Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly. In Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He is faced with the hard reality of war and this forces him to readjust his romantic beliefs about war. Through the novel, the reader can trace the growth and development of Henry through these four stages: (1) romanticizing war and the heroic role each soldier plays, (2) facing the realities of war, (3) lying to himself to maintain his self-importance, and (4) realistic awareness of his abilities and place in life. Through Henry’s experiences in his path to self-discovery, he is strongly affected by events that help shape his ideology of war, death, courage, and manhood. The romantic ideologies will be replaced with a more realistic representation. When Henry decides to go off to war, he has a romantic image of what the war will be like. He makes references to the great battles of the Greeks, and hopes that his own battles will be as heroic. Henry had “long despaired of witnessing a Greek-like struggle” (Crane, 3). His motivation to fight comes from his will to become a hero. He believes that he will do great things on the battlefield because that is his destiny, and hopes to gain recognition for his achievements. When he tells his mother that he will be going to war, she doubts his motivation and encourages him to keep clean socks (Crane,5)! Clearly, she was treating him like a child, not a man. She is a reminder that Henry begins his journey to war as a youth trying to find himself. Henry begins to question his courage at the time he finds out that his regiment will commence with the drills and move in to attack the enemy. Ho... ... middle of paper ... ... nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood” (Crane, 128). He had matured, yet the forces that controlled him were still beyond his control. He felt the need to be socially accepted and stay in control of how others perceived him. Through the four stages of growth and development that Henry overcame, the glorious dreams that he once had were replaced by the more realistic horrors of war. Crane represents courage as an instinct, similar to cowardice. Only when instinct dictates courage, one can be heroic. Along Henry’s struggle to become self-aware, he has discovered new ideologies about war, death, courage, and manhood. He has a realistic image of war, an indifference to death, an instinctive courage, and a quiet manhood. Works Cited Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. New York, New York: Signet Classic from Penguin Putnam Inc., 1997.
Henry is worried about how he will do in this first battle. He isn't. sure if he will run or not, and he is scared that he might. He doesn't. want to look like a fool and run, but he is also scared of getting killed.
“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.
Chapter 1 Analysis: Stephen Crane begins a new course of realism in The Red Badge of Courage. Many critics point to him as one of the first American authors of a modern style, and The Red Badge as a fine example of this. The novel is built on a coming-of-age theme, and many of its descriptive elements, such as its concentration on nature and character's actions, are in the realist style, most popularized in America by William Dean Howells and Frank Norris. However, Crane's style in this book has some slight differences from earlier styles. The narrator does not name the characters.
The Effects of War on a Union Soldier in The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane traces the effects of war on a Union soldier, Henry Fleming, from his dreams of soldiering to his actual enlistment. The novel also takes one through several battles of the Civil War. Henry Fleming was not happy with his boring life on the farm. He wants to become a hero in war and have girls loving him for his glorious achievements in battle. He would also like to prove that he is a man and can take care of himself.
Crane tries to dispel the link between heroism and actual real-life warfare by bringing Henry, an ignorant youth immersed in idealized notions of glory fame and honour, to a clearer and more sombre view of the world and himself.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Stephan Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. New Yourk: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Henry Fleming, the protagonist of this book, is persuaded to join the Union Army during the era of the American Civil War. Even though Henry wants to be a hero; to war, he is just a number. Henry romanticizes about dying a glorified death as a hero, but he lacks bravery and maturity.
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...
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.
In society, more often in youths, we see human's narcissistic and primal instincts to seek lionization, respect from their peers, and commemoration. In The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, these same humane flaws are paralleled through the character Henry Fleming; most notably this is apparent through character motivation, plot, mood, and setting. The plot: Henry Fleming a teenage boy with a misguided, romantic view of war decides to enlist in the Union army; his journey is one of self-discovery. War brings out Henry’s worst most animalistic traits
As the violence of war begins to subside, the psychological terrors begins to arise. The Youth's newfound fear of battle was a result of doubt within himself in correspondence with his capability to fight with honor and glory and still make it out of battle alive. Henry's emotions began to deviate from a yearning for glory and confidence, to fear, to depression, to anger and to exhilaration. The rapid change in the youths emotions causes Henry to go crazy with reasoning, ultimately altering the way he perceives not only war but the world as a whole. At the very beginning of the Red Badge of Courage, Henry was ready to launch into the glorified antics of war; after enlisting Henry and a few other head into town where the glorified antics that the youth desires begin. "the youth believed that he must be a hero . . . As he basked in the smiles of the girls and was patted and complimented by the old men, he had felt
Henry Flemming is an incredibly realistically portrayed character, in the book The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, who voluntarily enlists in the army for the Civil War. This book takes the reader on a journey through Henry’s experiences with the war itself – enlisting, marching, preparing for battle, fighting, healing, and more fighting. The author uses Henry Flemming – the myths he has about what it is like to serve in the army, what strength it takes to survive a battle, and how a person’s morals playout on the battlefield – to properly confront and debunk these myths about what warfare life was like during the Civil War. The 304th regiment, the company Henry joined up with, is able to become fully transformed from a simple group
Throughout the early chapters, Henry is questioning himself, wondering if he can really be a brave soldier, wondering if he is going to be able to survive. Crane shows imagery with just about every sentence he writes. The quote, “He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There was no shame in his face. He ran like a rabbit” (Crane 30), shows how he ran from the war to think about his own safety, not about the other men around him fighting for their lives. Fear is shown in the previous quote just about everywhere. Henry runs away from his fear in fighting during the war but later realizes that he is ashamed of what he does. So Crane shows Henry trying to be stealthy about it all and not acting like he ran, but convincing himself that he ran for the better. In another quote, the figurative language shown by similes, and metaphors, give another example of fear. “To the youth it was an onslaught of redoubtable dragons. He became like the man who lost his legs at the approach of the r...
Once in battle, Crane harnesses psychological realism to grant readers a look into the reality of war. Following the first attack in Henry’s first battle*, the narrator describes Henry felt like a “pestered animal, a well-meaning cow worried by dogs” and as a “babe being smothered attack the deadly blankets” (16)*. The manner in which Crane writes of the battle is deliberate for, as Kevin Hayes explains, “the Red Badge is deliberately narrow in scope” (Hayes 1). Kevin J.* Hayes* is another* critique of Red Badge*, as critiques Crane as if he had chosen to turn Red Badge into a film. *** Hayes notes, “Whereas* Civil War panoramas strived for epic effects,” Crane chose to write Red Badge through the eyes of a lowly private and highlight the realism of battle. Crane purposefully brings readers into the helm* of battle behind the eyes of Henry. Cranes usage of third person* limited is as Hayes describes “articulates Henry’s thoughts and verbalizes his mental imagery” as Henry’s thoughts are told to the reader (2). Through the third person limited point of view, readers can see Henry imagines war “as a spectator, not a participant”
In the forest, Henry begins to think about those things that are important to him. Even more powerful in his mind is the fact that all he wanted to be was a hero and he ran from the opportunity. His emotional conflict becomes so strong and Crane makes the reader so involved that the reader begins to sense the pain and suffering that Henry is dealing with inside. Even more powerful then all of Henrys thoughts of fears though, was his fear of being made fun of by the other soldiers.