Individualism and Conformity in Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane's pieces are written with the intent to establish individualism as an unfavorable quality. He establishes that group goals are more important than that of the individual and creates groups to which each character should conform. Crane supplies models for the individual to comply to and elucidates that adherence to the group would bring reward but deviation from said groups would be detrimental. Henry, in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, is created as a child in search of self worth and assurance. Crane establishes Henry as an individual by giving him the ability to think for himself but creates situations that stifle his individualism
…show more content…
"The youth ensured himself that at any moment [the army] might be suddenly and fearfully assaulted"(P.186). His fear was manifested as he awoke to the find himself retreating with the rest of his infantry. Crane had constructed a situation in which Henry's individuality could not be utilized. "[Henry] ran with his comrades, strenuously [trying] to think, but all he knew was that if he fell down those coming behind would tread upon him. All his faculties seemed to be needed to guide him over and past obstructions. He felt carried along by a mob"(P.188). Henry was no longer a person, he became like the other men of his regiment: indistinct.
In the wake of danger, Henry realizes that rejection of the group is impossible. He attempts to follow Crane's naturalistic instructions within the novel, conforming to the actions and ideas of the rest of the regiment around him. He accepts the underlying law that that adherence to the group would bring reward but deviation from said groups would be detrimental. With this acceptance, Henry "suddenly lost concern for himself [and] became not a man but a member... He was welded into a common personality which was dominated by a single
…show more content…
He finds this in the squirrel. After seeing the squirrel scurry away at the advance of his rock, he justifies his departure from the group by alleging that it was nature's will. The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the law, he said. Nature had given him a sign.
Henry mingles into a regiment returning from battle but again feels like an outcast. He comes to realize that he is the only one among them that is not injured. Crane thereupon creates a situation that allows Henry to be assimilated into the group. Henry is once again consumed by a retreating infantry. And upon questioning a soldier he is "crushed upon the [his] head" with a rifle. Crane had given Henry a red badge of courage. He could now return to the ranks of his regiment acclimatized.
Crane utilizes the general to make Henry stay within the group. After overhearing that his infantry can be spared, Henry finally acknowledges that his actions alone will not have any deep impact on the war. Henry fights valiantly within the group, driven by a collective feeling of patriotism and
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.
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.
This paper examines the drastic differences in literary themes and styles of Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, two African--American writers from the early 1900's. The portrayals of African-American women by each author are contrasted based on specific examples from their two most prominent novels, Native Son by Wright, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston. With the intent to explain this divergence, the autobiographies of both authors (Black Boy and Dust Tracks on a Road) are also analyzed. Particular examples from the lives of each author are cited to demonstrate the contrasting lifestyles and experiences that created these disparities, drawing parallels between the authors’ lives and creative endeavors. It becomes apparent that Wright's traumatic experiences involving females and Hurston's identity as a strong, independent and successful Black artist contributed significantly to the ways in which they chose to depict African-American women and what goals they adhered to in reaching and touching a specific audience with the messages contained in their writing.
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 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.
War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly. In Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He is faced with the hard reality of war and this forces him to readjust his romantic beliefs about war. Through the novel, the reader can trace the growth and development of Henry through these four stages: (1) romanticizing war and the heroic role each soldier plays, (2) facing the realities of war, (3) lying to himself to maintain his self-importance, and (4) realistic awareness of his abilities and place in life. Through Henry’s experiences in his path to self-discovery, he is strongly affected by events that help shape his ideology of war, death, courage, and manhood. The romantic ideologies will be replaced with a more realistic representation.
Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are similar to having the same concept about black women to have a voice. Both are political, controversial, and talented experiencing negative and positive reviews in their own communities. These two influential African-American female authors describe the southern hospitality roots. Hurston was an influential writer in the Harlem Renaissance, who died from mysterious death in the sixties. Walker who is an activist and author in the early seventies confronts sexually progression in the south through the Great Depression period (Howard 200). Their theories point out feminism of encountering survival through fiction stories. As a result, Walker embraced the values of Hurston’s work that allowed a larger
"The Red Badge of Courage" is the story of one young boy's journey through the Civil War and his quest for manhood. Henry, or The Youth as he is known in the book, is very naive in the beginning of the book. He sees war as something more glamorous and romantic than it actually is. He is very innocent and unaware of what war is truly like. Henry's only wish is to be seen as a hero and he believes that fighting in war will grant him that.
Women in general faced many hardships in the past and especially during the black arts movement. Women were disvalued and were the lowest in the society. They had some of the toughest jobs and worked very hard to provide for their kids. Throughout this essay there are three sources to support and display what women went through during the black arts movement. These sources are, “The Negro Woman in American Literature,” “Woman Poem,” and “Wine in the Wilderness.” All of these sources add critical information to help support the thoughts on how women were treated during the black arts movement and what they faced on a daily basis. Overall during the black arts movement women were involved in lots of art to display their sexual characteristics. Women faced many issues like being disrespected and not being given an equal opportunity. Lastly, the black arts movement really brought out the way that women were treated and displayed the terrible things that artists did to them in society, which caused more problems in their
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.
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.
Gates, Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1996. Print.
Throughout history and in present day, there has been a large neglect of Black Women in both studies of gender and studies of race. Combating both sexism and racism simultaneously is what separates Black Women and our history and battles from both white women and black males-combined with what is discussed as a triple jeopardy- race, sex and socioeconomic status provides black women with a completely different and unique life experience when compared to, really, the rest of the world. Beverly Guy-Sheftall discusses the lack of black feminist in our history texts stating,“like most students who attended public schools and colleges during the 1950s and 1960s, I learned very little about the involvement of African American women in struggles for emancipation of blacks and women.” (Words of Fire, 23) I, too, can agree that throughout my education and without a Black Women’s Studies course at the University of Maryland I would have never been exposed to the many founding foremothers of black feminism. In this essay, I will discuss the activism, accomplishments and contributions of three of those founding foremothers-Maria Stewart, Anna Cooper, and Ida B. Wells.
For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America, Black women were an after-thought in our nation's history. They were the mammies and maids, the cooks and caregivers, the universal shoulder to cry on in times of trouble. Often overlooked and undervalued, Black women were just ... there.
The year 1970 proved to be a watershed moment in the history of black women's writing and their struggle for emancipation.Many black women had distanced/were distancing themselves from the Feminist movement of the 60's.These women made their presence felt by drawing people's attention to their concerns which were different from those of white women.The black women's writing,which was revived in the 1970's,was the vehicle through which the black women voiced their concerns.The year saw the re-publication of Zora Neale Hurston's collection of black American folklore titled "Mules and Men".The year is also important because present day prominent black women writers-Toni Morrison and Alice Walker came up with their first novels.Margaret Walker and Maya Angelou were amongst the other prominent black women to have emerged around this time.