The Red Badge of Courage takes place during the Civil war and begins with a soldier named Jim Conklin returning back to his regiment to inform them that they might go into battle any day now. The main character of the story Henry Fleming who was recently recruited in the 304th regiment begins to worry about how brave he really is since he has never really been in battle before. The main reason he joined the army was for the honor and glory that came after the battle but he never really analyzed what it took to gain all the glory and honor that he wanted to obtain.
The regiment marches for several days until they are finally faced with a real engagement by the enemy ( confederate soldiers). Henry is surrounded by his fellow union soldiers, so he begins to fire his gun as the other members of the regiments but ultimately he scared in the midst of battle. Eventually the union soldiers prevail over the confederate soldiers as the victors and begin to congratulate one another, shortly after Henry decides to take a nap. Henry is awaken by the sound of the confederate soldiers attacking his regiment and fear ceases him and causes him to run away from the battle. While walking across the fields Henry tries to reason with himself and convince himself that there was no way that his regiment could have won so he was right to run away and save himself, because staying would have been like committing suicide. After a while Henry encounters a commander talking to a general and overhears that his regiment was able to hold back the confederate charge. This comment further depresses Henry but he still tries to console himself by holding on to the belief that all he did was preserve himself.
Shortly following that event Henry came across a group of wounded soldiers and decided to sneak into their line as an injured. He comes in contact with a proud soldier who talks about the courage of the soldiers in the army despite the injuries that he received which includes a bloody head and a broken arm. The wounded soldier goes on to ask Henry what kind of injuries has he acquired in battle; Henry frightened by the question hurries away toward the from of the line. Surprisingly Henry finds Jim Conklin in the line badly injured from the first battle that he endured.
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...
Even though Henry never expressed his fears to Tom Wilson or Jim Conklin. the audience could tell by the expressions on his face that he was scared. While he was writing a letter to his parents he wrote about how he is going to fight for the first time and he wants to make the proud. After Henry runs away from the first battle. He feels embarrassed because he didn't have a wound.
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.
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.
At the beginning of the novel Henry is disappointed with war; he had far greater expectations of war. He wants one thing out of this experience, Glory, and he would go to any extreme to fulfill it. In battle Henry acts impulsively and is easily manipulated, he flees from battle at the sight of others running. When he realizes his cowardice, he rationalizes without end why he ran. He justifies that nature also flees at the sight of fear when he scares a squirrel to runoff.
Author Stephen Crane attended many schools through out his life, but writing came to be his profession. The Red Badge of Courage, Crane’s most successful novel, was considered one of the first forms of realistic war fiction written on the Civil War. Some critics say that the unknown battle in Chancellorsville influenced Crane to write this novel. Through out the novel Crane’s shows how Henry Fleming transformed from a cowardly teenage recruit to a hero of war. This novel proved that any soldier, whether he is a sergeant or private, can pull through at the right moment, and be seen as a hero.
In The Red Badge of Courage, readers are able to picture Henry, the main character, because of the descriptive details. Although the readers are given more information about him mentally, they are still given small details about his physical characteristics. Throughout the entire story, Henry is on a roller coaster dealing with his maturity. He is forced to mature rather quickly and because of his age he has to face many battles within himself.
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 ...
The canteen was swinging out behind him. His terror was displayed on his face as he imagined what war would be like. He ran like a blind man.” After that, comes conflict. The conflict is when Henry goes on his final battle the brigade is sent out and Henry and Wilson try to get their enemy’s flag.
Soldier’s Heart and Red Badge of Courage are works that seem to reflect off one another. The two stories have such a minor amount of difference that it can be difficult to discern between the two. On the other hand, these works have numerous similarities, which would lead one would to believe that they were made with the identical idea in mind. Overall, two works have few differences but various comparisons.
In the Red Badge of Courage, main character Henry Fleming, is faced with many obstacles and tough situations that he must deal with. Nature and the physical environment around Henry, play a big role in the decisions that he makes, the actions that he takes and the re-evaluation of lifes values he later takes.
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.
ENG 232-941WB Romanticism and Naturalism in “Huckleberry Finn” and “Red Badge of Courage” Literature has many outside influences including nature, art, and society. Throughout the books “Huckleberry Finn” and “The Red Badge of Courage,” there are examples of Romanticism and Naturalism. One thing that is present in both books is that Naturalism is more prevalent than Romanticism. Naturalism originated in France in the 19th and 20th century. Naturalism depicts the universe as cold and heartless, and one's fate is determined by heredity, society and natural forces.
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.