As our kids head back to school this month, Media Bistro is featuring free eBook classics as part of its Free eBook of the Day feature. Today's Free eBook of the Day is "The Red Badge of Courage," by Stephen Crane. As some of you doubtless recall from your reading assignments in junior high school, this classic 1895 war novel depicts the hardships of the American Civil War. Project Gutenberg has the free download.
I remember reading this book in the sixth grade, and it stuck with me. The Vietnam War was going on at the time, and the book made me realize how brutal war really is. It made me think a little more about what was really going on halfway across the globe as I enjoyed my happy, sheltered childhood in the Midwest.
This book, which has been called the first modern war novel because it describes the war from the perspective of a regular soldier, is really the first time that anything like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) had ever been discussed. It came out a century before that term was coined, of course, but that is certainly what the main character of this book was feeling: fear and anxiety. He even witnesses a friend's bloody death.
"Red Badge of Courage" is probably too strong for readers younger than 11 or 12, but parents are typically the best judge of what their kids can handle, and what their kids should be reading. This is one of the important novels in American literary history.
