Red Badge Of Courage Themes

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.

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

“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.

In the beginning of the book, the author describes Henry’s beliefs about the war. He thinks war is about the glory soldiers receive or dying a hero’s death. As he gets into the first battle, he is suddenly faced with the reality. Passing be dead soldiers and watching the battle before him causes Henry to flee. As he is running away, he happens to stumble upon a rotting corpse, this makes the realities become even more clear. Shaken from the encounter, he moves on.

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 the second paragraph he addresses the situations that faces them as Americans. Henry questions the idea of people during this time and states “Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love?” He then states the only way to not lose this freedom that they worked so hard for is to fight “if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must

When faced with adversities early into his first battle, he quickly reconsidered his views on war and courage. By running away from the face of battle, Henry “saw his vivid error, and he was afraid that it would stand before him all his life” (Cane 24.30).  This pushed him into believing that he would never be a man of courage of masculinity. This “error” of running away caused Henry to be angry at himself for mistakenly thinking the battle was over and abandoning his fellow soldiers. While away from the battle Henry discovers “that he had a scorching thirst” and “his body was calling for food” (Cane 11.21). From the struggle of war and the experience of Wilson, Henry learns to reflect upon his life and learn from his mistakes, rather than being angry at himself. This allowed Henry to be influenced by the culture around him, shaping him into acknowledging that courage was not depicted by a gunshot or a wound, but by the act of adhering to the line of duty and learning from your

Over the history of human existence, people have been at war for different reasons. Usually war is understood to be between two countries. Yet the American Civil War was not entirely this. This war was between a country that was divided in its self. This caused for many different literary themes. A common theme of this time was the actual war. The Red Badge Of Courage shows that a man's actions in war are not truly his own, he does what war makes him do.

When the men regroup for the second attack, many of the Union soldiers around henry begin to run away. Henry gives into the pressure and joins in the retreat, he wasn’t prepared for the horror that war brings. As he’s running, he seems to observe everyone else around him. He sees his captain lying stretched on the ground, dead, the babbling man was grazed by a shot to the head, and another man grunted as he was struck in the stomach, along with many others that just started dropping to the ground. As Henry ran, he feared for his life that he was going to be struck in the back, but he continued running. The thought of self-preservation seemed more important to him than fighting with selflessness and bravery along with the other

In today’s issue, we will be covering all the major events that have transpired in The Red Badge of Courage as a sort of “catch-up” for new readers. Firstly, it all began when young Henry Fleming enlisted in the Union Army, wanting to fight for his country. He expects war to be thrilling and exciting, and for him to come back a decorated hero, praised by the town. However, it starts out far from his dreams. Instead, his regiment is only told to stay where they are, drilling and training over and over again and abstaining from any combat. Finally, his wish is granted as his regiment moves out, but not in the way they expected. The “moving” simply consisted of them stopping in one area, settling down, then being ordered to move again, repeating

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

In the book, they are celebrating their victory, when they notice the confederates are coming back with another attack. They were not prepared for this battle. As soon as he saw the confederates approaching, he forget he was apart of the team. He became more focused on how committed the confederates were. Henry thought to himself, "They must be machines of steel. It was very gloomy struggling against such affairs, wounded perhaps to fight until sundown." In this quote, Henry focuses on how strong the other army is. He forgets the importance of working together with his regiments to put them

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 Stephen Crane: 1. Significant of the book’s title The author chose the title “ The Red badge of Courage” because every soldier who got injured in a battle they would be giving a red badge and Henry the main character wishes to have a red badge to show his courage to everyone. He believes that he would return home as a hero or not return at all. He struggle through his journey in the battle to achieve or accomplish his goal of earning the red badge.

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.