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The Red Badge Of Courage Analysis

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The Red Badge of Courage is a great American novel, by Stephen Crane, about a young man named Henry Fleming, who encounters much adversity during the Civil War. Along the way, he comes to the realization that many unfortunate events he is unaware of, would lead to self-discovery. A character goes on a journey that revolves around obtaining an archetype known as the red badge of courage, however, he faces many difficulties along this journey as well as the unintentional achievement of self-discovery. It takes an individual journeying to obtain a symbol of honor or courage while coming face to face with many hardships to unintentionally discover new things about themselves and the beliefs they hold. The archetypal theory of literature is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring archetypes, symbols, etc. in a piece of literature. In this novel, there are many archetypes symbolic of the trials he faces during the Civil War on his journey to obtain a red badge of courage to prove that he is a courageous soldier, while also leading to the unintentional discovery of his true self and his changed beliefs. The main archetype being focused on is the red badge of courage that Henry’s journey through the Civil War is based upon. “At times, he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bofird to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.” (Crane, 50). The red badge of courage

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