Great fear can sometimes turn into great courage and self-confidence. Stephen Crane describes this fact exceptionally well in his novel The Red Badge of Courage. In the beginning of Crane’s novel Henry has a fear of the unknown along with many other fears. He is going into battle and he has not been tested in such a way before. Henry’s courage was eventually gained from experience and from confidence in himself and his regiment. The Red Badge of Courage demonstrates that courage cannot be defined as taking action without fear, but rather to be courageous in the face of one's fears. This is obvious when Henry acts like a coward in his first battle, in his retreat back to camp, and fights courageously in his last battle at Chancellorsville.
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his first battle, Henry wants to be a hero but he is deathly afraid of the advancing Confederate forces. In The Red Badge of Courage the Narrator mentions “The battle reflection that shone for an instant in the faces on the mad current made the youth feel that the forceful hands of heaven would not have been able to have held him in place if he could have gotten intelligent control of his legs. (Crane 23)” This quote shows that Henry has shown how much of a coward he is by saying that nothing could have stopped him from disserting his fellow soldiers and his pride. Also the Narrator states that, “He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There was no shame in his face. He ran like a rabbit.” (Crane 22) Henry’s wondering and speculation about whether or not he will run when faced with battle is decided in this moment. After thinking that he and his fellow Union soldiers have defeated the confederate attack, he is distressed when the Confederate force charge at them once more. Henry exaggerates their fighting to the point that they no longer seem human they are "machines of steel" and "redoubtable dragons" causing him to flee in fear. “Henry went from dreaming about his time in battle and all the heroic actions he will do. His first day he ran.”(Woodress) This exemplifies that the main character Henry Fleming knows little about himself and how he is going to fight in his first battle. Henry then retreats back to the Union camp to ponder on how he fought that day. In Henry’s retreat back to the Union camp, Henry starts to realize that being a coward is a natural instinct and that to become a hero he must overcome his fear of death and war. “He has acted in a cowardly manner, and all his fellow soldiers will know. As he wanders through the woods behind the battlefield towards the Union base camp, he begins to make excuses for his actions. (Crane 40)” Here is when Henry first realizes that disserting his fellow comrades is his biggest mistake and now he has to make a really good excuse to not get punished for his actions. Critics have said “Henry reflected on his performance as a soldier. He felt a large amount of guilt about his cowardly retreat the previous day.”(Campbell 86) This shows that the readers can feel the sense that Henry now realizes that desertion was not going to make him the hero that he set out to be but instead make him angry and ready to fight courageously the next day. Stephen Crane also mentions that “The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the law, he said. Nature had given him a sign. The squirrel, immediately upon recognizing danger, had taken to his legs without ado. He did not stand stolidly baring his furry belly to the missile, and die with an upward glance at the sympathetic heavens. On the contrary, he had fled as fast as his legs could carry him; and he was but an ordinary squirrel.” (Crane 47)Here Henry realizes that being afraid of something is a natural instinct and that everyone and everything is afraid of something but they all have to face their fears to survive. Ultimately Henry prepares for another day at battle against the Confederates in hopes of being able to fight courageously to make up for disserting his fellow comrades the previous day. Henry, in his last battle at Chancellorsville, fights like the courageous hero he wanted to be by getting over his fear of war and death.
This is witnessed when the Critics state “He achieves an epiphany, as demonstrated in his instinctive to grab the Union flag and run with it resolutely to join his men in battle. The conclusion, thus, shows Henry as a man, aware of his maturity, his soul changed.”(Napierkowski 257) Henry shows his courage and his bravery by grabbing the Union flag a continue marching alongside his comrades while marching towards the hostile enemy just across the field (in the Civil war if you were holding the flag you were usually the biggest target on the battlefield). “It was revealed to him that he had been a barbarian, a beast. He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion. Regarding it, he saw that it was fine, wild, and in some ways easy. He had a tremendous figure, no doubt. By this struggle he had overcome obstacles which he had admitted to be mountains. They had fallen like paper peaks, and he was now what he called a hero.”(Crane 97). Henry now sees the transformation of himself from the beginning when he retreated back to now courageously fighting the enemy head on. In Addition, the reader can tell a strong difference between boyish Henry to now somewhat of man Henry has become on the battlefield, thus, Henry has overcame his fear and became the hero he always wanted to
be. In Stephen Crane’s, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is faced with confronting the Rebel army and retreats back to camp with fear where he thinks about his decision and prepares to fight the next day. Henry fought in the end of the novel in the face of his fear and has now changed into a more courageous and confident person from this experience. Whereas if he were to have just have taken action without fear he would still be the same person as he was before. In the Novel, Crane does not portray courage as a virtue, but as an unreasoning response to an external threat. In conclusion, The Red Badge of Courage demonstrates that courage cannot be defined as taking action without fear, but rather to be courageous in the face of one's fears.
Mark Twain best described courage when he said that, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear” (Twain). Both in The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and Watership Down by Richard Adams, the authors deal with the topic of courage and each share a similar view on it as this quote. Indeed, both authors suggest that courage is not accumulated simply by acts of heroism, but rather by overcoming fears and speaking one’s mind as well. These books are very similar in the way that bravery is displayed through the characters in an uncommon way. Firstly, an example of bravery
An example of courage, as the judgment that something else is more important than fear, is through the character of Kak in B for Buster by Iain Lawrence. In this novel, Kak is characterized as a young, determined boy, desiring to turn himself from a comic book reading boy into a World War II hero. Planning to escape his drunken, abusive father, Kak enlists himself in the Canadian Air Force although he is underage and only sixteen years old. During his first mission, he is becomes frightened of the risk of not coming home alive, but doesn?t show his emotions because of his austere, intrepid crewmen. During this mission, Kak did not have an absence of fear, but he felt that becoming a hero like the ones in his comic book, and accomplishing his dream of fly, was more important than his fear of dying.
The important conflict in The Red Badge of Courage is Henry Fleming's. fear about how he will perform in his first battle. There were three people. who expressed their ideas about their fears before the first skirmish. They Henry Fleming, Tom Wilson, and Jim Conklin.
In John Marsden’s Tomorrow When the War Began, the quote from David Seabury “Courage and convictions are powerful weapons against an enemy that depends upon only fists and guns”, is evident throughout the novel with the character’s various successes. Conviction (willpower) is very strong in the main characters, as the stakes are high with their entire town invaded leaving very few free. This conviction is also essential for courage, which as Ellie explains in the book, can only be found amidst fear. “I guess true courage is when you're really scared but you still do it” p.25. There are various frightening moments in this book, like when the ride on mower was used like a bomb or having to rescue Lee using heavy machinery. These are all moments the characters used their will to survive to propel them to do something that they were terrified to do. The characters also face daunting themes head on despite the previous stress. This is courage, found within conviction, and it has proved to be a good weapon against those with physical weapons.
Courage is when you know you’re beaten. The character Atticus, for instance, who was a seasoned lawyer acted courageous defending Tom Robinson. Tom Robinson was a black man who was accused of raping a white girl. Atticus was appointed to defend him. Jem was happy because he thought his father had won the case but Reverend Sykes loathed telling Jem “Now don’t you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man…”(Lee 208). Atticus was sure he wasn’t going to win the case, nevertheless he gave it a try. That didn’t stop Atticus from trying to defend his client Tom Robinson. Another part in the novel when Atticus was courageous was when he shot at the man street dog. Heck Tate the Maycomb Sheriff was not as courageous as Atticus so he handed Atticus the air rifles and with one shot Atticus took down the street dog. Miss Maudie says “I saw that, One Shot Finch” (Lee 97). Atticus was referred to as one-shot finch because of his shooting skills. The other incidence in the novel when Atticus portrays courage was when he was not scared when Bob Ewell threatened him. Bob Ewell was the man who accused Atticus’ defendant Tom Robinson of raping his daughter Mayella. Atticus thought Bob Ewell threatened him as some sort of revenge, but unfortunately Atticus was wrong because when Bob Ewell said ...
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.
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
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, his 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.
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.
There are four main themes to me in “The Red Badge of Courage.” These themes are courage, personal growth and maturity, self-preservation, and nature. The theme of courage is what this story is all about really. What is courage? Who has courage? I want courage. How does one obtain courage? This is what Henry wonders and eventually figures out after having a misunderstanding of what bravery and courage was to begin with though. “His self-pride was now entirely restored. In the shade of its flourishing growth he stood with braced and self-confident legs, and since nothing could now be discovered he did not shrink from an encounter with the eyes of judges, and allowed no thoughts of his own to keep him from an attitude of manfulness. He had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man” (Crane 78). Henry feels that because the other men are giving him praise, then he is right in his behavior. But is this courage? Absolutely not. As Henry marches from battle, the reader is led to believe
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
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 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.
...ther battle begins, but this time, Henry is prepared to fight. Henry's fighting tactics are extremely wild and is afterwards is congratulated by his lieutenant for a job well done. However,between battles, Henry and Wilson (his fellow soldier) overhear a general referring to their regiment as "mule drivers" and preparing to sacrifice them at the front line in the next battle (Crane Chapter 18). Henry accepted this challenge and thinks of it as an obstacle he desires to overcome. When the next battle starts, he and Wilson see the Union flag beginning fall. They both sprint to retrieve the flag and lead their comrades to their next fight. After the battle ended, the officers praise their courageous action (Crane Chapter 21). In the novel’s final battle, Henry captures the Confederate flag as well and helps lead the Union regiment to victory (Crane Chapter 23).
"hero" in the eyes of the masses by enlisting in the army. Henry's goal of