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Crane's use of color in the red badge of courage
Literary perspective on stephen crane the red badge of courage
Conclusions about the theme of the red badge of courage
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From Fear to Courage
When new soldiers go to fight in a war, they never know what’s coming. Although events are preserved in stories by the veterans, nothing can capture the real thing. Seeing everything up close and personal can change a person dramatically. Soldiers may never be the same after traumatic events such as these. Wars test a person and shows how strong not just physically, but mentally, one is. Stephen Crane, throughout his novel, The Red Badge of Courage, creates three distinct tones by utilizing the stylistic devices of imagery and figurative language, which reinforce Crane’s fearful, unworthy and courageous attitude on the realities of war. In the novel, fear is one of the very first tones viewed as one begins the reading.
Throughout the early chapters, Henry is questioning himself, wondering if he can really be a brave soldier, wondering if he is going to be able to survive. Crane shows imagery with just about every sentence he writes. The quote, “He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There was no shame in his face. He ran like a rabbit” (Crane 30), shows how he ran from the war to think about his own safety, not about the other men around him fighting for their lives. Fear is shown in the previous quote just about everywhere. Henry runs away from his fear in fighting during the war but later realizes that he is ashamed of what he does. So Crane shows Henry trying to be stealthy about it all and not acting like he ran, but convincing himself that he ran for the better. In another quote, the figurative language shown by similes, and metaphors, give another example of fear. “To the youth it was an onslaught of redoubtable dragons. He became like the man who lost his legs at the approach of the r...
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... eyes. The fearfulness, unworthiness, and courageousness were only a few tones that caught my eyes while reading Crane’s thought on the realities of war. Crane wants his readers to be able to see and feel a realistic view on the war. He wants them all to realize the heartbreak and fear, the rage and the pain of war that all soldiers have gone through. Having a better understanding and facing the horrid truth helps you get into reality more than float around it. The realities of war may be gruesome, and hard to handle, but we should always respect the soldiers and be aware of the bravery it takes just to be out there fighting. Medals or not, having a high-ranking or a low-ranking, every one of those men and women deserve a little something extra.
Works Cited
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. New York: Dover Publications Incorporated, 1895.
Henry is worried about how he will do in this first battle. He isn't. sure if he will run or not, and he is scared that he might. He doesn't. want to look like a fool and run, but he is also scared of getting killed.
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.
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.
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.
In this chapter, Henry asks Wilson if he’s going to run, and explains that many good men end up running away. On that same page, Crane describes how Henry felt at this moment as seen in the quote above. Henry feels like a “mental outcast” at this point because he worries of what will happen if he feels the urge to run. The quotes above foreshadows the later instance where Henry runs away.
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.
In the literary work, Speaking of Courage, Tim O’Brien highlights the trying struggle of a post-war solider attempting desperately to integrate himself back into American society. Paul Berlin’s trials and tribulations exemplify the “dominance of a citizen culture in the United States,” as mentioned by Dr. Decker in class. American society does not allow for the soldiers we have sent off to fight to return as warriors.
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.
“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.
War is not meant to be glorified. War is not meant to look easy. Stephen Crane was one of the few authors during his era who realized this fantasy-like aura around war and battles and decided to do something about it. The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, was inspired by Crane’s life and his desire to portray the realistic side of war.
Many soldiers of today know what courage is. Courage is doing what is needed to do, not what absolutely must be done. In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, the soldiers were not what one would think of as courageous. The soldiers were courageous in the sense that their courage came from fear of dishonor. The soldiers did what must be done in order to keep their honorable reputation. True courage was not present until the end of the story.
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 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...
In conclusion, the short story “The Veteran” by Stephen Crane possess many elements that show that courage does not fade away when a soldier becomes a veteran. The short story uses dialogue, imagery, and setting to show that a soldier can be afraid, but still show courage and strength and risk their lives for others, no matter how old one is. Henry is a courageous and strong person and he showed this by running into a barn engulfed in flames to help several animals get out safely. Even though Henry did not make it out alive, his legacy will live
In the story The Red Badge of Courage by stephen crane the author develops the theme by using the characters thoughts and actions. The author conveys the theme, people often doubt themselves when facing a great challenge. The narrator begins the story with a young soldier laying in his bunk. The narrator starts with “He tried to mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from a battle.”