After the failure of his 1st novel, Maggie, Crane found inspiration for a 2nd while lounging in a friend's studio having a portrait painted. He became fascinated with issues of the Century largely devoted to famous battles & Civil War military leaders. Frustrated with dryly written stories, he stated, "I wonder that some of those fellows don't tell how they felt in those scraps...
After the failure of his 1st novel, Maggie, Crane found inspiration for a 2nd while lounging in a friend's studio having a portrait painted. He became fascinated with issues of the Century largely devoted to famous battles & Civil War military leaders. Frustrated with dryly written stories, he stated, "I wonder that some of those fellows don't tell how they felt in those scraps. They spout enough of what they did, but they're as emotionless as rocks." Eventually the idea of writing a war novel overtook him. He would later state that he "had been unconsciously working the detail of the story out thru most of his boyhood" & had imagined "war stories ever since he was out of knickerbockers."
During an unnamed battle, 18-year-old private Henry Fleming survives what he considers to be a lost cause by escaping into a nearby wood, deserting his battalion. He finds a group of injured men in which one of the group, the "Tattered Soldier", asks Henry, who's often referred to as "The Youth", where he's wounded. Henry, embarrassed that he's whole, wanders thru the forest. He ultimately decides that running was the best thing, & that he's a small part of the army responsible for saving himself. When he learns that his battalion had won the battle, Henry feels guilty. As a result, he returns to his battalion & is injured when a cannon operator hits him in the head because he wouldn't let go of his arm. When he returns to camp, the other soldiers believe he was harmed by a bullet grazing him in battle. The next morning he goes into battle for a 3rd time. While looking for a stream from which to attain water, he discovers from the commanding officer that his regiment has a lackluster reputation. The officer speaks casually about sacrificing Henry's regiment because they're nothing more than "mule drivers" & "mud diggers". With no regiments to spare, the general orders his men forward. In the final battle, Henry becomes one of the best fighters in his battalion as well as the flag bearer, finally proving his courage as a man.
p19 Chapter III
Once the line encountered the body of a dead soldier. He lay upon his back staring at the sky. He was dressed in an awkward suit of yellowish brown. The youth could see that the soles of his shoes had been worn to be thinness of writing paper, and from a great rent in one the dead foot projected piteously. And it was as if fate had betrayed the soldier. In death it exposed to his enemies that poverty which in life he had perhaps concealed from his friends.
p79 Chpt XV
In the present, he declared to himself that it was only the doomed and the damned who roared with sincerity at circumstance. Few but they ever did it. A man with a full stomach and the respect of his fellows had no business to scold about anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the u... (查看原文)
If not for the requirement of the English teacher, I'd never read such a book about war. Meanwhile, the words used in the whole book are not familiar to me. Thus I'm sometimes confused for not knowing what the hell the story is talking about in a whole chap...
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daliwa7
Dover Publications, Inc.1990版
Raven☔️
漓江出版社2012版
0 有用 Tina JI 2019-01-06 21:18:14
因为书名买的书，断断续续读了好久了，都快忘记之前的情节，虽然书很短。最喜欢的是语言，画面细致耐读。但是并没有战争的残酷和宏大，只能代入一下渺小的个体随战争沉浮的感觉。
0 有用 锐 2018-02-09 00:36:04
似乎什么也没有发生，故事性不强，大量的心理及环境描写凸显战争的残酷以及不必要