Themes In The Red Badge Of Courage

The amount of blood shed, and the amount of soldiers that were fleeing was not a confidence booster for him. The soldier next to Henry dropped his riffle and ran before Henry did. This was ultimately the decision maker. After witnessing this, Henry didn't even need to think twice about fleeing. As Henry is running, he begins to rationalize the decision in which he made. Thinking that maybe he had made the right decision. He completely forgot all the lessons his regiment had instilled in him and his fellow comrades. He abandons all the honor and loyalty he has for his Union, and runs for

Great soldiers are always portrayed with specific defining characteristics, including courage, bravery, and selflessness. In Stephen Crane's Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, the main character, Henry, lacks these specific traits. In Henry's first battle experience, he fights alongside the other soldiers, despite being terrified. However, in his regiment's second battle, Henry flees the scene. Henry's actions are due to his lack of courage and bravery, and his selfish demeanor. He does not realize the intensity of the war until after the first battle, thus resulting in him running away afterwards.

Crane defines courage as "a temporary but sublime absence of selflessness," I think Henry experienced a temporary but not sublime absence of consciousness. In battle I think he was acting more like a machine than himself. "Henry ran like a madman to reach the woods before a bullet could discover him...In his haste his eyes almost closed, and the scene was a wild blur...pulsating saliva stood at the corners of his mouth."(Crane Ch. 20) He was acting out of fear, thus he wasn't truly himself in his actions. The one main reason Henry fled in the beginning is because he feared death. When you act out of fear you become more mechanical in your actions. A hero doesn't flee from battle and try to rationalize their actions by lying to

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 the Novel, The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, Henry Flemming is the main character, and is referred to as “the young

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

The Red Badge of Courage is a story of humility and courage. The setting is during the Civil War with the 304th Regiment. Henry Fleming, the story’s main protagonist has many questions that need to be answered. He questions if he would run away when in the midst of a battle. Henry joined the regiment in hopes of obtaining personal glory. After false rumor after false rumor of moving towards the battle, the 304th regiment loses hope of experiencing battle. The main plot and conflict is introduced when Henry encounters his first battle: the struggle to run for his life or stay and fight until death. During his first battle, fear grips him, but he cannot flee because he is boxed in both left and right. After they push the confederate soldiers back, they are attacked soon yet again and this time Henry runs for it. When he finally stops, he tries to justify his actions by stating that the soldiers are stupid for fighting a lost battle. He comes across a group of soldiers with wounds and envies their “red badge of courage”. After hearing how generals and higher ranked officials talk about his regiment, he becomes enraged, furious. This is the turning point of the story, because he makes something of himself from then on. Henry Fleming chooses to redeem himself in battle by becoming one of the best in the 304th regiment. The climax of the novel

Henry sacrificed his romantic ideas of war to become a good soldier. When Henry enlists, he imagines glorious battles and being a war hero. “His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds.” (p. 4) However, in his first battle, war isn't the noble act he envisioned. He watches numerous people he knows die horrible deaths and runs away out of fear. “On his face was the horror of those things which he imagined...He ran like a blind man.”(p. 46) The scenes that he witnesses are so horrific, that it leads to him being unable to focus on anything, even running from those sites. After running, Henry realizes that he isn't going to be a war hero. It is this realization that allows Henry to become a good soldier. In his next battle, Henry forgets about himself and fights as a part of a group. “He suddenly lost concern for himself...He was welded into a common personality that was dominated by a single desire.”(p. 38) He becomes such a good soldier that his commander tells him “‘...if I had ten thousand wild cats like you I could tear the stomach outa this war in less’n a week!’”(p. 111). Sacrificing the idea that he is going to be a war hero is what allows Henry to become

Throughout the book Henry is transforming due to the fact that he is afraid of what will happen while fighting in the war, and his other fear of what will happen if he doesn't."Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get killed directly and end his troubles.” This quote indicates that Henry was so petrified of the war that he thought being killed would be more pleasurable than having to withstand battle. Also it gives a deeper meaning that Henry did not want to hurt people or see people hurting one another like wild animals. One can see how Henry’s transformation evolves throughout the book, and in the end he becomes knowledgeable war-weary man. “So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover tranquility, and it was as if no plowshares were not. Scars faded as flowers." It implicitly states that Henry is not that immature war hungry boy anymore, but he is a man of wisdom. At the end of the quote the line “Scars faded into flowers” truly is a beautiful way of saying that Henry has learned from his mistakes, and that good came even out of the worst of things. Ultimately the protagonist is a great embodiment of how one can change into someone so weary and stubborn into someone so strong and

He matures because he sees lots of things that are not good yet he kept fighting. Had to push through the hard time in war because that was the only way he could get through it. Henry had to be a hero for himself and for his fellow soldiers. An example of him maturing is when he saw the dead man. “Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants.” (Crane, 35). It may have been a very disturbing sight for him to see, he just had to be brave and to keep moving. He could not let that stop him. He was a hero because he could of ran away and not look back, he did not though. Henry became a hero as the book went on, even though some may

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

Throughout the entire story, Henry really does grow as a character. He show's not only maturity, but heroism as well. In Henry's first battle, he really nails it. He snaps right into the fact that it is time to fight. And that he needs to stand up and really prove that he can do this. And that's exactly what Henry does. He get's through his first battle. But his second one wasn't so great. In the second battle, Henry did end up running away from the battle. But, what Henry didn't understand was that it was okay to do that. He doesn't realize that it is okay to be afraid in a situation of

“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.

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.