Examples Of Henry In The Red Badge Of Courage

Henry V was a great warrior. If you could name someone that did not care if he were to get harmed, it would be Henry V Yet it would be his honor to bring victory. He was a leader and had only one desire. He took any opportunities that came. Once he said his mind to something, he was going to do it. Even if it meant putting his life on the line, the way he thought about it was different. For him, it would just lead him and his men closer to success.

Crane defines courage as "a temporary but sublime absence of selflessness," I think Henry experienced a temporary but not sublime absence of consciousness. In battle I think he was acting more like a machine than himself. "Henry ran like a madman to reach the woods before a bullet could discover him...In his haste his eyes almost closed, and the scene was a wild blur...pulsating saliva stood at the corners of his mouth."(Crane Ch. 20) He was acting out of fear, thus he wasn't truly himself in his actions. The one main reason Henry fled in the beginning is because he feared death. When you act out of fear you become more mechanical in your actions. A hero doesn't flee from battle and try to rationalize their actions by lying to

Initially, Henry fears that he will run like a coward when faced with his first battle. He’s been in the army for a while now but hasn’t seen any action yet. Talking with the other men, he tries to get them to admit that they are scared as well. No one wants to say as much; they all seem perfect examples of fearless men, which leaves Henry feeling even worse about his own apprehension. Shortly before his first battle, he sees his first dead body, a gruesome corpse.

He was now a more courageous man from that point on. He saw his wound as a fact that he survived the shot, and he believes that he can survive what comes his way instead of running. When he ran back into battle one his friends had been killed. The man killed was the flag bearer. Instead of running in fear he pried the flag from his hands and ran into the heat of battle. Henry did not think about the possibility of himself being the one that could die. He decided to fight for his own honor. Henry grew there his experience n the Civil War because of things like his red badge of courage.

Henry shows heroic traits fighting in the war. At the beginning of the story Henry runs to the woods, by the end of the book Henry fights and it turns out he actually likes fighting. This quote shows heroic traits by showing Henry actually fought. He like fighting and should not have ran the first time. Henry almost regrets running the first time.“He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion. Regarding it, he saw that it was fine, wild, and, in some ways, easy.” (Cane ) This quote proves that when Henry started fighting he liked and and he fought like a beast. This is not the only instance in which Henry shows heroic qualities.

As Henry is trying to find ways to justify running from the battle, he happens to overhear a few men talking about the very same battle. His side had won, and Henry is faced with the harsh truth, Henry ran out of fear. Not because he though that the soldiers fighting alongside him would lose, but because he was afraid only for his own life. As he is thinking about all of this, Henry finally comes across other soldiers. As he inspects them more closely however, he notices that they are all badly wounded. Still trying to escape the battle, he joins

In The Red Badge of Courage, Henry shows immaturity by enlisting in the army and being naïve about the war. Henry explains that since he was young, he dreamed about the war of the bloody battles that the soldiers fought in. He thinks fighting in a war will make him a hero and achieve glory. He enlisted in the army, although his mother opposed the decision. However, when he makes it to the camp, he had to wait many weeks in the camps until he was called up to battle, and he started to doubt his place in the army.

Henry wanted some excitement and to be seen by everyone as a hero. He wanted to

First, Henry did not flee during the first war out of patriotism for his country. He knew what he was leaving at home and knew he was going to be a part of a major part in history. Uniform on, gun in his hand he wants to come home just like all his brothers beside him and knows the only way out is to fight your best and hardest and win. He wanted women to lust after him and did not want to wreck that dream of coming home, so he pushed through despite how hard it was.

Henry is in a battle and he is not trying to be a coward and runs away. Henry is heroic because at the end he carries the flag to the enemy line and Henry feels brave and heroic. Henry is heroic because he keeps shooting when the enemy retreats, Henry carries the flag to the front line, Henry pulled out the flag in the enemy line and wins the battle.

“The Youth,” which Henry is referred to as, dreamt of glory in battle and being a hero (Crane 2). That is the reason why Henry enlisted himself; even though he told his comrades he was forced to be in the army. His mother’s farewell speech is ironic because he thought that she would give him a tearful and long speech, but all she really said was to “Watch out, and be a good boy” (4). She does not want Henry to be a hero even though that is what he went to war for. She told Henry that she will be fine if he does not return home. Henry tries to pull off being a confident and good soldier, while in the reality he is very nervous about what will happen in battle. Throughout the novel, he questions his courage and if he would run from battle. At an early battle, Henry continuously fires at the enemy line and feels like he is a courageous soldier. However, soon after this battle, another one erupts and Henry runs from it. This is

He described that he couldn’t escape even if he wanted to. Through this analogy, the reader can see that Henry is reducing the soldiers to unthinking, unfeeling machines, performing their duty without taking into account the threat of injury or death. As he looks around at the faces of the rest of the soldiers in his regiment, he notices their focused commitment to the firing of their rifles. He wonders if he is the only one faced with questions of morality. While the regiment began to advance, Henry was shocked to receive a packet of letters from Wilson, who feared he would die in battle. After the battle, he is glad that he made it through the first day. He begins to lose the romantic vision of war by seeing the realities, but he starts lying to himself about who is really is.

Initially, Henry had enlisted because he wanted to be viewed as a hero and to appear fearless. Crane exemplifies this through his quote "He arose and began to pace to and fro excitedly. The thrill of his enthusiasm made him walk with an elastic step. He was sprightly, vigorous, fiery in his belief in success. He looked into the future with clear, proud eye, and he swore with the air of an old soldier."

The Red Badge of Courage, written by Stephan Crane in 1895 gives a detailed, yet, fictional account of Henry Fleming, a farm boy who joins the Union Army in the American Civil War. Before Henry is battle-tested, he ponders his courage and questions whether he will be able to fight the urge to flee from battle. Henry does indeed end up deserting his comrades however he ultimately overcomes his guilt and becomes one of the best fighters in his regiment. In order to depict a realistic and relatable war scene, Crane includes Henry’s realistic thought-process and emotion in his struggles to maintain courage. The narrative simply revealed war in a manner that was divergent to all prior forms of literature in the 19th century. Previous novels predominately entailed the glorious and romantic aspects of war rather than the tedious, gritty, and gruesome details of close combat. Instead, Crane broke the barriers of literary norms in war-related literature; the novel depicted a pragmatic experience of combat from the eyes of an inexperienced and frightened youth. In the Red Badge of Courage, Stephan Crane primarily uses religious and gory imagery as well as symbolism to contrast the romantic conceptions of war versus the reality of experiencing battle.

Henry overcomes his concerns of the unknown, but he still lacks courage to talk to the commanders and the leaders of the regiment, which shows his cowardice. Henry has this lack of courage because he felt ashamed. Henry viewed his shame and lack of courage as a burden on other soldiers in the regiment. He felt that the soldiers who had a wound were fulfilled, and he envied him because they had "a red badge of courage" (Crane84) the courage that he lacked. His lack of "a red badge of courage" (Crane84) was short lived when he was shot. Jim Conklin, a man of Henry's first regiment, is