Fantasies and Realities in The Red Badge Of Courage
In The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane the main character, Henry Fleming, thought he understood the war between the North and the South. However, his understanding came “from his knowledge of fairy tales and mythology”(Gibson 21). Henry thought that he was like the heroes that he read about in these stories. He soon learned that real war was very different from his imaginative expectations. Crane took Henry’s fantasies and contrasted them with the realities of the war to develop this main character into a mature person.
Henry spent his early life on a farm in Virginia. Henry’s perception of the world was shaped almost entirely by the books his mother gave him to read. After the war started, “the newspapers carried accounts of great battles, in which the North was victor. Almost every day the newspapers printed accounts of decisive victory”(Walcutt), Henry’s mother was reluctant to let her son leave home and go South to do battle against the Confederate Army. She knew that Henry’s vision of war was not what war is really like. She tried to get Henry to change his mind about joining the army, but she was unsuccessful because “tales of ‘the war in his own country’ inevitably began to move him. They many not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in them’”(Cody 122). Henry “is motivated” by his “heroic expectations of ‘great things’”(Colvert 97) as well as his keen interest and curiosity about what he views as the elements of war.
Henry thought that if one did not get a red badge of courage, then he was a coward. Henry had “battles” in his mind. “Fleming would pass into an absorptive trance in which...
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...n, IA: Perfection Learning Corporation, 1979.
Gibson, Donald B. The Red Badge of Courage: Redefining the Hero. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988.
Lowell, Amay. Introduction. The Work of Stephen Crane: “The Black Riders and Other Lines.” By Stephen Crane. Vol. VI. 1926. Rpt. in Discovering Authors. Vers 1.0. CD-ROM. Detriot: Gale, 1992.
Magill, Frank N., Magill’s Survey: American Literature Realism to 1945. California: Salem Press, Inc., 1963.
Walcutt, Charles C. Stephen Crane: Naturalist and Impressionist in his American Literary Naturalism, a Divided Stream, University of Minnesota Press. 1956. Rpt. in Discovering Authors. Vers 1.0 CD-ROM. Detriot: Gale, 1992.
Wolford, Chester L. “Stephen Crane.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Ed. Frank N. Magill. English Language Series. Vol. 2. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1991.
In The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming was drawn to enlist by his boyhood dreams. His highly romanticized notion of war was eclectic, borrowing from various classical and medieval sources. Nevertheless, his exalted, almost deified, conception of the life of a soldier at rest and in combat began to deflate before the even the ink had dried on his enlistment signature. Soon the army ceased to possess any personal characteristics Henry had once envisioned, becoming an unthinking, dispas...
The hero of The Red Badge of Courage, which was written by Stephen Crane in the late 1800s, was a young private named Henry Fleming, who was fighting for the North in the American Civil War. Like Pip, in Great Expectations, Henry was a commoner. He was new to the Army and few people knew his name. The main difference between Henry and the earlier heroes is that Henry was not born with leadership qualities or traits like bravery. In fact, in the first battle he fought, he proved himself to be a coward by running from it.
Events of crisis tend to reveal people’s true character, as well as help those people learn from the experience. Decisions people make during crises can display what kind of personality they have. In The Red Badge Of Courage by Stephen Crane, the youthful main protagonist, Henry, decides to join the army. In the beginning of the novel, Henry exhibits multiple cowardly qualities. However, through a series of battles, Henry learns more about himself and begins to become a remarkably brave soldier. Henry’s transformation from cowardice to bravery is portrayed through Henry’s change in thoughts, actions, and dialogue.
Henry is somewhat naïve, he dreams of glory, but doesn't think much of the duty that follows. Rather than a sense of patriotism, it is clear to the reader that Henry goals seem a little different, he wants praise and adulation. "On the way to Washington, the regiment was fed and caressed for station after station until the youth beloved
“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.
...n American Literature. By Henry Louis. Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 387-452. Print.
In the Historical fiction, “The Red Badge of Courage”, written by Stephen Crane; a young man try’s to find courage in himself in the time of war. After watching your commander die in war, would you stay and fight or return home and be a coward? Enlisting Himself into war Henry, to be more than the common man to prove worthyness and bravery. With the sergeant dead will Henry lead his men to victory, or withdraw his men in war. Not being the only are faced with the decision Jim and Wilson Henry’s platoons will have the same decision.
Having read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and the exploits of Greek warriors, and, as well, longing to see such, Henry enlisted into the Union army, against the wishes of his mother. Before his departure, Mrs. Fleming warned Henry, "...you must never do no shirking, child, on my account. If so be a time comes when yeh have to be kilt or do a mean thing, why, Henry, don't think of anything `cept what's right..." Henry carried with himself this counsel throughout his enlistment, resulting in his questioning himself on his bravery. As a sign of Henry's maturation, he began to analyze his character whilst marching, while receiving comments from his brethren of courage in the face of all adversity, as well as their fears ...
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.
Wolford, Chester L. "Stephen Crane." Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Ed. Frank N. Magill. English Language Series. Vol. 2. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1991
Wolford, Chester L. "Stephen Crane." Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Ed. Frank N. Magill. English Language Series. Vol. 2. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1991.
The word language is most often associated with speech, yet it is also closely related to power. While many see language as a tool of unification and empowerment, it is also used to silence others. Society gives advantages to individuals that speak the dominant language, and those who are not fluent, are victims of social pressures such as ridicule, harassment, and isolation. Language gives individuals the power to manipulate and oppress others. Oppression occurs when one group has power over another group, and use that power to manipulate. Language gives dominant groups the power to oppress minority individuals through segregation, assimilation and hierarchies.
Works Cited “American Literature 1865-1914.” Baym 1271. Baym, Nina et al. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
language can allow us to communicate an exact idea or to persuade others to one
Kaplan, Amy. “The Spectacle of War in Crane’s Revision of History”. Bloom, Harold ED. New