Writing The Red Badge of Courage allowed him to do just that. He was able to use the ways he enjoyed writing to convey the true feelings that soldiers felt during a war. The book is now well known simply for how realistic the events in the novel were; “It is often considered one of the best American war stories ever written, even though the author was born after the events and never saw the battle” (The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane). Because he was so strongly influenced by realistic writing, Crane used it to also influence his writing and to influence the reader. He wrote this novel to tell the realistic events that happened during the