From Fear to Courage When new soldiers go to fight in a war, they never know what’s coming. Although events are preserved in stories by the veterans, nothing can capture the real thing. Seeing everything up close and personal can change a person dramatically. Soldiers may never be the same after traumatic events such as these. Wars test a person and shows how strong not just physically, but mentally, one is. Stephen Crane, throughout his novel, The Red Badge of Courage, creates three distinct tones by utilizing the stylistic devices of imagery and figurative language, which reinforce Crane’s fearful, unworthy and courageous attitude on the realities of war. In the novel, fear is one of the very first tones viewed as one begins the …show more content…
As Crane describes the Confederates as ‘dragons’ and ‘monsters’, it gives one a fearful image and can make him feel anxious or afraid. Dragons and monsters are always seen in a daunting view. In chapter seven, Crane uses this fear and attempts to channel this tone through the reader. Crane successfully has the reader engaged in the writing while be able to feel what Henry must be feeling. However, in chapter ten, Crane helps readers visualize a different tone. As for chapter ten, that stuck out to some was unworthiness. To feel unworthy is not a pleasant feeling. It is like one is without value or just undeserving, and no one wants to feel like that. When people head to war, during this time period, they would head to war without any training. All the government wanted was numbers, and fast. So they would get deployed, and that’s that. But when it is just an eighteen or nineteen year old kid, he may feel provincial when he is surrounded by veterans who know and have seen death, while the kid is still scared out of his mind by it. Through imagery, Crane is able to express this tone clearly. “He now thought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied those men whose bodies lay strewn over the grass of the fields and on the fallen leaves of the forest” (Crane 46). Henry wants to just drop dead more than anything here. He does not feel he really deserves to be alive because he has not done anything for
First, one should focus on the language and Henry's ethos. The soldiers are burdened with the thought of a
Two northern boys in the novels, “Soldier’s Heart,” and “The Red Badge of Courage,” suffer through the journey and hardships, loss of loved ones, and war. The contrasts in these works are few, however the variances in stories minister support in helping each book to stand out, and separate from the other. The similarities between books are uncanny, so similar, in fact that throughout the duration of the novels differentiating the novels becomes increasingly problematic for the reader. Also, the similarities concerning the two books “Soldier’s Heart” and “The Red Badge of Courage” aid the reader in understanding the mind-set of a soldier during a war. The comparisons and differences of the
War can force young soldiers to grow up quickly. In The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He enters the war with romanticized ideas of what war is like, and leaves with those ideas very much changed.
Courage tells us a lot of things and makes us think because without courage we shouldn’t live and walk around others with our full emotions and not been not bad and nice but normal “courage is what it takes to stand up and speak courage is what it takes to sit down and listen” (winston churchill). And I think it is the best behavior that a human can have in his life. And there is more good things that we write or learn.
War changes people in many ways, especially the lives of the soldiers in the army. The changes that the soldiers go through are told in many novels, such as The Red Badge of Courage. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane is a coming-of-age novel because Henry Fleming changes from an immature adolescent to a mature man by the end of the novel.
Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage is a remarkable piece of nonfiction literature. His work is so thorough that one wonders how he has time to do much more. Yet he has created time in his life to go west and go camping and hiking and canoeing in the summers with his family. Which possibly shows that anything can be raw material to the open mind, for it was on those trips that he developed a great fascination with the Lewis and Clark expedition that explored the West when the country was twenty-five years old. Ambrose creates a precise and true story of the expedition in witch most readers would be enthralled. His style is smooth, readable and enjoyable, unlike many historical nonfiction of the day.
Ordinary courage is a book that tells the story of an ordinary man who is inlisted in the continental army in the revolutionary war. Joseph Plumb Martin is the young man fighting in this war, at the time he entered he was just a mere 16 year old kid but by the time his time in the continental army was up he became a man. This is a first person memoir of what it was like for a regular person living in a war zone, and dealing with the everyday fears of food shortage, low morale, and danger of attack. This is something that many people in todays world could not handle because even some of the old guys in the
In the beginning of the fighting, Henry felt doubt overwhelm and paralyze him as he “shut his eyes and waited to be gobbled” by his foe (Crane 30). Facing the possibility of death in the second battle, Henry’s distrust in his own ability to protect himself caused him to the run away. Painfully aware of the doubts that inundated him, Henry longed to find another “who suspected himself” (Crane 9). Another soldier, Wilson, exposed his doubts when he gave Henry a yellow envelope for his parents saying, “It’s my first and last battle, old boy” (Crane 20). In a flash of recognition, Henry understood that he was no less of a soldier as a result of his doubts as they appeared commonplace among his fellow recruits. With this revelation in hand, Henry embraced the experience he gained in the first two battles and allowed himself to arise as a leader in his regiment. As the confederate soldiers approached in the third battle, Henry encouraged his companions to press on in confidence. He yelled, “Come on, yeh fools! Come on! Yeh can’t stay here. Yeh must come on” (Crane 79). Henry chose to engage the enemy with confidence rather than flee with
War requires people to give up their lives to reach a common goal. These sacrifices create opportunities that allow people to grow. In The Red Badge of Courage, Henry and Wilson make sacrifices which lead to growth.
Written by Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage is a novel filled with irony. This story is written in the point of view of the main character, Henry Fleming, and tells about his maturation through the war. Including the title, from the beginning to the end of the book there is irony present. The use of irony by Crane helps create a lot of discussion for critics. Henry’s internal debate is a main source of irony in this novel. Also, his fantasy of how he thought war was going to be and how it turned out is ironic.
In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.
War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly. In Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He is faced with the hard reality of war and this forces him to readjust his romantic beliefs about war. Through the novel, the reader can trace the growth and development of Henry through these four stages: (1) romanticizing war and the heroic role each soldier plays, (2) facing the realities of war, (3) lying to himself to maintain his self-importance, and (4) realistic awareness of his abilities and place in life. Through Henry’s experiences in his path to self-discovery, he is strongly affected by events that help shape his ideology of war, death,
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.
Courage is a necessity to overcome fears and achieve a desired goal. Fear is something that exists in all of us. There is no hero or any particular courageous figure that is without fear. Being fearless is not required to be courageous, one simply has to look past or overcome their fears to possess this great quality. When overcoming fears and going against the norm, there are always risks involved. There are different types of risks that come about. Someone could risk life or limb, while others risk their reputation. Either risk is serious enough that a person must have courage to endure that particular risk. Courage can occur anytime, anywhere, and often in our everyday lives. Everyone will experience courage no matter how young,
There is an important event that happens in every person’s life. That important event may be a number of things. Such as someone winning the lottery or even having a tragic loss in the family. My important event in life was the day I conquered my fear of heights. Everyone has some type of fear or phobia that absolutely petrifies them. Whether it’s a fear of snakes, swimming, or even germs, it can be conquered as I discovered.