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| Red Badge of Courage |
| 作者Author / Stephen Crane 史蒂芬•克雷 |
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Stephen Crane
In the Red Badge of Courage (1895), Stephen Crane describes the capture of four Confederate prisoners by Union troops. Crane does not characterize these soldiers as stereotypes of Southern degeneracy, as does Homer in Prisoners from the Front (1866), but rather as modern men dealing individually, like the Union soldiers themselves, with the overwhelming machinery of war. Homer was much closer to the war historically and he reflected Northern biases; filtering the war through the naturalistic perspective of the 1890s, Crane sees it as the ultimate physical and emotional challenge to the human being:
史蒂芬•克萊恩在《鐵血雄師》（1895）一書中，史蒂芬•克萊恩描繪北方聯盟的軍隊擄獲四個南部邦聯的俘虜的景象。不同於何瑪的《前線來的俘虜》，克雷恩沒有把其士兵刻畫成南方沒落的典型。相反的，他把他們描述成現代人類，就像北方聯盟的士兵一樣，需獨自面對勢不可檔的戰爭機械。就歷史角度而言，何瑪的年代比較靠近南北戰爭，所以他也反映出北方聯盟的偏見；相反的，克雷恩以1890年代的中立的角度來看這場戰事，視之為人類身體與心靈的終極挑戰。
- At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon, and they now sat as prisoner. Some blue men were about them in an eager and curious circle. The soldiers had trapped strange birds, and there was an examination. A flurry of fast questions was in the air.
- One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the foot. He cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to curse with an astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses of his captors. He consigned them to red regions; he called upon the pestilential wrath of strange gods. And with it all he was singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the conduct of prisoners of war. It was as if a clumsy clod had trod upon his toe and he conceived it to be his privilege, his duty, to use deep, resentful oaths.
- Another, who was a boy in years, took his plight with great calmness and apparent good nature. He conversed with the men in blue, studying their faces with his bright and keen eyes. They spoke of battles and conditions. There was an acute interest in all their faces during this exchange of view points. It seemed a great satisfaction to hear voices from where all had been darkness and speculation.
- The third captive sat with a morose countenance. He preserved a stoical and cold attitude. To all advances he made one reply without variation, "Ah, go t' hell!"
- The last of the four was always silent and, for the most part, kept his face turned in unmolested directions. From the views the youth received he seemed to be in a state of absolute dejection. Shame was upon him, and with it profound regret that he was, perhaps, no more to be counted in the ranks of his fellows. The youth could detect no expression that would allow him to believe that the other was giving a thought to his narrowed future, the pictured dungeons, perhaps, and starvations and brutalities, liable to the imagination. All to be seen was shame for captivity and regret for the right to antagonize. (Crane 94-95)
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