile]
- 00:24
…or even among the horrors of the American Civil War. [Civil War re-enactment]
Full Transcript
- 00:29
The Civil War is exactly where Stephen Crane takes us in The Red Badge of Courage.
- 00:37
But would it ruin it if we told you that Stephen Crane never even went to war? [Stephen Crane watching re-enactments on couch]
- 00:40
Brace yourself, because that’s exactly what we’re going to do: Stephen Crane never even
- 00:43
went to war.
- 00:44
Does that fact change your view of the book and its celebrated realism?
- 00:56
Some people are miffed. They think authors who haven't experienced war shouldn't write [actor gets tomato thrown at them]
- 01:01
about it, especially from such a personal angle.
- 01:05
Everything in Red Badge of Courage is filtered through Henry Fleming’s eyes, but how can
- 01:10
someone who never lived through it know what those eyes saw? [Crane holds two eyeballs on strings]
- 01:16
From a perspective that close, it’s impossible to tell where Crane’s knowledge ends and
- 01:21
his embellishments begin. [zombie walks across screen]
- 01:27
But maybe those sticklers are just killjoys in general.
- 01:30
See, there’s another camp that doesn’t care Crane never fought a battle in his life.
- 01:39
Tolkien never went to Middle-Earth, as far as we know. [Tolkien throws ring into lava]
- 01:45
And Henry Fleming may be fictional, but the thoughts and feelings he’s having are super
- 01:50
authentic. What matters is that Crane changed the way
- 01:53
we think about war. [Civil War re-enactment]
- 01:55
He showed us the harsh reality of battle through the eyes of soldier, instead of a distant
- 01:59
birds-eye view that made the whole thing seem kind of poetic.
- 01:59
We don’t know about you, but we fail to see the beauty of living in a trench filled
- 02:03
with mud, blood, body parts, and disease.
- 02:07
Does the fact that Stephen Crane never went to war invalidate his work?
- 02:12
Or does it hardly matter? Shmoop amongst yourselves.
Related Videos
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.
Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...
