Stephen Crane has written many remarkable poems, short stories, and novels throughout his short life (He lived only to the age of 29). The Red Badge of Courage is a tale of war, life, responsibility, and duty. It has been considered the first "great modern novel of war"(Alfred Kazin). It traces the effects of war on Henry Fleming, a Union soldier, through his dreams of battle, his enlistment, and his experience through serveral battles of the Civil War. Henry, "the youth", was a young man who lived on a farm with his mother. He dreamed about what fighting in a war would be like, and dreamed of being a hero. He dreamed o