How Does Henry Fleming Fantasize In The Red Badge Of Courage

"He became not a man but a member. He felt that something of which he was a part -a regiment, an army, a cause, or a country -was in a crisis. He was welded into a common personality which was dominated by a single desire." (Crane ) The Red Badge of Courage is written by Stephen Crane. It takes place during the Civil War. Some readers think Henry is a Coward while other think he is a hero. Henry shows heroic traits when he ends up fighting, grabs the flag, and stays with the army.

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.

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.

In the Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Henry has a conflict of individual vs. self as he struggles to mature at first when confronted with the realities of war. We see Henry be mesmerized by the glories of being a soldier but he does not truly understand what it means to be a soldier fighting in a conflict such as the Civil War. He matures and develops throughout his exposure to warfare and understands what it means to be a warrior. This is the central point in understanding why he fights with the other soldiers the first battle, yet he flees when the second battle ensues.

In this skirmish, Henry did the exact opposite of what he did before, and fought with a war crazed vigor. He shot, reloaded, and shot again, never stopping to rest and continued firing like this well after the battle, shooting at nothing. This earned him the nickname “war devil” for his fighting vigor. When the battle ended, Henry was giving permission to go find a stream to fetch some water, but as he was searching, he overheard the generals discussing the battle tactics and learned that his regiment was to charge the enemy, which he told to his regiment. When the time finally came, the regiment surged forward toward the treeline, where gunfire tore at them and brought many to the ground. Despite the heavy losses, Henry managed to wrestle the flag from the fallen flag bearer, only to realize that some of the regiment was fleeing. Suddenly, a renewed and fresh wave of enemy soldiers burst out of the forest, running toward them. Even in this difficult and deadly situation, the regiment slowly encircled the Confederate troops, firing upon them and moving in, finally causing the enemy to retreat. Still the enemy was not vanquished. New soldiers bearing a flag poured from the trees, this time taking cover behind a fence, destroying Henry’s regiment. Their only choice was to charge them yet again, and with words of

Henry Fleming is portrayed as a thrill seeker who wanted to experience the civil war first hand. Henry chased the action of a solider and the thrill of a battle without knowing truly what was expected from him, or what would happen to him mentally. During the at the battle field, Henry exclaimed his desire to

Henry Fleming is going through a difficult stage between being a "man" and being a "boy". The reason he joined the army was to become a hero. He was blind to the Union’s cause, for Henry it was more for personal achievement and well-being, “his province was to look out, as far as he could, for his personal comfort.” Henry goes through a complete change of character as the war goes on going from a “boy” to a “man” as quick as a war can make that happen.

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.

“Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a despairing fondness for this flag which was near him.” (Crane 108). In the story, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Henry Fleming is a 16 year old soldier who is fighting for the Union during the civil war at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia. Many readers believe that Henry is a hero, but some also believe he is cowardly throughout the book. Henry proves he is that he is heroic throughout the last few chapters of the book because he picks up the fallen flag, encourages people to stay and fight, and he continues to fight even after the enemy is gone.

A solider is a solider in anytime. Whether he is a solider fighting off the British in the American Revolution, or a solider fighting against his own in a civil war. Many of the experiences and feelings are the same. Have you ever wondered what it is like being a solider? Have you ever wondered about a soldiers feelings as he faces battle for the first time? Stephen Crane shows us in The Red Badge of Courage, a character, Henry Fleming, an average young recruit in the Civil War. Fleming comes to realize that when it comes to war what he expects is different from what he must come to except. Stephen Crane was born shortly after the Civil War which may have influenced his writing of The Red Badge of Courage, which some critics view as

Thousands upon thousands of people died, hundreds of thousands injured and all over a simple disagreement... whether to rid slavery or not. In "The Red Badge of Courage", Stephen Crane portrays many themes through the main character Henry. Henry signed up for the 304th regiment in the Civil War. When he tells his mother, she is very disappointed because she told him not to. She did not want him to because Henry's father is not around; his father passed away when Henry was young.

“He wished that he, too, has a wound, a red badge of courage.” (Crane, 40). The book The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane is about a 16 year old soldier named Henry Fleming, fighting in the the civil war. A union soldier fighting for the north, he is a hero in the story because even though he made some wrong decisions earlier in the war, by the end of the book he was a brave and independent young man. Henry was a hero in the story The Red Badge of Courage because he makes it through battle and does not give up, he grabs the flag when it is about to fall, and matures very quickly while in battle.

In the novel, The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, Henry Fleming possesses noticeable character traits. First, Henry Fleming exhibits that he is irritable. In addition to being irritable, Henry Fleming expresses selfishness. Finally, Henry Fleming displays cowardliness turned to courage. Throughout the novel, Henry Fleming proves himself to be irritable, selfish, and cowardly turned into courage.

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 is a story of self-discovery. The novel is set during the American Civil War, on multiple battlefields. Henry Fleming is a young soldier fighting for the Union. He first joined the army because he dreams of the glories of battle and performing heroic deeds in battle. Although Henry wishes to be a brave soldier, when in battle, his survival instincts take over, and he begins debating fight or flight. His desire to become a soldier and his instinct to survive introduces the main plot and conflict of the story: During a battle, he runs away. This causes him to see the contradiction in himself and it becomes an emotional conflict for him to solve out the contradiction. Because he is so hung up on the image of the war hero, even though he wasn’t shot at, but hit by a fellow soldier, he lies to his comrades that the wound was a bullet wound. He’s lied once to them about fighting bravely in battle when in actuality he ran away, and he lied again telling them that the head would which he actually got from another soldier was a bullet wound. The climax of the plot occurs when Henry redeems himself at another major battle by fighting bravely and taking up the Union flag when the flag bearer is wounded. He ignores his fears and faces the battle like the hero he’s dreamed of and he overcomes his survival instinct. The resolution happens after the battle is over and Henry survives. He reflects on the decisions he’s made and sees how much he’d