Part 1, The Seer and the Seen, Section 4 Summary and Analysis

"Stephen Crane and the Mainstream of American Fiction" (published as an introduction to The Red Badge of Courage, 1960). The author begins this essay by commenting on Stephen Crane's background, as a child of conservative evangelical Christians born in the socio-cultural aftermath of the American Civil War (see "Quotes", p. 61). He continues with comments on Crane's visionary and technical gifts as a writer and on the way critical and popular consideration of those gifts has been colored by reaction to Crane's flamboyant life and untimely death at the age of twenty-nine. He then examines ways in which Crane might have come to a factual understanding of the Civil War experience without actually having fought in it. He suggests that Crane might have gained knowledge from his older brother who fought...