Red Badge Of Courage Sparknotes

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephan Crane is a war novel published in 1895. It’s mainly about a boy named Henry Fleming who becomes a soldier in the Civil War raging from 1861-1865. He recently just joined the 304th regiment in his hometown, and meets many new people. After hearing that they were going to combat with confederate soldiers, he’s afraid if he will desert or not. He feels that he will desert for fear of death and many of the other soldiers will die if they don’t.

Henry signed up even though his mother told him not to. After he went with his regiment, they were camped on a riverbank for a few weeks. Lately, there’s been a rumor that they will be in combat soon. Many of his friends say that if many people desert, he will also desert.

Henry is unsure whether he will or not. Finally, the regiment received orders to move. After a few weary days of traveling on foot, they finally arrive while a battle is happening. Henry realizes, once he gets there, that he can’t desert even if he wanted to. They win the engagement and everybody is happy. After a short nap, Henry wakes up and finds the enemy charging once again. Overwhelmed with fear of death, he runs from the battle and never looks back.
After running for a while, He later says that he made the right choice and the rest of the men that fled were fools.

Later, he overheard a general on horseback say they managed to defend the charge. After hearing this, Henry is shocked that he deserted and is ashamed of himself. He assures that he did it for his own life, so that he would be okay, but he was still ashamed nonetheless. After a while, he joined a column of wounded soldiers. He says the wounds that the soldiers obtained, were like a red badge of courage. He later finds a man who looks familiar and later finds out it is his friend, Jim Conkin. He later tries to heal him and take care of him. But later, Jim runs from the line into bushes, where Henry watches his best friend in the Union army die in his hands. Later as he is wandering around for a sign of life, he eventually does. He finds a battle ensuing and union Soldiers are retreating. Henry tries to speak with the soldiers to ask what happens. But he accidently gets hit in the head by a rifle. After a while a soldier leads him to their

regiment.
He is reunited with his regiment.

His friend Wilson thought Henry Got Shot and cared for him until he got better. The very next day, they reenter the battlefield. Henry enraged at the enemy for the death of his friend and his experiences fight bravely. They manage to defeat the army and Henry is congratulated by his general, saying “with ten thousand henrys we could win this war in a week.” However, despite his amazing performance, an officer says that the regiment fights like mule drivers. Angered by this, he fought valiantly, even bearing the flag when the color bearer falls. Still, the officers were not impressed, calling the regiment mud diggers. He is very happy when his general says that he’s one of the best fighters in the regiment. He continues to fight and says that he has overcome the red sickness of battle. He says he is now able to look forward in his

life.
This book was a pretty well written book. Even though it was published in 1895, it was very accurate on how it was during the civil war. I liked this book and I would totally recommend this book to anybody looking into history books about old battles and life in the 1800s. Henry managed to have courage, more than he had before. Courage is a big topic and theme of this book, as without courage, we wouldn’t be able to do new things. To go out of our comfort zone is a huge step to have one thing that all of us need courage. With courage I believe we can overcome any obstacle in the world.