War is an experience that many would consider brutal, horrific, and even inhumane. It is however, a part of the fabric of humanity. It has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen as long as there are humans on Earth. In Stephen Crane’s novel, The Red Badge of Courage, he depicts the time of the Civil War through the eyes of a young new soldier named Henry. Crane uses masterful imagery and figurative language to stimulate the reader’s imagination, but also to engage their mind as they envision the intensity of war and picture the reality of the circumstances. In order to do this, Crane portrays a variety of tones throughout the book, namely: paranoia, desperation, and intensity. These tones follow Henry as he follows the path of a soldier.
After Henry enlists in the army, he is afraid of what the future will hold, and is unsure of whether his strength will stay with him as fighting erupts, specifically, Henry is cynical of the soldiers who seem to be excited for war. Crane uses such elements of figurative language as metaphors to create a paranoid tone as Henry tries to find his character amidst the impersonal environment of war. “His emotions made him feel strange in the presence of men who talked excitedly of a prospective battle as of a drama they were about to witness, with nothing but eagerness and curiosity apparent in their faces. It was often that he suspected them to be liars. He did not pass such thoughts without severe condemnation of himself….He was convicted by himself of many shameful crimes against the gods of traditions.” (9-10). Henry feels threatened by the army he has enlisted in. He is not sure of how he must act or, more importantly, who he must be when faced with the insurmountable odds...
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By using such literary elements as imagery and figurative language, Crane creates such tones as anxiety, exasperation, and ferocity as Henry learns what it is like to be a warrior. These tones serve to portray Crane’s image of war, but are expressed in such a way that they are not taken as fantasies of epic proportions, but rather a piece of what makes war such a deplorable experience. Crane is an artisan that shapes the image of war using similes, metaphors, and symbolism as the structure, and bringing it to life with descriptive language and color. The end result is like Picasso’s Guernica; a picture of civil war that is riddled with abstract and dark undertones, while portraying the realistic horrors of the battlefield.
Works Cited
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1990. Print
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.
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
He struggled to fight and ran away. He felt ashamed of himself and wanted to change. He saw what JIm did and how he put all his effort and life into this war. Henry destroyed his guilt and lead his regiment into victory. He changed from cowardice and fear to courage, humility, and wisdom. My emotional response was motivational because Henry was afraid and his fear almost consumed him but, he rose up and developed the courage to be victorious.
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.
Vivid imagery is one way with which writers protest war. Crane uses imagery to glorify, and shortly thereafter demean and undercut war, through the use of imagery, by placing positive and negative images of war close to eachother. “Blazing flag of the regiment,” and “the great battle God,” are placed before “A field where a thousand corpses lie.” (A) These lines’ purposes are to put images into the reader’s head, of how great war may appear, and then displaying that there are too many casualties involved with it. In Dulce Et Decorum Est, a man is described dyin...
“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”
The Red Badge of Courage is not a war novel. It is a novel about life. This novel illustrates the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Stephen Crane uses the war as a comparison to everyday life. He is semi-saying that life is like a war. It is a struggle of warriors—the every day people—against the odds. In these battles of everyday life, people can change. In The Red Badge of Courage, the main character, Henry Fleming, undergoes a character change that shows how people must overcome their fears and the invisible barriers that hold them back from being the best people—warriors, in the sense that life is war—they can be. Henry has a character change that represents how all humans have general sense of fear of the unknown that must be overcome.
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...
113-117. Modern Critical Interpretations: Stephan Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Cody, Edwin H. Stephen Crane. Revised Edition.
Henry Fleming’s growth is demonstrated after the first battle when he becomes mentally stronger and surmounts his fear of being a coward. Henry Fleming is a romantic dreamer, inspired by visions of a chivalric type of warfare in which he becomes a mighty hero (Solomon). He reads of “marches, sieges, conflicts, and longed to see it all. (Crane, 4)” He never knows where he is going or what is expected of him until the order comes. As a “fresh fish” (Crane, 9), Henry must prove to the veterans and himself that he is not a coward although he is not sure how he will react in real combat. Henry does not have much self-confidence in himself and contains many of his fears in terror of being ridiculed. His insecurity causes him to be in the state of mental agony until he can prove that he is not a coward in the heat of the battlefield. In the first battle, Henry believes he has passed his test and is in an ecstasy of self-satisfaction. “So it was all over at last! The supreme trial had been passed. The red, formidable difficulties of war had been vanquished. (Crane, 45).” His delight with his actions can be seen when he begins to chat with his companions. There was a little flower of confidence growing within ...
There are many characteristics in Crane’s novel that would more readily fit within the category of realism: the ordinariness of his characters, the use of dialect, the portrayal of protagonist Henry Fleming as a complex individual, the description of nature as disinterested in human affairs, and the positive ending of the story. Realism, often described as "slice of life" or "photographic" writing, attempts to portray life exactly as it is, without twisting it or reworking it to fit it into preconceived notions of what is appropriate or what is aesthetically pleasing. In this book, Crane relies on neither the oversimplified rationalism of classicist literature nor the emotional idealism of romantic prose. Instead, he offers realistic, believable characters with average abilities. The soldiers are presented neither as epic heroes nor as bloodthirsty killers; rather, their most noticeable trait is their overwhelming normalcy. The soldiers of Henry’s regiment curse, fight, and argue just like normal people. This down-to-earth, gritty, everyday style is characteristic of realism. A particular convention used by Crane in convincing the reader of his characters’ existence is dialect. The distinctive speech of the soldiers enhances the photographic effect of the novel, lending it authenticity. Another distinctive trait of realism is complexity of character – a trait readily evident in Henry Fleming. As he switches between cowardice and heroism, compassion and contempt, and optimism and pessimism, the reader observes that he is more than just a stereotype. He is a person with fears, hopes, dreams, and foibles.
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.
The Red Badge of Courage uses both color imagery and color symbols. While Crane uses color to describe, he also allows it to stand for whole concepts. Gray, for example, describes the 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 Fleming's mental visions of battle. In the process, it gains a symbolic meaning which Crane will put to an icon like the "red badge of courage" (110, Penguin ed., 1983). Crane uses color in his descriptions of the physical and the metaphysical and allows color to take on meanings ranging from the literal to the figurative.
Kaplan, Amy. “The Spectacle of War in Crane’s Revision of History”. Bloom, Harold ED. New