【正确答案】正确答案：The Red Badge of Courage is a short novel with elements of the bildungsroman. The book focuses on the character development of a young soldier after he enlisted in the Union Army in 1863, during the American Civil War. The novel presents a realistic portrait of the youth and the battle he fights with the enemy and with himself; and it centers on the maturation of a naive youth who matures into a young adult in the crucible of war. But this novel is also obviously under the influence of naturalistic idea, that is, human being is at the mercy of fate or a pitiless universe. In the book, nature carries on with its business regardless of what happens to man. Like a great unfeeling machine, it functions in its usual way without heed to humans in peril.