How Does Henry Mature In The Red Badge Of Courage

He listens in on the battle, and to much of his surprise, he hears cheering from what’s left of his regiment. He then takes off into the woods in anger. While running through the woods his conscience begins to speak to him. He keeps telling himself that he is a coward and a deserter. Out of guilt, Henry runs back to the battle site, and meets again with his regiment. These actions showed Henry’s maturity and desire to be a war hero.

      In The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane explores the theme of courage and heroism in depth. He develops these themes through the main character, Henry Fleming. Henry is a naïve young man faced with the harsh realities of war, in this book, some argue that Henry is transformed into a heroic "quiet manhood" while others see Henry as the same young man who ran from battle in the beginning of the book. I think Henry doesn't change, his heroic status acquired at the end of the book isn't truly him, instead he merely is motivated by fear of dying and being rejected by his fellow soldiers.

"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.

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

The Red Badge of Courage is about finding the strength within oneself to keep one’s courage and bravery. Henry Fleming recently joined the 304th regiment during the Civil War because he was drawn to the glory of military conflict, but doubts his courage to fight and risk his life when a tall soldier named Jim Conklin spreads a rumor that the army will march soon. As the regiment marches for days and the soldiers become weary, they finally come across the enemies (Confederates) and attack. Although Henry wants to be brave, he internally fights his fear of war and death, and he runs off which becomes the main conflict. When he returns to fight, he discovered that the Union army defeats the Confederates. This gained him confidence, but as the

Henry is now a well renounced fighter in his regiment and even referred to “as a war devil”(730). The only reason Henry is known as such an amazing fighter is because of what he goes through. Henry loses a multitude of his companions in war and learns the importance of helping others through his friend, Wilson. Wilson also teaches him that he is never fighting alone and without a cause; therefore these reasons give Henry a new found purpose that enhances his

As the battles continue, Henry dedicates himself to fighting. He starts working with his soldiers, and not only focusing on himself. He no longer wants approval from the other soldiers, because he knows what he does is right and has a significant amount of self affirmation. This shows his maturation and

“ The Red badge of courage “ was a great book. The book introduces a boy named Henry, who is the main character in the story. He wants to enlist in the army so he can have his share of showing bravery. He ends up enlisting even though his mother told him that he was not aloud. The conflict however in this story was not Henry's mother, or the fact that he enlisted in the army without permission, but its the way he feels about his first time at war. Henry is afraid that once its time to actually fight, he'll be to afraid and run away from it.

The Red Badge of Courage stood out to me from other war novels because it told the story of a youth and his hard and emotional journey to adulthood. Henry Fleming begins as an innocent young man, eager to experience the glory of war. Shortly after enlisting, he faces the truth about war and his own character. Henry is faced with the contradiction between his survival instinct and his desire to be a real soldier.

Henry retreated during the second attack but eventually came back. Henry was immature and he felt wronged because most men in the regiment deserted him and left him to fight without much help. He fled because of annihilation. Another example of how immature Henry is, is that seeing a squirrel run made him feel better because it helped him rationalize his own flight of danger. As Henry becomes more mature, he promises Jim that he will not let him die in the road. His actions show maturity because at this point, Jim’s life is more important that his own. After seeing all the dead soldiers Henry begins to realize that this is a part of a war. He wishes he were dead because he was a coward and had run from battle. He wants to be a war hero but does not believe he can be because he had run from the war earlier.

In Stephen Crane’s cynical novel “The Red Badge of Courage” Henry believes a “red badge of courage “ is irrefutable proof that a soldier used self sacrifice to display bravery. Henry longs for a “red badge of courage” to relieve himself of the shame and guilt he feels for abandoning his regiment. In chapter nine of “The Red Badge of Courage” Stephen Crane makes Henry’s internal battle of self worth extremely apparent. “At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way.

During the novel The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Henry fights alongside his comrades in the first battle that he had participated in, yet he flees in the second one he participates in. What caused him to react this way? His reasons for his actions are quite cowardly and dishonorable but justified nonetheless.

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.

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.

I believe the purpose for Stephen Crane writing this book is to show how 1) Don’t underestimate something, and 2) it is also a way to consider how a teenager felt when going into war. The way he showed not to underestimate anything is by showing how Henry felt about fighting in the war, and masculinity. Henry thought the war was easy which is why he joined, he did it for the glory and himself. In the end, he realizes that war is about fighting for what you believe in, and not for your own personal glory. Lastly, the way it showed how a teenager felt is by showing that he thought the war was easy, and also that he ran away in the beginning battle. In the beginning, Henry left his mom to join the war thinking it was easy. The group he was in