Evanston: courage: red badge and captains
Evanston: courage: red badge and captains
The Civil War Today app has led me to other material, including last weekend a rereading of Stephen Crane’s THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, which I found to be even better than I remembered.
The main character, Henry Fleming, a private in the Union army, flees during an unnamed battle, wanders in nearby woods, joins a procession of the wounded making their way to the rear, is hit on the head by one of them, an injury he later turns to advantage by claiming to have been stuck by a bullet, returns to his unit, and on the next day fights with berserk abandon.
The novel is compellingly modern, not about what happens, but Henry Fleming’s thoughts and feelings about what happens and the incoherence of war.
Henry and his unit sit and wait, march here, march back, march there, are attacked, charge unseen opponents in a woods, are filled with pride at their fierceness until they overhear an officer say they fight like mule drivers, think the battle is being won, think the battle is being lost.
The novel is short and excellent--I read it in two mornings--and justly included in lists of the best war books. Free ebook versions are available both from Gutenberg and Amazon.
John Huston directed a 1951 film adaption, which I vaguely recall seeing long ago. If you are in the U.S. and have access to the Turner Classic Movie channel, it is going to be broadcast at 4:45 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, March 4.
Before he died of tuberculosis in 1900 at age 28, Stephan Crane also wrote many short stories, among them “The Open Boat,” with which I was familiar before I wrote my own version. For the record, you can’t copyright titles. I just reread it, too.
Crane was a correspondent on his way to Cuba during the Spanish American War when his ship sank.
In his story four men, identified only as the Captain, who is injured, the cook, the oiler, and the correspondent are in a life boat within sight of the Florida coast for two days and a long miserable night, eventually rowing through breaking surf to reach safety. I don’t suppose that when I first read the story, I had any idea that I would one day do the same.
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I met a man named Kim whose father’s favorite novel was written by Rudyard Kipling.
In an email he mentioned CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS, which I had never read. So I did, and Carol and I also just watched the 1937 film version, with a cast including Spencer Tracey, Freddie Bartholomew, Lionel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, John Carradine, and Mickey Rooney.
Book and movie vary in details--the 1897 novel includes a record breaking cross country train journey, while the movie includes references to airplanes--but tell the same coming of age story in which the spoiled son of a rich man falls overboard from a ship crossing the Grand Banks, is thought drowned, but is miraculously rescued by a fishing schooner whose captain and crew do not believe his claims of wealth and have no intention of returning to their home port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, until the hold is full of fish. Predictably, before then the boy learns the value of honest toil and good shipmates and becomes the son his father always hoped he would be.
All these characters are too good to be true, but that does not necessarily detract from novel and film.
I have never been any kind of fisherman, but I have sailed those waters, gone into Gloucester and crossed the Grand Banks, and am impressed by how well Kipling describes working life at sea; and the movie includes some impressive footage of schooners under sail.
A great novel and film? No. Entertaining? Indeed.
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I fly to GANNET two weeks from today.
I’m already packed, but then I never unpacked in January.
The temperature when I woke this morning was 9ºF/-13ºC.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013