Masculinity In The Red Badge Of Courage

On October 5th, 1895, Stephen Crane published a thrilling and intriguing novel called the Red Badge of Courage. The novel itself took place in Virginia between the years 1861-1865 and focused on showing how an adolescent Civil War soldier faced his fears on the battlefield. The soldier known as Henry Fleming, began to second guess himself while in the middle of fighting in the Battle of Chancellorsville. This sudden feeling of fear, then caused the protagonist to make a series of rash decisions that would greatly affect his future. The genre of this amazing piece of literature is historical fiction and war drama. To begin with, one major theme that continually played a part throughout the entire book is masculinity. The main character Henry

Many of the soldiers who enlisted into the war discovered that their assumptions were completely amiss. To them, war was all about glory and exhilarating battles that they would one day be able to tell to their adoring families. Instead, they were confronted with death, fear and even some terrifying moments. Stephen Crane makes it known that the troops were never prepared for what the war was going to throw at them. Henry being one of these naive soldiers absolutely saw and experienced all the cruelties that resulted from this negative event in history. One of these harsh occasions in particular was when Henry witnesses the decease of one of his good friends Jim Conklin. After discovering that the soldier had been shot while in battle Henry starts to notice how pale and weak Jim was becoming. These symptoms then led to the fateful end of Jim Conklin’s life. Succeeding Jim's passing Henry remarks that he “desired to screech out his grief [and that] he was stabbed, but his tongue lay dead in the tomb of his mouth”(Crane 57). He then “threw himself again upon the ground and began to brood”(Crane 57). These quotes shows exactly how the reality of war played a part on Henry's emotions. From this Henry noticed and beared how truly horrific the civil war was. Now he viewed the war as dreadful and wretched all because of that one eye opening

For example, the novel contained a great deal of difficult dialect. Many of the lines within the book had shortened words and phrases in them, making it complicated to understand and interpret. In particular, one line that stands out is “We’re goin’ t’ move t’ morrah”(Crane 1). Words like morrah and move t’ are not commonly spoken during this time period. In addition, another quote the relates to this shortcoming is “He’s up an’ gone, ain’t e? An’ he’s alright here”(Crane 57).This manner of speaking was more frequently used in the 1800’s by the americans in the south. By using this outdated language it made the book gruelingly tough to read let alone