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What Does Henry Fleming Symbolize In The Red Badge Of Courage

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In The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Henry Fleming is the main character in the novel. Henry is a young boy who enlisted in the Union army to fight in war. Before going into war his fears gets to him and he starts thinking if he is going to be courageous and fight or if he is going to run. Henry fights along with the other soldiers in the first battle and had a short victory. Short because then the enemy reassembled in which Henry and the other soldiers were caught off guard. A second battle had commenced even though he fought in the first one he fled from the scene when the second battle began. Having fought and won, why would Henry run from the second battle? Henry stays to fight during the first battle but leaves the second battle …show more content…

He felt that the regiment was losing or weakening and that they couldn’t handle it. He looked around to see how the others were feeling, so he didn’t think he was the only one. He runs once he sees others soldiers start to run away. “We ain’t never goin’ to stand this second banging. I didn’t come here to fight the hull damn’rebel army.” “The youth stared. Surely, he thought this impossible thing was not able to happen. He waited as if he expected the enemy to suddenly stop, apologize, and retire bowing. It was all a mistake. But the firing began somewhere on the regiment line and ripped a long in both directions.” “The words that comrades had uttered previous to the firing began to recur to him.” He saw other soldiers talk negatively and that affected what he was going to do. “He caught changing views of the ground covered with men who were all running like pursued imps and yelling”. “There was a revelation. He too threw down his gun and fled. There was no shame in his face”. “He ran like a rabbit.” “They seemed to be patting them on the back and encouraging them with words”. The other soldiers were happy about not staying and about running. In his head he made running away and being a coward okay because in his point of view it was self-preservation. If he would have died where would the army be? He didn’t want to die for nothing and pretends he was acting smart by running. He did it out of fear for survival and to save the army. His conscience was making up for the wrongs he did by covering it up with other things. It would have been different if the other soldiers didn’t put things in his head. He is young and young people usually follow others so to him it was okay to follow the soldiers that were running. Henry runs from the second battle because of the other soldiers peer pressure and influencing him to

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