The Red Badge of Courage: Chapters 1-3

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

In his novel The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane attempted to go beyond the usual accounts of war — the winners and losers of battles, and the casualty reports — to look at the emotions a regular soldier would face while enlisted in the army.

This look at a character's emotions and thoughts is known in literature as interiority.

Interiority refers to the inner thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and mental processes of a character in a narrative, particularly in literature. It delves into the character's internal world, including their emotions, desires, fears, memories, and reflections.

Interiority allows readers to gain insight into the character's motivations, conflicts, and complexities, enhancing their understanding and empathy towards the character. It's a crucial aspect of character development and storytelling, providing depth and richness to the narrative.

In other words, the reader gets inside the character's head when a writer uses interiority. You can see the character's thoughts and how they are mentally reacting to a situation.

This is what Stephen Crane does in The Red Badge of Courage; the reader gets to know the thoughts and emotions of Henry, an enlisted private in the Union Army.

Before reading, it is important to understand Crane's vocabulary in the novel.

Use Merriam-Webster to define the following terms used in the novel's first three chapters. After each definition, write a sentence in your journal using the word correctly in context based on its meaning.

When you have finished writing the definitions and sentences, read Chapters One through Three in The Red Badge of Courage either online or a hard copy if you have access to one.

As you read, take notes on the interiority of the main character, Henry. Write down at least five examples of his thoughts and feelings about the Civil War.

When you have finished reading and taking your notes, move to the Got It? section to explore the details of these three chapters more closely.