What exactly is "the Red Badge of Courage" ..?

[Gage]

Hey guys..
Im doing a project for school and i need some imput.
What do you think .. or what is the "Red Badge of Courage" .. and why is it the Red Badge of courage.. and not just.. the badge of courage
If you have ANY info on this or any links to direct me too.. it will be greatly appreciated.. thank you. and Godbless

[WolvenNightmare]

A red badge or courage is a wound recieved in battle. It signifies, that you were there and held enough courage with in you to fight and get hit. Why the red badge of courage as the title? No idea on that one...

[uniquelyme]

it's probably the RED Badge of courage because a wound is normally red from blood perhaps??

JESUS loves you!

[Gawain]

Henry recieves his "red badge of courage" trying to stop a fellow soldier from fleeing the battle. This situation is rendered ironic--and, Crane was above all versed in the ironic--because the reader knows Henry is battling his own cowardice and the deconstruction of his romantic vision of war. But the "red badge" goes much further than that. It is a stain: physical and psychological. The soldiers surrounding Henry believe he has recieved the would in battle. Henry does nothing to correct their mistake. Therefore, Henry is seen as a war hero, the youth selflessly giving blood for his country. The deeper stain here is obviously the psychological stain. Whereas Henry's wound heals, the memory of his cowardice and deception remain with him forever. Even after he has proven himself in battle, hoisting the standard in a hailstorm of enemy fire, Henry cannot lose the shame of running from battle while others gave their lives. The episode in which this shame is brought most to life occurs when Henry walks on the road with the wounded. A severly maimed soldier asks Henry where he is hurt, and Henry, unable to face the disgrace, runs away.

Henry appears in one of Crane's later works. In this short story, an aged Henry, who has become a war-hero god in the eyes of his family and community, divulges his secret shame. At story's end, Henry gives his life to save a favorite horse from a burning barn. Is this redemption? Perhaps. But the point of the title, in my view, is its ironic tint. At the end of the novel, Henry is completely disillusioned and, despite his hero status, is plagued by the memory of his failure, his red badge of courage.

Stephen Crane was an impressionist. He lived on experience. His writing was founded on experience. In fact, I think he was the first great war reporter, and, if you have any interest in such things, I highly recommend his reports from Cuba and Greece. At any rate, he was committed to conveying to his readers impressions of the reality of war, the blood, the pain, the horror that it is. This is not to say that romantic visions of war didn't creep into his works, they did. However, his mastery of isolating scenes, focusing on the visual and so successfully transmitting the emotional that lay beneath it, cannot help but give the reader a sense of Crane's own disillusionment with the popular vision of gallant, selfless, glorious war heroes. To Crane, like Shaw, war reduces man to animal, but unlike Shaw, Crane rarely grants his "man" a happy ending.

[RJbibliophil]

I have nothing more to say. :p