The novel takes place during a battle over the period of four days in Virginia, during the American Civil War. Main Characters: 1.) Henry Fleming – Henry Fleming, the main character, is a soldier who faces the realities of war, by clashing thoughts of death. 2.) The Tall Soldier (Jim Conklin) – Jim Conklin, known as “The Tall Soldier,” is a mature and an experienced confident soldier who is befriended by Henry Fleming. 3.) The Loud Soldier (Wilson) – Wilson, “The Loud Soldier,” is an independent who likes to do things his way, no matter if he is wrong, to start arguments and fights. 4.) The Lieutenant (LT. Hasbrouck) – LT. Hasbrouck is the lieutenant of Henry’s army, who represents what confidence is, by boldly leading his company into battle. 5.) The Tattered Soldier – The Tattered Soldier is a soldier who is …show more content…
thought of by Henry as a clingy soldier who talks to much. Plot: The beginning of The Red Badge of Courage begins when the reader meets the main character, Henry Fleming. After wanting to be a soldier for so long, he finally decides to enlist himself. With his company, the soldiers are waiting to go into battle. Henry is afraid that he would run away. The army has been waiting, but no battle has occurred. During this time, Henry learns that he is with Jim Conklin, whom he knew for some time, and Wilson, “The Loud Soldier.” Before battle, Wilson was afraid that he would die, giving letters to Henry to deliver to Wilson’s family if he died during the war. Henry fishes around if anyone is as scared as Henry is about death, none show any fear. The battle begins and Henry’s fear of death gets the better of him. He runs away from the field and retreats for a while. He doesn’t stop, and when he does, he hears the battle. Many soldiers came back his direction wounded from the front line, looking for medics. One of the men was “a tattered soldier.” Henry learns about what happens, and the soldier wants to know where his wound was, as he was not on the front line.
Henry leaves the conversation disappearing into a crowd. In the crowd, Henry sees his friend and comrade, Jim Conklin. He suddenly died and Henry was quite sad about his dead. The tattered soldier asked about his wound, but once again, Henry ignored him. Henry runs away again is suddenly hit by another man who was tired and injured. Henry finally returns to his own regiment. Upon return, Wilson wants his letters back, as he survived. Another battle begins, Henry decided to stay and not flee due to guilt. He fights well and becomes a leading soldier. He is complimented as a, “wildcat,” by his lieutenant. With the lieutenant, Henry leads the charge with his company into battle. Instead of his old self, being afraid of death, he is wild and proofing himself. Wilson and Henry even pick up the fallen Union flag. After the battle, Henry is congratulated by his comrades in arms. He helped win the one of many battles. Henry has accepted what he did and decided he was a man who had “the red badge of
courage.” Personal Reflections: 1.) One thing that ended up surprising me is house Henry developed throughout the novel. At the beginning, Henry was a soldier who was timid and afraid of war. By the end of the novel, Henry became a leading role is company, being nicknamed “wildcat” by his lieutenant. He represented courage and confidence that every soldier should have. 2.) One question I would ask the author would be why he created a story about the American revolutionary war, and about a man who was afraid of death. Significance of the Title: I believe the author chose The Red Badge of Courage as the title because it is a metaphor. I think the author chose this title because it relates to what Henry was afraid of, but at the same time, he wanted the most. It relates to the book because the red badge of courage is a metaphor for which represents great courage in battle.
Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier is a work notable not only for its vivid and uncompromising account of his experience as a member of the Wehrmacht in World War II, but also for its subtle and incisive commentary about the very nature of war itself. What is perhaps most intriguing about Sajer’s novel is his treatment of the supposedly “universal” virtues present within war such as professionalism, patriotism, camaraderie, and self-sacrifice. Sajer introduces a break between how war is thought about in the abstract and how it has actually been conducted historically.
The book begins with an in-depth explanation of what happened in the latter stages of the Civil War. Major battles like Sayler’s Creek, High Bridge and Richmond are described through detailed language. For instance, at High Bridge, “Each man wages his own individual battle with a ferocity only a life-and-death situation can bring. Bullets pierce eyes. Screams and curses fill the air. The grassy plain runs blood red.” (page 61). All of these iconic Civil War battles led up to the Confederate surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse and the inescapable rebuilding of a new nation Abraham Lincoln had to deal with. Next, John Wilkes Booth is introduced and his pro-Confederate motives are made clear. His conspiracy to kill the president is described and his co-conspirators like Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt who also attempted to kill Secretary of State Seward a...
The book opens with a Confederate spy as he made his way through the Union lines on the night of June 29, 1863 toward Confederate General Robert E. Lee bearing news of the Army of the Potomac as they crossed paths in the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The days after follow the various Union and Confederate regiments as they regained their wits about them after the previous Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Marching onward toward Gettysburg, where the most deciding battle of the Civil War would take place.
No one knew he ran so he still had his pride and After that, his attitude changed and he began fighting with no fear. Tom Wilson is another young soldier in the 304th regiment who is called. the loud scream of soldiers. When he is in the tent talking to Henry and Conklin he talks about how he will not run and take on the whole army by himself. When he is in the first battle he tries to run but is caught by an officer.
It appears that the war in Vietnam has still gotten into Henry. The war may be over in reality but in his mind it is still going on. This can explain all the agitations and discomfort he has such as not being able to sit still. Based on research, what Henry was experiencing was shellshock from the battlefield from the many soldiers being killed to t...
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...
Billy was not dressed as a soldier should be, lacking a helmet, an overcoat, a weapon, and boots. In fact, “He didn’t look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo” (33). Much like other children sent into the war, Billy was not prepared for what he would face. To other soldiers he seems laughable, a joke on the face of the entire army, but all other soldiers are as unprepared as Billy. Billy’s comical appearance acts as a symbol of his placement in the war; in other words, a scrawny, unprepared soldier is absurd during wartime.
In his book, My Fellow Soldiers, Andrew Carroll tells the story of World War I through the eyes of the American participants. He uses quotes, personal letters and diaries, from an array of characters, to depict a day in the life of a WWI warrior. Though, he narrows his focus on the untold story of General John J. Pershing, a US army leader. He uniquely talks about the General's vulnerable and emotional side. "Pershing was notoriously strong-willed, to the point of seeming cold, rigid, and humorless, almost more machine than man" (p.XVIII). Pershing is commonly recognized for his accomplishments during the war and remembered for his sternness. He was "…especially unforgiving when it came to matters of discipline" (p. XVIII). Nicknamed "Black Jack" due to his mercilessness towards his soldiers, in this book, Pershing is portrayed as a General with much determination and devotion to his troops, family, and close friends.
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.
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
Henry is trying to tell Bates that the King is not responsible for whatever happens to a soldier at war just because he has sent him, and uses the example above to illustrate this.
Henry shows courage again in one of the last chapters we read. In the morning after a night of sleeping in a barn, Henry and Piani reunited with a group of soldiers. Suddenly two men from the battle police seize hold of Henry. Piani was led away, questioned, and then shot to death.
...in the War for Independence. He gave little reason to not believe the experiences he described, and was even careful to warn the reader that his memory may not be serving him as well in recollecting all the events. Even in his criticism of the government, he does not portray an image that would suggest he did not believe in the cause of independence, neither did he take an anti-Unites States government position. He is simply attempting to explain what happened during his time as a participant in the war, and he convincingly does so in his narrative. As he reflects upon his experiences he acknowledges the soldiers’ great sacrifice, the sacrifice of their youth, their bodies, and even their futures. While he was only a private soldier, and most of his life an ordinary citizen, Joseph Martin represents the American hero who gave his life for the cause of Independence.
takes place in the south, where at the time, slaves were newly emancipated and things are
Plot summary: Frederic Henry is an American fighting with the Italian army. He is in charge of the ambulances in the army. After taking a break in the winter, Henry comes back to his unit and the war. He has a roommate named Rinaldi, who is a surgeon and also a lieutenant. Rinaldi introduces Henry to two nurses, named Catherine Barkley and Helen Ferguson, from Great Britain. Henry and Catherine end up talking about how the war killed her fiancé. When they meet again at the British hospital, they find out their