Henry Fleming and The red Badge of Courage
The main character of this book is Henry Fleming, mostly referred to as The Youth or Youth. The Youth has dark, curly brown hair also; he is a young teenager and is average height when compared to the Tall Soldier. Henry is insecure because he is going through a difficult stage between being a "man" and being a "boy". Henry can't wait to get to war when he signs up but during the book Henry learns that war has a lot of affects on people emotionally and physically. Henry's flaw is that he is afraid of making himself look bad and he is worried that he is going to be a coward and run away from battle. Henry really wants to be a "man" and be courageous. I once heard a swim coach give an extremely good definition of courage. He said "To me courage is not to be unafraid but it is to be afraid but one does it anyways and doesn't worry about being afraid. I think Henry thought of courageous as fearless and that is also part of his flaw.
The first time Henry's flaw gets him in trouble is in chapter 10 and when he gets his chance to go into battle he flees. He at first thinks the war is boring but he soon learns that war is very frightening. When Henry flees he also shows insecurity when he tries to make up an excuse for why he wasn't with the rest of the regiment. Henry thinks very poorly of himself at this point and really anyone would run from a war, I don't think he was ready.
The second time Henry's flaw is evident is in chapter 12 when Henry tries to stop a man to ask what is going on with the battle since he ran away. The man was also trying to get away and hit Henry on the head with his rifle. This is evidence of his flaw because if he hadn't run away then he wouldn't have to bother this man. Henry is also too afraid to go back without any knowledge of what happened.
The first time Henry's flaw improves is when he is mad at himself for running away from the battle and he begins to relate to nature.
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.
War changes a person in ways that can never be imagined. Living in a war as well as fighting in one is not an experience witnessed in everyday life. Seeing people die every time and everywhere you go can be seen as an unpleasant experience for any individual such as Henry. The experiences that Henry had embraced during the Vietnam War have caused him to become an enraged and paranoid being after the war. It has shaped him to become this individual of anxiety and with no emotions. The narrator says:
Henry's flaws were very similar to those of Pip and the Greek heroes. Arrogance was a flaw that many Greek mortal heroes, especially Odysseus and Oedipus, had. When Henry realized that none of his fellow soldiers were aware that he had run from the first battle, he regained his self-pride and self-confidence. Before long, he had convinced himself that he was "chosen of the gods and doomed to greatness." At first, Pip believed that status and wealth determined the "goodness" of a person. Henry had similar illusions. He believed that a war hero was a person who could manage to escape every tight situation he got into, and also a godly figure people looked up to and were fascinated by. His other illusions were that the only the best could survive against the hideous "dragons" of war, and that the enemy was a machine that never tired or lost will to fight.
We learn that when Henry comes home from the war, he is suffering from PTSD. "It was at least three years before Henry came home. By then I guess the whole war was solved in the governments mind, but for him it would keep on going" (444). PTSD changes a person, and it doesn 't always stem from war. Henry came back a completely different person. He was quiet, and he was mean. He could never sit still, unless he was posted in front of the color TV. But even then, he was uneasy, "But it was the kind of stillness that you see in a rabbit when it freezes and before it will bolt"
The Red Badge of Courage - Henry is No Hero In The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane explores the theme of courage and heroism in depth. He develops these themes through the main character, Henry Fleming. Henry is a nave young man faced with the harsh realities of war, in this book, some argue that Henry is transformed into a heroic "quiet manhood" while others see Henry as the same young man who ran from battle in the beginning of the book. I think Henry doesn't change, his heroic status acquired at the end of the book isn't truly him, instead he is motivated by fear of dying and being rejected by his fellow soldiers.
Henry suffers from retrograde amnesia due to internal bleeding in the part of the brain that controls memory. This causes him to forget completely everything he ever learned. His entire life is forgotten and he has to basically relearn who he was, only to find he didn’t like who he was and that he didn’t want to be that person. He starts to pay more attention to his daughter and his wife and starts to spend more time with them.
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.
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.
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.
The development of cities is essential in the development of a civilization. Egypt’s cities began close to the Nile River. The Nile ran directly through the land and was the main attraction to settlers. It flooded every year, and in doing so, it fertilized the ground and allowed the growth
Egypt is an Arab country located in the northeast corner of the continent of Africa. It borders Asia. The Sinai Peninsula is located in Asia. Egypt is an intercontinental country. The Arab Republic of Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea with a coast of 995 km. Furthermore, it is bordered to the east by the Red Sea with a coastline of 1941 km. The area of the Arab Republic of Egypt is about 1.002,000 square kilometers. The history of ancient Egypt is one that
“The climate of Egypt is characterized by a hot season from May to September and a cool season from November to March. Extreme temperatures during both seasons are moderated by the prevailing northern winds. In the coastal region average annual temperatures range from a maximum of 37° C (99° F) to a minimum of 14° C (57° F). Wide variations of temperature occur in the deserts, ranging from a maximum of 46° C (114° F) during daylight hours to a minimum of 6° C (42° F) after sunset. During the winter season desert temperatures often drop to 0° C (32° F). The most humid area is along the Mediterranean coast, where the average annual rainfall is about 200 mm (about 8 in). Precipitation decreases rapidly to the south; Cairo receives on average only 26 mm (1 in) of rain a year, and in many desert locations it may rain only once in several years.”
Beijing and China are obviously in a different climatic region as compared to the majority of the United States. Fortunately for the Chinese, technology and advancements have been developed to help limit the effects of the climate on society; irrigation to deal with droughts, dams and dykes to aid in flood diversion and control, and proper medicine to eradicate epidemics and combat other flood-related health tribulations. Between the monsoons, flooding, droughts and famines, Beijing and China seem to have been a formidable place to live, especially in the past with all the challenges involved in Asia ’s unforgiving climate.