Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - M. Thomas Inge: Sam Watkins and the Fictionality of Fact

Ah, how we envied those that were wounded. We thought at that time that we would have given a thousand dollars to have been in the battle, and to have had our arm shot off, so we could have returned home with an empty sleeve (W, 16). Crane offers the same idea more succinctly: At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage (RB, 133). Except for the final felicitous image that gave the book its title, Watkins's style is as simple and as direct as that of Crane. One of the most famous and often-explicated images in Crane's novel is the final line of chapter nine: "The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer" (RB, 137). Watkins also had his own red sun as a silent witness to the ravages of man: 'The sun was poised above us, a great red ball, sinking slowly in the west, yet the scene of battle and carnage continued" (W, 54). The most frequently discussed figure in The Red Badge is the tall soldier, Jim Concklin, who lurches through chapter nine in a coma-like state, incoherently conversing with Henry, finally to collapse into a death tremor. Henry reports, "As the flap of the blue jacket fell away from the body, he could see that the side looked as if it had been chewed by wolves" (RB, 137). Watkins has a very similar experience with an equally spectral figure at Murfreesboro: As I went back to the field hospital, I overtook another man walking along. I do not know to what regiment he belonged, but. I remember of first noticing that his left arm was entirely gone. His face was as white as a sheet. The breast and sleeve of his coat had been torn away, and I could see the frazzled end of his shirt sleeve, which appeared to be sucked into the wound. I looked at it pretty close, and I said "Great God!" for I could see his heart throb, and the respiration of his lungs. I was filled with wonder and horror at the sight. He was walking 54