The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Sh - Stephen Crane [102]
Chapter IX
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.
Chapter XI
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.”
Chapter XII
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.
Chapter XIII
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.
Chapter XIV
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.
Chapter XVI
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.
Chapter XVII
41 (p. 95)