Henry Fleming in Red Badge of Courage
The Civil War forced many young boys out of childhood and into adulthood. Most of these young boys were not prepared for war, and Henry Fleming was one of these boys.
Henry Fleming's life in New York was routine. He had his normal share of friends and lived on a farm. When Henry got up in the mornings, he always knew exactly what the day had in store for him. This simple and boring life drove
Henry to enlist.
Henry wanted some excitement and to be seen by everyone as a hero. He wanted to be a man. However, his mother was strictly against his joining the Union Army.
She thought that the Army was for rough and uncivilized heathens.
His mother's greatest fear was that these heathens
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After hearing the tales of battle, Henry began to be intimidated by fear. Would he run when faced with death or would he have the courage to fight? This question was always on
Henry's mind. Finally, after many months of monotonous camp life, the question was answered. After hours of marching one day, Henry's regiment met with a
Rebel battalion. When gunfire erupted, Henry sprung up and ran. He ran with
"the zeal of an insane sprinter." Now Henry had the answer to his question, he was a coward. After his flight from battle, Henry met a group of soldiers who were wounded. He felt guilty because he was unmarked. He wanted to be wounded like them so he could have his own "Red Badge of Courage."
Henry did get his badge of courage on his return to his detachment. Ironically, it was from the butt of a fellow soldier's rifle. Now he was determined to prove himself and show that he would not run again. War used to be something
Henry could not imagine fighting in, but now it was his obsession. When the time came he did more than just stand up to his fear, he led the charge against the Rebels and was noticed for his heroic actions by the commander. After the battle he felt as if he had crossed a bridge from being an inexperienced, frightened young boy to a strong and heroic soldier.
The war was the catalyst that propelled Henry into manhood. Henry leaped into manhood by having to face every man's greatest fear, death, instead of maturing
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
“He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity. He saw that he would again be obliged to experiment as he had in early youth. He must accumulate information of himself, and meanwhile he resolved to remain close upon his guard lest those qualities of which he knew nothing should everlastingly disgrace him.” (Crane, Chapter 1) From this quote the reader can tell that Henry is fearful about whether he has the courage to fight in a battle. Henry assumes that war is only for creating heroes and that they are granted prestige in society. When he recalled his mothers advice, he realizes that it isn’t about making a name for himself, but meeting his responsibility honestly even if he has to sacrifice his own life.
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
Moving closer to the battle, Henry, the rookie private with a lack of self-confidence and courage, starts thinking if he should run away from a battle or fight in the battle. With a lack of war experience, he feels insecure going to battle and does not know what to do. He starts to ask his fellow soldiers on their thoughts and opinions about running away from a battle as he felt cowardliness of doing so. He also asked one
Henry is trying to communicate to his audience that the British will betray them in terms that his audience will relate to or understand, so he uses a situation that happens in a well-known piece of
First, Henry might have been scared. He saw what happened in the first battle and it affected him in a way it didn't the others. This was the first time he fought in a war or battle with other men. He made friends with some of the soldiers in his regiment. If he stuck
Henry Fleming (the youth) is the main character in the book Red Badge of Courage. Henry enlists in the Union Army during the US Civil War at a very young age and fights alongside other Union soldiers in his first battle. However when faced with an immediate second battle Henry decides to run and desert his unit. Henry is so tramatized by the dead and wounded soldiers that he sees during his first conflict that he cannot accept walking straight into his own death. So he runs away as fast as he can to save himself.
Henry Fleming is a young twenty year old. Any young twenty year old that experiences combat for the first time will without a doubt be surprised and shocked at what they find. Henry realizes when he encounters war that he isn’t ready to embark on this endeavor: “ Previously he had never felt obliged to wrestle too seriously with this question. In his life he had taken certain things for granted, never challenging his belief in ultimate success, and bothering little
Henry saw that the soldiers were particularly happy even the wounded ones. He was envyus of
Henry stayed with his team during the first battle because he did not want to be called out and leave the group. The first battle was a sure fire win so there was really no point in running from this war at the time. Henry stayed with the rest of the soldiers on the battle turf for the first war.
Henry’s internal struggle is his view of courage. Henry believes courage is something a person earns and achieves. He never experienced war, but has dreamt and, “He had imagined peoples secure in the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess. But awake he had regarded battles as crimson blotches on the pages of the past. He had put them as things of the bygone with his thought-images of heavy crowns and high castles.” (Crane 3) Henry wants to go to war to become a hero. He thinks that he has courage and could go to war and get all the glory. Henry runs from battle and has guilt, he comes up with excuses, he is a piece of the army and should save himself. When Henry comes back to the battlefield, he sees wounded soldiers and, “At times he regarded the
In the following battle, another test of his manhood, Henry flees from his regiment along with a few soldiers near him. War is defined as a “blood-swollen god”, this is far from the romantic view he held at the first stage of his development (Crane, 23). He is ashamed to admit his fear to himself and brands himself a criminal. He is forced to hide in the forest so that he is not noticed by his crew. He attempts to justify his reaction by testing a squirrel. He tests the squirrel by throwing a pine cone at it to see if it will run, and it does (Crane, 44). This proves to himself that it is simply instinctive to run when your life is threatened. He soon
Henry the young soldier in The Red Badge of Courage novel, goes through a lot when war breaks out in his country. He feels isolated from everyone else around him because he is scared and doesn’t want to have to fight for his life. During some encounters he goes running the opposite direction of danger while his fellow soldiers run into the face of danger. At some points in the book he is
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