The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

He had long despaired of witnessing a Greeklike struggle. Such would be no more, he said. Men were better, or more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the throat- grappling instinct, or else firm finance held in check the passions. 

-- Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

I think that when I was in school, the series of wars and conflicts from the second World War to the Vietnam War had such an impact on the literature that we read in the 1970s that I missed out on some of the literature spawned by the U.S. Civil War. The Red Badge of Courage is a story I had heard about, but frankly couldn't have told you what war it was about, and in my mind could have been any before WWII. Reading it now, I can see how, if I had picked it up as a young girl, I would not have gotten far into it. The language if pretty complex, making classical references that I wouldn't have known back then, and with a vocabulary that was probably out of my reach. But also, the subject matter wouldn't have been interesting to me as I had no frame of reference for the fear of bravery.

A book exploring the thoughts of young men, or women, as they decide whether to enter into life or death situations means more to me now, not because I have been in those situations, but because I teach people who are the age of most military recruits. I have difficulty imagining these young people I see in the classroom as the same age of my brother as he headed off to Camp Lejeune when he enlisted in the Marines, and ended up serving in Vietnam. How could these kids I teach possibly have been in Iraq or Afghanistan fighting in the desert? But they are, and books like this provide some perspective on their thoughts if they had to go into battle, or as my sister did in Afghanistan, wonder if just being on a mission outside the wire would be shortened by an IED.

On the other hand, the introspection of the young soldier is somewhat confusing to me. I have spend my life around quiet men, and one would suspect that the taciturn men I have dated and married were chosen because because my father was so reserved. Be that as it may, I have always assumed that the men didn't spend time on self-reflection such as the young soldier in Crane's story. I assumed, falsely, of course, that if someone didn't talk much, then they didn't think much either. As is clear from my own writing, I spend a lot of time mulling over ideas and my own situation in life, but I tend to spew those thoughts out in writing or speech. My male companions provided no such evidence of introspection. So stories such as this, which is almost all about the mental turmoil of a young man, seem foreign to me, and I wonder if I would have considered the inner thoughts of quite men differently if I had read these types of books earlier in life.

---------------

More to come as I finish this story.