The Red Badge of Courage
The Red Badge of Courage, by Steven Crane, has been proclaimed one of the greatest war novels of all time. It is a story that realistically depicts the American Civil War through the eyes of Henry Fleming, an ordinary farm boy who decides to become a soldier. Henry, who is fighting for the Union, is very determined to become a hero, and the story depicts Henrys voyage from being a young coward, to a brave man. This voyage is the classic trip from innocence to experience. The soldier story, The Red Badge of Courage, was used to reflect the harsh Civil War realities. Cranes style of writing to portray these realities included the technique of symbolism. In this technique, symbols are hidden within certain objects throughout the story to help express the theme. Henry, Jim Conklin, and Wilson all symbolized a specific aspect of mankind.
Henry, Jim Conklin, and Wilson all symbolized a specific aspect of mankind. In the beginning of the story, Henry is characterized as a shy and timid boy who has been nurtured his whole life by his mother. When Henry develops the motivation to free himself from his nurturing mother and finally become a man, he decides to fight in battle. As soon as Henry enters battle, this motivation to become a man softens to a mere whisper, Henry is afraid. He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There was no shame in his face. Crane uses Henry's fear to symbolize how a true-life person would feel. Not many people can relate to a super hero who can face all fears, but they can relate to a person who shows fear, without shame, in a frightening situation. Inspiringly, Henry finally does face his fear of the harsh realties of battle. In the end, Henry has overcome his fear and shows pride towards his becoming of a man.
Another soldier who had a great impact of symbolism was Jim Conklin. To begin with, Jim Conklin's name has symbolism; his initials are J.C. just like Jesus Christ. Just like Jesus Christ, Jim was the perfect man who taught all the other soldiers to find peace, good, and inspiration inside every one of them. None of the soldiers had any grudge against Jim and visa versa. Even the death of Jim symbolizes the death of Jesus Christ. His spare figure was erect; his bloody hands were quietly at his side.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
There is not many a time when men like Stephen Crane come by and take the whole world by surprise. His ideas are not popular for thinkers at the time but very realistic and down to earth. In his time, his short stories were not very prevalent but were read by many people. Stephen Crane found it very difficult to make money off of them and in that way, was inspired to write vigorously even to the point of his death. Stephen Crane craved the attention and support of the people and so gave birth to Naturalism literature. Interestingly, Stephen Crane found his own voice when he wrote The Red Badge of Courage at just twenty years old, and became very famous for the novel. This war novel was followed by a tremendous amount of short stories that had nature as a main theme. Stephen Crane felt nature all around him and felt that, even as a child Methodist, nature is an overwhelming force that should not be meddled with. Stephen Crane’s religious upbringing and life-changing experience led him to incorporate recurring themes of nature in his short stories as seen in The Open Boat.
At the beginning, Henry Fleming has an undeveloped identity because his inexperience limits his understanding of heroism, manhood, and courage. For example, on the way to war, “The regiment was fed and caressed at station after station until the youth [Henry] had believed that he must be a hero” (Crane 13). Since he has yet to fight in war, Henry believes a hero is defined by what others think of him and not what he actually does. The most heroic thing he has done so far is enlist, but even that was with ulterior motives; he assumes fighting in the war will bring him glory, yet another object of others’ opinions. At this point, what he thinks of himself is much less important than how the public perceives him. As a result of not understanding
The Transformation of Henry Fleming in The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane's purpose in writing The Red Badge of Courage was to dictate the pressures faced by the prototypical American soldier in the Civil War. His intent was accomplished by making known the horrors and atrocities seen by Unionist Henry Fleming during the Battle of Chancellorsville, and the conflicts within himself. Among the death and repulsion of war, there exists a single refuge for the warrior--his brethren.
In chapter nine, Henry shows his brave character once again. In Paula, Henry was installed in a roadside trench. Some of the men were hungry so Henry volunteered to go and fetch some cold macaroni from the other side of the trench. The major advised him against it and said, “You better wait until the shelling is over.” Henry replied, “They want to eat.” (53) As Henry and the others came back to the dugout, shelling began and bombs burst around them. Then the blast furnace door swung open and Henry was badly injured. This incident showed his selfless courage and bravery. He did not have to do it, yet he went and got the food anyway. Henry risked his life for the others, and that is another true sign of bravery.
Symbolism is strongly represented through Kaplan’s short story. The symbols represented are the ocean, the killing of the doe and the woods. Visiting the ocean for the first time at the Jersey Shore was new for Andy. Since then she had been awfully frightened of the ocean. She believes the ocean to be a huge, vast that constantly moved, keeps shifting
According to Google, symbolism in literature is defined as the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense. Symbolism can be seen throughout media and in many pieces of literature including To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In the book, the symbol of the mockingbird represents the character Boo Radley, and how his story teaches people to not always believe what others have to say about someone without being able to prove it true for themselves.
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.
Symbolism is one of the most effective and powerful elements in writing. We see various examples of this all throughout "The Things They Carried." Symbolism enables us to tell a story one way, while all along trying to say another. I believe Tim O'Brien has achieved success in doing so in "The Things They Carried."
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.
If it was not for Stephen Crane and his visionary work than American Realism would not have taken hold of the United States during the eighteen hundreds. During the years following the Civil War America was a melting pot of many different writing styles. Many scholars argue that at this time there was still no definite American author or technique. Up to this point authors in the Americas simply copied techniques that were popular in regions of Europe. Stephen Crane came onto the scene with a very different approach to many of his contemporaries. He was a realist, and being such he described actions in a true, unadorned way that portrayed situations in the manner that they actually occurred (Kaplan). He had numerous admired pieces but his most famous work was the Red Badge of Courage (Bentley 103). In this novel he illustrates the accounts of a Union soldier named Henry Fleming. At first the writing was considered too graphic and many people did not buy the book. Eventually the American people changed their opinions and began to gravitate towards Crane’s work. The readers were fascinated by the realistic environment he creates even though he himself had never fought in a war (Bentley 103). By spreading the influence of realistic writing Crane has come to be known as the first American Realist.