From AudioFile
Crane's classic story of Henry Fleming's rite of passage in the Civil War is superbly narrated by Walter Lewis. His voice is extremely versatile and expressive. Although Henry and the men of his regiment are from New York, Lewis's Midwestern accent ably conveys the rural character of the personalities in the work. The narration is done just as well; when hearing of the panic of Henry's regiment at the second Confederate assault, one can sense the terror that can so quickly seize and carry away men in battle. There is music interspersed in the action, usually to indicate chapter or side breaks. The effect is mixed. Some listeners (as well as this reviewer) may expect music from the period, martial or popular, rather than the orchestral pieces presented. The cover notes, for the most part, are equal to the performance. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Présentation de l'éditeur
The Red Badge of Courage was published in 1895, when its author, an impoverished writer living a bohemian life in New York, was only twenty-three. It immediately became a bestseller, and Stephen Crane became famous. Crane set out to create 'a psychological portrayal of fear.' Henry Fleming, a Union Army volunteer in the Civil War, thinks 'that perhaps in a battle he might run. . . . As far as war was concerned he knew nothing of himself.' And he does run in his first battle, full of fear and then remorse. He encounters a grotesquely rotting corpse propped against a tree, and a column of wounded men, one of whom is a friend who dies horribly in front of him. Fleming receives his own 'red badge' when a fellow soldier hits him in the head with a gun. 'The idea of falling like heroes on ceremonial battlefields,' Ford Madox Ford remarked later, 'was gone forever.'
