ABSTRACT
Stephen Crane's focus is certainly on the nature, experience, and significance of war in a general sense. Man struggles for survival in a universe as brutal, primitive, hostile and uncaring as that which Henry Fleming encounters in his experience of the American Civil War. It is the bleakly naturalistic vision that Crane communicates in The Red Badge of Courage. After the publication of his earlier short novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Crane said that his aim had been to show 'that environment is a tremendous thing in the world and frequently shapes lives regardless'. He was familiar with Hamlin Garland's theory of veritism, and was deeply sympathetic towards it. One of various details which have encouraged some scholars to identify the occasion of the novel as the Battle of Chancellorsville, fought in northern Virginia. Finally there is the central fact that redemption for Henry Fleming is wholly dependent on his wound, his red badge of courage.
