Internal Conflict In The Red Badge Of Courage

The Power of Courage Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage is a novel about a youth called Henry Fleming, and is based during the Civil War. When young Henry joined the army and prepared for his first battle , he thought of himself as a coward. When he was marching with the regiment one day they stumbled upon a dead soldier’s body, That made him fear the battle and wonder if he had enough courage to fight. He started to run with “fear and dignity” according to him. When Henry saw the enemy approaching he stood there as if they were to stop and retreat. He saw one of the soldiers fixing his rifle and according to Henry the soldier looked very courageous when all of a sudden the soldier got his rifle and started running away. He found himself

Henry has the doubt that maybe when he goes into battle he might run away because he does not have enough courage. For example when the author says “No one seemed to be wrestling with such a terrific personal problem. He was a mental outcast” (Crane 19). The author is trying to express how Henry is a “mental outcast” by implementing that no one was going through the self-doubt situation that Henry was going through. Another example of how Henry is having internal conflicts is how Crane explains how Henry thinks he might flee during the battle because of his lack of courage: “There was a more serious problem. He lay in his bunk pondering upon it. He tried to mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from a battle” (Crane 8). This quote perfectly explains what Crane means when he says the Henry was a “mental outcast”. Crane’s diction makes this the perfect sentence because it explains what Henry’s main fear was. This makes Henry a very low self esteem kind of person which has major internal conflicts and contradicts himself the majority of the time and makes for the perfect example of internal conflict by doubting on

For instance when Crane describes Henry as a young man who does not quite know what he really wants to, and when he finally decides, he encounters more problems. One of them being his fear of going into battle because he thinks he might run the risk of dying. But then, towards the end of the novel Crane decides to make Henry feel sure and proud of himself for having the courage of going into battle and not running away like he once did. For instance when Crane mentions:

With this conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point. He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man. So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. (Crane 148)

All in all The Red Badge of Courage contains a perfect illustration of internal conflict, symbolism, and characterization. All of this devices help teach the readers that courage does not mean a lack of fear, true courage means having the guts to confront the fear. Stephen Crane does a beautiful job of explaining and breaking down the facts in how Henry started being a character which had deep fear and finished being a “man of courage” by having the guts to go into battle even