Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage
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.
When Henry decides to go off to war, he has a romantic image of what the war will be like. He makes references to the great battles of the Greeks, and hopes that his own battles will be as heroic. Henry had “long despaired of witnessing a Greek-like struggle” (Crane, 3). His motivation to fight comes from his will to become a hero. He believes that he will do great things on the battlefield because that is his destiny, and hopes to gain recognition for his achievements. When he tells his mother that he will be going to war, she doubts his motivation and encourages him to keep clean socks (Crane,5)! Clearly, she was treating him like a child, not a man. She is a reminder that Henry begins his journey to war as a youth trying to find himself.
Henry begins to question his courage at the time he finds out that his regiment will commence with the drills and move in to attack the enemy. Ho...
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... nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood” (Crane, 128). He had matured, yet the forces that controlled him were still beyond his control. He felt the need to be socially accepted and stay in control of how others perceived him.
Through the four stages of growth and development that Henry overcame, the glorious dreams that he once had were replaced by the more realistic horrors of war. Crane represents courage as an instinct, similar to cowardice. Only when instinct dictates courage, one can be heroic. Along Henry’s struggle to become self-aware, he has discovered new ideologies about war, death, courage, and manhood. He has a realistic image of war, an indifference to death, an instinctive courage, and a quiet manhood.
Works Cited
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. New York, New York: Signet Classic from Penguin Putnam Inc., 1997.
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.
In The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming was drawn to enlist by his boyhood dreams. His highly romanticized notion of war was eclectic, borrowing from various classical and medieval sources. Nevertheless, his exalted, almost deified, conception of the life of a soldier at rest and in combat began to deflate before the even the ink had dried on his enlistment signature. Soon the army ceased to possess any personal characteristics Henry had once envisioned, becoming an unthinking, dispas...
Chapter 1 Analysis: Stephen Crane begins a new course of realism in The Red Badge of Courage. Many critics point to him as one of the first American authors of a modern style, and The Red Badge as a fine example of this. The novel is built on a coming-of-age theme, and many of its descriptive elements, such as its concentration on nature and character's actions, are in the realist style, most popularized in America by William Dean Howells and Frank Norris. However, Crane's style in this book has some slight differences from earlier styles. The narrator does not name the characters.
The Effects of War on a Union Soldier in The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane traces the effects of war on a Union soldier, Henry Fleming, from his dreams of soldiering to his actual enlistment. The novel also takes one through several battles of the Civil War. Henry Fleming was not happy with his boring life on the farm. He wants to become a hero in war and have girls loving him for his glorious achievements in battle. He would also like to prove that he is a man and can take care of himself.
Crane tries to dispel the link between heroism and actual real-life warfare by bringing Henry, an ignorant youth immersed in idealized notions of glory fame and honour, to a clearer and more sombre view of the world and himself.
Henry Flemming is an incredibly realistically portrayed character, in the book The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, who voluntarily enlists in the army for the Civil War. This book takes the reader on a journey through Henry’s experiences with the war itself – enlisting, marching, preparing for battle, fighting, healing, and more fighting. The author uses Henry Flemming – the myths he has about what it is like to serve in the army, what strength it takes to survive a battle, and how a person’s morals playout on the battlefield – to properly confront and debunk these myths about what warfare life was like during the Civil War. The 304th regiment, the company Henry joined up with, is able to become fully transformed from a simple group
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Stephan Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. New Yourk: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Stephan Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. New Yourk: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Henry Fleming, the protagonist of this book, is persuaded to join the Union Army during the era of the American Civil War. Even though Henry wants to be a hero; to war, he is just a number. Henry romanticizes about dying a glorified death as a hero, but he lacks bravery and maturity.
The Red Badge of Courage marked a significant departure from the heavily idealized Civil War fiction that appeared in the decades preceding its publication. The novel's unique tone and vivid imagery propelled its author to overnight success. Rather than portraying a larger historical view of the Civil War composed of epic battles that are fueled by a clash of ideals, Crane's focus is much narrower, in that he concentrates on the individual psychology of Private Henry Fleming. The novel impressionistically records Henry's shifting psychological state as he is transformed from a naive, vainglorious youth to an experienced soldier who possesses a deeper understanding of the nature of courage and self-preservation.
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.
In society, more often in youths, we see human's narcissistic and primal instincts to seek lionization, respect from their peers, and commemoration. In The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, these same humane flaws are paralleled through the character Henry Fleming; most notably this is apparent through character motivation, plot, mood, and setting. The plot: Henry Fleming a teenage boy with a misguided, romantic view of war decides to enlist in the Union army; his journey is one of self-discovery. War brings out Henry’s worst most animalistic traits
As the violence of war begins to subside, the psychological terrors begins to arise. The Youth's newfound fear of battle was a result of doubt within himself in correspondence with his capability to fight with honor and glory and still make it out of battle alive. Henry's emotions began to deviate from a yearning for glory and confidence, to fear, to depression, to anger and to exhilaration. The rapid change in the youths emotions causes Henry to go crazy with reasoning, ultimately altering the way he perceives not only war but the world as a whole. At the very beginning of the Red Badge of Courage, Henry was ready to launch into the glorified antics of war; after enlisting Henry and a few other head into town where the glorified antics that the youth desires begin. "the youth believed that he must be a hero . . . As he basked in the smiles of the girls and was patted and complimented by the old men, he had felt
Once in battle, Crane harnesses psychological realism to grant readers a look into the reality of war. Following the first attack in Henry’s first battle*, the narrator describes Henry felt like a “pestered animal, a well-meaning cow worried by dogs” and as a “babe being smothered attack the deadly blankets” (16)*. The manner in which Crane writes of the battle is deliberate for, as Kevin Hayes explains, “the Red Badge is deliberately narrow in scope” (Hayes 1). Kevin J.* Hayes* is another* critique of Red Badge*, as critiques Crane as if he had chosen to turn Red Badge into a film. *** Hayes notes, “Whereas* Civil War panoramas strived for epic effects,” Crane chose to write Red Badge through the eyes of a lowly private and highlight the realism of battle. Crane purposefully brings readers into the helm* of battle behind the eyes of Henry. Cranes usage of third person* limited is as Hayes describes “articulates Henry’s thoughts and verbalizes his mental imagery” as Henry’s thoughts are told to the reader (2). Through the third person limited point of view, readers can see Henry imagines war “as a spectator, not a participant”
The main topic of The Red Badge of Courage is fear and how it would affect a young man in a bloody war, like The Civil War. The war becomes the young soldiers worst nightmare, which gives him conflicting thoughts, emotions and fears. The young character soon realizes as all of these things affect him emotionally and physically, that the war is very different from what he had hoped it was going to be. Although the soldier becomes nervous and even runs away at the Battle of Chancellorsville, he eventually returns to find that he and his fellow soldiers have grown. They had learned more about themselves then they ever believed possible. The young soldier becomes a man with plenty of courage by the end of this book.