Red Badge Of Courage Analysis

First, one should focus on the language and Henry's ethos. The soldiers are burdened with the thought of a

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.

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 a battle in deep trenches, Henry starts complaining that the regiment has no real plan in the battle and that the regiment does not really know what to do in the battle. Wilson tries to calm down Henry from his anger, but Henry got angrier and took his anger out on Wilson. The lieutenant was dissatisfied with Henry’s anger and told him to keep his mouth shut about anything that might bring the regiment down. His immaturity is shown as Henry does not know how to control his feelings in a dangerous situation, which could get him and the regiment in

Henry Fleming enlists as a youth with heroic fantasies of battle lingering in his mind and walks off the "place of blood and wrath" three days later a serene veteran of battle. He came from hot plowshares seeking a Homeric Iliad, timid and anxious about his potential and what others think of him. He ponders a great dilemma: will he run from battle? He is reassured after asking the tall soldier his question. His friend tells him that he would do what the rest of the regiment was doing. Henry is not an individual yet, he is a

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 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

In the first battle, Henry fights along side the other soldiers. At this time, Henry is feeling confidant in his fighting skills and counted on his fellow soldiers to do their job. The narrator says, "He became not a man but a member. He felt that something of which he was apart- 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". In this quote, it talks about how he feels that he believes in his regiment. He isn't so selfish, he believes he is no longer an individual with regiments, they work as a whole person. In the second battle, it's different, he flees with the regiment.

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

Henry is also listening to the orders from his Captian who is standing behind him who is shouting encouragement to the troops and begins to feel part of the war machine. “He suddenly lost concern for himself and forgot to look at a menacing fate. He became not a man but a member.” He continues to fire and reload even as others a dying around him. After the battle is over and the regiment holds its ground the soldiers are excited and happy they have survived, they have beaten back the enemy. He is encouraged by the beauty of the flags blowing in the wind and the beauty of the sky and land. Henry feels he is a man he has passed the ultimate test. However he realizes that he is one skirmish in a series of

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.

“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.

Henry's fears take over, and his only way to achieve his self comfort again is to run away from the battle. Henry uses the forest to calm himself. The forest is where he begins to overcome his selfish ways, he reflects back on the battle and the men, and starts to believe that he can be of help to one or more of the men in the regiment. Henry eventually wins over the fear and joins with another regiment to fight against the rebels.

In Red Badge of Courage Henry fights in the first battle but in the second he runs away. In the second battle it was more brutal then the first. In the first battle he was curious, he was also terrified during the second battle.