Ignatius Critical Edition Study Guide The Red Badge of Courage / Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane described his novel of the American Civil War as a "psychological portrait of fear." Although he never experienced the horror of battle himself, Crane based his realistic narrative largely on stories told by Civil War veterans. While those accounts tended to focus on the external action of warfare, the young newspaper reporter aspired to illustrate the internal experience of the soldier.

Features

Introductions situate the reader in the work, historically and otherwise.

Summaries give a helpful overview of chapters and sections without attempting to replace reading the text.

Key Moments and Themes and Points to Ponder are addressed to train the students' careful attention to important parts and ideas in the text.

Text-level Questions test the students' knowledge of the narrative.

Higher-level Questions test the students' ability to discern themes and correlations in the work itself, and their ability to critically evaluate these in terms of literary merit and wider significance.