Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 2013): 32-41
Author without Authority: Stephen Crane’s Belief within The Red Badge of Courage and “The Open Boat” Mark Eckel and Tyler Eckel Introduction Stephen Crane (1871-1900) would have loved The Matrix. The 1999 film by the Wachowski Brothers hit the Cineplex by storm. Audiences immediately saw its implication: What if there is another reality? The conflict in the film revolves around both saving what is real and convincing others that this “real” exists. Viewers ponder, “Am I seeing the world only as I believe it to be or as it really is?” Personal interpretation is crucial, but does our interpretation create the world or mask something in the world which we refuse to acknowledge? Like The Matrix, Crane is syncretistic, claiming multiple answers to his question. Crane writes about reality as he sees it in The Red Badge of Courage (1895) but carries on the “eternal debate” (Red Badge 60) about “The Question” (70). The problem for viewers of The Matrix and for Stephen Crane is the seeming lack of unity in reality. Some do indeed go through life without questioning, “How does everything fit together?” This question, however, is crucial to the whole of life. If there is no organizing principle, if no one is in charge, if humans are left to the whims of fate and personified Nature has no master, we in fact live in Crane’s world. Stephen Crane’s view of life can be summarized as naturalistic cynicism—man against indifferent nature. Crane’s naturalism provides the essential understanding of life: Nothing and no one governs Nature. Cynicism is best reflected in Crane’s use of irony. There are no happy endings in Crane’s writings. The story stops abruptly, not in tragedy, not in triumph, but in timidity. A human writing about humans concludes that existence has no coherence, nothing to hold it together and thereby give life meaning. Nature is not against humans; human existence does not matter to Nature. Crane portrays humanity as pathetic, spinning on an apathetic Sphere. If Earth is uninterested in humanity, life is simply a state of flux. How, then, should a person respond to living in such a world of instability? The Red Badge of Courage is not simply one man’s view of war; the book ultimately ignores the coherence of the universe. If there is no governing structure, order, or framework whereby people interpret life, everyone is left alone. The verbal shrug of the shoulders—“whatever”—is indeed the answer to every query. Humans by themselves are left to themselves. Crane uses impressionistic realism to make the individual the arbiter and interpreter of truth. Impressionism suggests personal, emotional, visual, situational, and