The Red Badge of Courage marked a significant departure from the heavily idealized Civil War fiction that appeared in the decades preceding its publication. The novel's unique tone and vivid imagery propelled its author to overnight success. Rather than portraying a larger historical view of the Civil War composed of epic battles that are fueled by a clash of ideals, Crane's focus is much narrower, in that he concentrates on the individual psychology of Private Henry Fleming. The novel impressionistically records Henry's shifting psychological state as he is transformed from a naive, vainglorious youth to an experienced soldier who possesses a deeper understanding of the nature of courage and self-preservation. At the beginning of the novel, "the youth," as Henry is often referred to, possesses very romanticized notions about war and courage. As he waits encamped with his regiment, Henry frets not about death or being maimed but about whether or not he will run from battle and prove himself a coward in the eyes of his fellow soldiers. Henry's early preoccupation with "proving himself" in battle represents the naive and egoistic notions of courage and bravery that he holds early on in the story. When Henry's regiment is finally ordered to move, the youth experiences a significant change in attitude …show more content…
Having never been in battle himself, Crane demonstrates his own instincts for recording the horrors of war and the experience of individual soldiers with great accuracy. Several Civil War veterans in his own time were convinced that Crane must have been in the war. Considered his best and most powerful work, Crane proved himself to be a great talent at a very young age with his war novel, which has never been out of print. Unfortunately, he never had much of a chance to outdo himself, since he died at the age of
Though in his short life Stephen Crane was never a soldier, his novel The Red Badge of Courage was commended by Civil War veterans as well as veterans from more recent wars not only for its historical accuracy but its ability to capture the psychological evolution of those on the field of battle (Heizberg xvi). Walt Whitman, on the other hand, served as a field medic during the Civil War. He was exposed perhaps to the most gruesome aspect of the war on a daily basis: the primitive medical techniques, the wounded, the diseased, the dying and the dead. Out of his experiences grew a collection of poems, "Drum Taps" , describing the horrors he had witnessed and that America suffered. As literary artists, a wide chasm of structure and style separates Crane and Whitman. The common cultural experience, the heritage of the Civil War connects them, throwing a bridge across the darkness, allowing them, unilaterally, to dispel notions of glorious battles and heroic honorable deaths. By examining Crane's Henry Fleming and the wound dresser from 'Whitman's poem of the same name, both fundamental literary differences and essential thematic consistencies emerge.
The important conflict in The Red Badge of Courage is Henry Fleming's. fear about how he will perform in his first battle. There were three people. who expressed their ideas about their fears before the first skirmish. They Henry Fleming, Tom Wilson, and Jim Conklin.
The main character of this book is Henry Fleming, mostly referred to as The Youth or Youth. The Youth has dark, curly brown hair also; he is a young teenager and is average height when compared to the Tall Soldier. Henry is insecure because he is going through a difficult stage between being a "man" and being a "boy". Henry can't wait to get to war when he signs up but during the book Henry learns that war has a lot of affects on people emotionally and physically. Henry's flaw is that he is afraid of making himself look bad and he is worried that he is going to be a coward and run away from battle. Henry really wants to be a "man" and be courageous. I once heard a swim coach give an extremely good definition of courage. He said "To me courage is not to be unafraid but it is to be afraid but one does it anyways and doesn't worry about being afraid. I think Henry thought of courageous as fearless and that is also part of his flaw.
For example, Henry’s actions in the second battle convey his initial cowardice. In response to the enemy coming back to fight, Henry “ran like blind man” (Crane 57). Henry’s actions illustrate his cowardice since he is afraid to stay and fight and flees instead. However, as Henry matures throughout the novel, he learns to control his fears and show courage through his fighting. For instance, in the battle after Henry rejoins the regiment, Henry “had not deemed it possible that his army could that day succeed, and from this he felt the ability to fight harder” (Crane 133). Henry portrays bravery in this battle, since he still fights with all of his strength, when he believes the enemy would win. Henry’s change from cowardice to bravery is conveyed through his act of running away from battle, to fighting courageously in
In the Red Badge of Courage, the protagonist Henry, is a young boy who yearns to be a Great War hero, even though he has never experienced war himself. Anxious for battle, Henry wonders if he truly is courageous, and stories of soldiers running make him uncomfortable. He struggles with his fantasies of courage and glory, and the truth that he is about to experience. He ends up running away in his second battle. Henry is somewhat nave, he dreams of glory, but doesn't think much of the duty that follows.
“The Red Badge of Courage” was written by Stephen Crane in 1985 as a fictional tale of a soldier of the Civil War. With its accurate depictions, readers were led to believe that Crane had at one time been a soldier. This was however not the case. Crane has a unique way of using themes and symbols in “The Red badge of Courage” to relay a very realistic portrayal of war.
The descriptions of war that he read in magazines were usually dry and too matter-of-fact. He also believed that they lacked connection to the real emotions that are brought about by warfare; “dates and locations of battles cannot even begin to reproduce the essence of combat” (“Naturalism”). Due to his yearning to learn more and provide a realistic representation of war, Crane researched many aspects of the battlefield and often referred to scenes he wrote about as “skirmishes on the football field” (“Biography of Stephen Crane”). Ultimately, Crane “saw the opportunity to craft the first novel that explored warfare from the point of view of the psyche” and he “attempt[ed] to show that humans were not designed to commit such atrocities on each other”
Crane wrote this story in first person through the eyes of one soldier. He created a new sense of realism by doing this and by avoiding any romanticism or anything artificial, which hadn’t really been done before.
Henry's final step in maturation was finally made through the sacrifice of his companions, and their pressuring him to lead the charge. The reaction of one soldier to another is the basis of war, as camaraderie is the methodology by which wars are won. Henry gave witness to the horrors of war, the atrocities of battle, the deaths of his friends, and later a life of victory. The ultimate transformation in Henry's character leading to a mature temperament was found by finding himself in the confusion of war and companionship.
Him obtaining a wound courageously is what made them respect Henry, and he knew that if they were aware that it was all an accident between regiment soldiers, he would no longer be viewed as a hero. What scared Henry was dying and being forgotten or dying a death not worthy of being heroic. He wanted to be known for his sacrifice and prove to the world that his individual life was worth celebration, and dying a significant death or being wounded in a courageous war effort was the way to do that, in Henry's eyes. In the same way that death needed to be purposeful, it needed to have substance in order to create Henry into a hero. "He finally concluded that the only way to prove himself was to go into the blaze, and then figuratively to watch his legs to discover their merits and faults ... To gain it, he must have blaze, blood, and danger, even as a chemist requires this, that, and the other" (Crane 115). Like a chemist needs to meet certain requirements in order to be a chemist, Henry knew that in order to be the hero he always wanted to be, his death must be filled with the necessary aspects, such as a blazing fire, blood, and danger. Without risk, his death could not have been heroic. Henry experienced many dead corpses and bloody wounds and saw the ways the world simply passed over them and
At the beginning of the novel, Henry is merely a youth, a young boy. He goes into war and quickly realizes he is afraid, and he is not the brave-hearted man he thought he was. It takes Henry time to mature and gain courage, but he fights, and he wins. It is here, with this newfound sense of courage, that he becomes a man. Henry goes from being afraid he will run from battle to becoming the hero of the battle, and fighting with every ounce of courage
In the first part of the novel, Henry is a youth that is very inexperienced. His motives were impure. He was a very selfish and self-serving character. He enters the war not for the basis of serving his country, but for the attainment of glory and prestige. Henry wants to be a hero. This represents the natural human characteristic of selfishness. Humans have a want and a need to satisfy themselves. This was Henry's main motive throughout the first part of the novel. On more than one occasion Henry is resolved to that natural selfishness of human beings. After Henry realizes that the attainment of glory and heroism has a price on it. That price is by wounds or worse yet, death. Henry then becomes self-serving in the fact that he wants to survive for himself, not the Union army. There is many a time when Henry wants to justify his natural fear of death. He is at a point where he is questioning deserting the battle; in order to justify this, he asks Jim, the tall soldier, if he would run. Jim declared that he'd thought about it. Surely, thought Henry, if his companion ran, it would be alright if he himself ran. During the battle, when Henry actually did take flight, he justified this selfish deed—selfish in the fact that it did not help his regiment hold the Rebs—by natural instinct. He proclaimed to himself that if a squirrel took flight when a rock was thrown at it, it was alright that he ran when his life was on the line.
The world of Stephen Crane's fiction is a cruel, lonely place. Man's environment shows no sympathy or concern for man; in the midst of a battle in The Red Badge of Courage "Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment" (89). Crane frequently anthropomorphizes the natural world and turns it into an agent actively working against the survival of man. From the beginning of "The Open Boat" the waves are seen as "wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall" (225) as if the waves themselves had murderous intent. During battle in The Red Badge of Courage the trees of the forest stretched out before Henry and "forbade him to pass. After its previous hostility this new resistance of the forest filled him with a fine bitterness" (104). More omnipresent than the mortal sense of opposition to nature, however, is the mortal sense of opposition to other men. Crane portrays the Darwinian struggle of men as forcing one man against another, not only for the preservation of one's life, but also the preservation of one's sense of self-worth. Henry finds hope for escape from this condition in the traditional notion that "man becomes another thing in a battle"‹more selfless and connected to his comrades (73). But the few moments in Crane's stories where individuals rise above self-preservation are not the typically heroicized moments of battle. Crane revises the sense of the heroic by allowing selfishness to persist through battle. Only when his characters are faced with the absolute helplessness of another human do they rise above themselves. In these grim situations the characters are reminded of their more fundamental opp...
Cowardice is defined as a lack of bravery, but can have several other meanings according to different people. In the story Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Henry shows traits of cowardice in a multitude of ways during his experiences at war. Henry joined the army with the hope of becoming a hero, although no sign of heroism is shown throughout the story. Fleming's high expectations for himself do not make up for his actions in Red Badge of Courage.
The Red Badge of Courage, by it’s very title, is infested with color imagery and color symbols. While Crane uses color to describe, he also allows it to stand for whole concepts. Gray, for example, describes both the literal image of a dead soldier and Henry Fleming’s vision of the sleeping soldiers as corpses and comes to stand for the idea of death. In the same way, red describes both the soldiers’ physical wounds and Henry’s mental vision of battle. In the process, it gains a symbolic meaning which Crane will put an icon like the ‘red badge of courage’. Stephen Crane uses color in his descriptions of the physical and the non-physical and allows color to take on meanings ranging from the literal to the figurative.