The Red Badge Of Courage Summary

Upset with Huck’s actions, Jim expresses his grief as if Huck actually lost him. Jim shows his ‘fatherly’ side by scolding Huck, encouraging his conscience into being a kinder person. He shows how thankful he is that Huck was lost because Huck is the only person he cares about on the journey and without him, Jim would have no help and motive to move on. This incident also illustrates how loyal Jim is to Huck.

All throughout the story, readers are given the chance to look inside the mind of Wilson and see his judgmental and self righteous personality. Readers are able to witness as he lays blame while avoiding it himself, and how easily his judgment can change based off the situations he’s in. At the beginning of the

Henry hated to be ridiculed so badly that he abandoned the poor man who only showed care and concern for Henry. A hero doesn't abandon a fellow soldier in desperate need of help. Henry tries to reassure his confidence by asking other soldiers how they would respond to battle. Jim Conklin honestly said that it depended on the circumstances, "but if everyone was a standing and a fighting, why, I'd stand and fight."(Crane Ch.1) When he asked Wilson, Wilson dismissed the notion of running from battle. Henry was trying to look for someone to relate to, but as a result of questioning his fellow soldiers he further isolated his insecurities of battle.

Meanwhile we meet two men, Jim Conklin or "the Tall Soldier" whom Henry has known for years, and Wilson or "the Loud Soldier." Wilson, afraid that he will die in battle, gives Henry a packet of letters to deliver to his family after the war. When the fighting finally starts, Henry doesn’t do too badly. However, when a second round of fighting begins after a brief lull, Henry is terrified and heads for the hills. Afterwards, he tries to rationalize his decision (to himself) by claiming it was simply a survival instinct. He oscillates between a

"The tall soldier turned and, lurching dangerously, went on. The youth and the tattered soldier followed, sneaking as if whipped, feeling unable to face the stricken man if he should again confront them. They began to have thoughts of a solemn ceremony. There was something rite-like in the movements of the doomed soldier. And there was a resemblance in him to a devotee of a mad religion, blood-sucking, muscle-wrenching, bone-crushing. They were awed and afraid. They hung back lest he have at command a dreadful weapon."(Ch. 9 P. 65) Each character plays a major role in the novel even though they are minor characters. Both the tattered soldier and Jim Conklin serve to show was Henry’s guilty conscience. It reminded him that the wounds that the men showed also displayed their courage which Henry did not believe he had since he ran away from the fight. “He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements shook the land. They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in them. He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see it all. His busy

As he is walking, a few soldiers that seems to be fleeing run into him. As Henry tries to stop them to ask what’s been happening, one of the soldiers swings at him with a rifle, opening a bloody gash on the top of his head. After a long while of waiting, a friendly soldier finds him and leads him back to camp, where a friend tends to his wound. After a few days of waiting, they come across another battle. This time Henry doesn’t flee, instead he thinks about all the people who have fought and died in the war, and decides to do the same: fight. Not only for the glory this time, but for the people he was

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 (the youth) is the main character in the book Red Badge of Courage. Henry enlists in the Union Army during the US Civil War at a very young age and fights alongside other Union soldiers in his first battle. However when faced with an immediate second battle Henry decides to run and desert his unit. Henry is so tramatized by the dead and wounded soldiers that he sees during his first conflict that he cannot accept walking straight into his own death. So he runs away as fast as he can to save himself.

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

A few days later they started marching and they attacked. This is Henry's and many of the men's first battle, so he and a few others flee from the battle. Then Henry finds Jim after the battle. They talk for a while, then Jim dies. Henry feels guilty so he starts looking for the regiment. He comes across another Union soldier and they get in a fight, the soldier hits Henry on the head with his rifle. Henry makes it back to the regiment and tells them that the wound is from the battle so they won't think that he ran off. Henry is then nursed bye a soldier named Wilson. By morning Henry is ready to fight. He fights several battles and stays on the front lines, in that same day.

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

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.

Jim is also a relatively flat character. He goes through the novel with very little change in his character. He is always superstitious, but also is very accepting of people. One example of his superstitions is, “And [Jim] said that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn’t got to the end of it yet.” (Twain, 64.) Jim always adheres to his superstitions, and in a way they govern his life. Even when Tom and Huck are attempting to set Jim free near the end of the book, Jim goes along with all their crazy machinations. This is similar to his superstitions, because he is willing to do silly things, since he believes they are essential to gaining freedom.

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

Henry overcomes his concerns of the unknown, but he still lacks courage to talk to the commanders and the leaders of the regiment, which shows his cowardice. Henry has this lack of courage because he felt ashamed. Henry viewed his shame and lack of courage as a burden on other soldiers in the regiment. He felt that the soldiers who had a wound were fulfilled, and he envied him because they had "a red badge of courage" (Crane84) the courage that he lacked. His lack of "a red badge of courage" (Crane84) was short lived when he was shot. Jim Conklin, a man of Henry's first regiment, is