Paul Sandall
Mrs. Warwick
Language Arts 8-3
16 March 2015
Historical Accuracy of the Red Badge of Courage to the Battle of Chancellorsville Imagine smoke pouring out of the barrels of thousands of muskets and the seemingly never ending crash of the cannons and musketry going off. In Stephen Crane’s book the Red Badge of Courage Crane uses the historical events of the Battle of Chancellorsville to explain the mind of a single boy named Henry Fleming. In the Red Badge of Courage Henry fights a battle with himself in his mind. In his first battle he turns and runs and later is afraid to say so. Crane accurately represents the historical background of the Battle of Chancellorsville by showing the harsh reality of war, the geological background of this battlefield, and the outcome of the first day of fighting. Crane shows that war is not as elegant as you are led to think, it is cruel and deadly. “The corpse was dressed in a uniform that had once been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish.” (66) This avid image projects that war is very sad and cruel and is horrible to witness. “War is all the horrible things a human can do to another human being.” This is showing that people do terrible things to one another and we need to not do…show more content… “The youth wished to launch a joke- a quotation from the newspapers. He desired to say, ‘All quiet on the Rappahannock,’ but the guns refused to permit even a comment upon their uproar.” (128) The Rappahannock is a river that ran right beside the Battle of Chancellorsville. Chancellorsville was fought in Northern Virginia near the Rappahannock. ( ) This shows that Crane knew what he was talking about and knew the geography of the land. This evidence shows that Crane was correct on the geography of the area of the land of the Battle of