What is the red badge of courage?

The title phrase names a wound as social currency. Soldiers who bleed have evidence they stood fire; Henry, after running, receives a bloody head gash from a panicked comrade’s rifle butt — not enemy fire, but still a “badge” he can show. Crane ironizes the symbol: Henry’s mark is accidental, yet it lets him re-enter the brotherhood of fighters.

Later real combat gives Henry fiercer credentials, but the title keeps asking whether blood equals virtue. Jim Conklin’s ghastly death and Wilson’s quiet fear complicate any simple equation. Teach the phrase as both literal injury and camp slang, then track how Henry’s shame attaches to visibility. The novel’s realism lives in that gap between wound and worth.