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The red badge of courage as a psychological novel
The red badge of courage as a psychological novel
The red badge of courage as a psychological novel
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The Truth Behind the Title “The Red Badge of Courage”
“The Red Badge of Courage” is a novel by Crane and is about a teenager named Henry Fleming. Henry, who has romantic notions about the glories of war, finds out that war is not what everyone portrays it to be. Once he enlisted in the union army, he discovered that he was inept in the battlefield. “The Red Badge of Courage” is in interesting title because there is a lot of meaning behind it, it’s ironic, and it’s significant in many ways.
Courage, in most war novels, is defined as a soldier who rushes into war showing no fear in battle. In “The Red Badge of Courage”, Crane shows how war actually goes and brings a new meaning to courage. Courage is about living up to certain
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duties and responsibilities but since everyone has his or hers own duties, they must receive a personal “badge”. The badge of courage is red because red is the color of blood and represents the struggle of the war and the passion to it. Crane does not romanticize war in any way but he shows his characters are passionate about war. The badge of courage refers to wounds that the soldiers had gotten during war. The wounds are seen as courageous acts because it means that they fought with all they can and stayed and fought the enemy. There is a lot of irony in the title “The Red Badge of Courage”. Since Henry romantics war and sees it as a heroic act, he enlists. Little did he know, war was not what he expected. After seeing his first dead body, he is absolutely terrified of war which caused him to run away from battle because he was afraid that he was going to die. He claims that it was simply a survival instinct but in reality he was oscillating his guilt. Henry then heads back to the battle and sees a group of men who are wounded. Seeing their injuries he then wishes that he, too, had a red badge of courage. Henry tries to fake an injury but eventually runs into Jim Conklin, who dies a terrible death in front of Henry. Henry runs away from that scene and encounters another group of men and gets hit with rifle on the head by someone from his own army, and then ends back up at his own regiment. Henry being injured, no one accuses him of running away from the battle. Seeing his head injury, the men assume a bullet grazed him. The title The Red Badge of Courage is ironic because Henry believes that in order to be brave he needs to receive a “Badge”-a wound- in war. It was ironic because he did not get wounded by the enemy, but by one of his men and that is the opposite of courage but Henry hides the actually reason of his wound anyway so that his friends think that he is a courageous fighter. Henry turns out to be inadequate for battle. The title the Red Badge of Courage also is ironic because when someone reads it or hears the saying it is commonly thought that it is a courageous act and it means something very important.ONce you earn the Red badge, it means that you did something courageous for your army and the men and you're important and significant but that isn't the reality of it.
The red badge of courage is a lie because it isn't what it seems.The red badge is nothing more than the blood oozing from a wounded man. Crane seems to put military bravery and honor with death and injury to project the image of the reality of war. The title is paradoxical and the protagenist, once stated beforem Henry, was accidently inflicted by a union solier and it was not a mark of courage at all.It actaul;ly becomes a mark of cowardice for Henry considering that he lied about the entire thing and says he was wounded by the oppisitie side even though he …show more content…
was The Badge of courage is used in the scene where Henry runs away because of him being a coward and then he comes back and sees a group of men who,m are injured and are getting the red badge because it means that they weren't afraid of battle at all. It was significant that he was never wounded in all the other skirmishes and he repeatedly and courageously exposed himself to danger because it meant that he did not even fight for the war itself and did not even come to realization with what was going on.
He only fought for himself and that was significant for the reader to know because it made the reader come to realization that Henry was just another selfish teenager who did not care about the war itself but only to get a red badge of courage so he can say that he had it. Henry did not actually want to be in war he just had heard so many romanized versions of war but then when he got there he realized that it wasn't what he thought and he sayment with injuries receive the red badge of courage. the Red badge of courage even to the point where Henry tries to fake an injury was the worst because there was so many injured men who were trying their best and fighting and just want to go home or get medical help when henry sees it as a joke to be injured just so he can receive something he doesn't deserve which is idiotic of him.
The Red Badge of courage has a lot of meaning to the title behind it with the irony. The reader starts reading the book probably not expecting a story about what war is really like because a lot of war stories romanticize war and make it seem heroic. Like Greek Myths and such, but the title is meant to be ironic. In the novel that Vrane writes the reader comes to realization quickly
that there is nothing heroic about war. The red badge of courage really means getting wounded which can meant that it is not heroic in many ways, taking Henry is an example.
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...
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. Henry is somewhat nave, he dreams of glory, but doesn't think much of the duty that follows.
For example, Henry’s actions in the second battle convey his initial cowardice. In response to the enemy coming back to fight, Henry “ran like blind man” (Crane 57). Henry’s actions illustrate his cowardice since he is afraid to stay and fight and flees instead. However, as Henry matures throughout the novel, he learns to control his fears and show courage through his fighting. For instance, in the battle after Henry rejoins the regiment, Henry “had not deemed it possible that his army could that day succeed, and from this he felt the ability to fight harder” (Crane 133). Henry portrays bravery in this battle, since he still fights with all of his strength, when he believes the enemy would win. Henry’s change from cowardice to bravery is conveyed through his act of running away from battle, to fighting courageously in
In reality, Henry was an insignificant soldier and the General would never care whether he died in battle or not. To me, a hero doesn't try to hide behind his insecurities, like Henry did, he faces them. In conclusion, I think Henry was not a hero in this novel, in fact I thought he acted more like a coward. Though during brief periods of time Henry physically acted heroically, his moral character was weak, trying to cover up his psychological wounds with self-justification and delusion.
The Red Badge of Courage, by Steven Crane, has been proclaimed one of the greatest war novels of all time. It is a story that realistically depicts the American Civil War through the eyes of Henry Fleming, an ordinary farm boy who decides to become a soldier. Henry, who is fighting for the Union, is very determined to become a hero, and the story depicts Henrys voyage from being a young coward, to a brave man. This voyage is the classic trip from innocence to experience. The soldier story, The Red Badge of Courage, was used to reflect the harsh Civil War realities. Cranes style of writing to portray these realities included the technique of symbolism. In this technique, symbols are hidden within certain objects throughout the story to help express the theme. Henry, Jim Conklin, and Wilson all symbolized a specific aspect of mankind.
...a of his "red badge" of cowardice known only to him, he earned his "red badge of courage." However, the necessity of a turn in character to create the final hero is still evidenced. By showing the close relationship between the negative and positive aspects of a single characteristic--in this case confronting battle with either courage or cowardice--Crane opens the door for an infinite understanding of what makes a hero by demonstrating that perfection is not a necessary characteristic.
In the first part of the novel, Henry is a youth that is very inexperienced. His motives were impure. He was a very selfish and self-serving character. He enters the war not for the basis of serving his country, but for the attainment of glory and prestige. Henry wants to be a hero. This represents the natural human characteristic of selfishness. Humans have a want and a need to satisfy themselves. This was Henry's main motive throughout the first part of the novel. On more than one occasion Henry is resolved to that natural selfishness of human beings. After Henry realizes that the attainment of glory and heroism has a price on it. That price is by wounds or worse yet, death. Henry then becomes self-serving in the fact that he wants to survive for himself, not the Union army. There is many a time when Henry wants to justify his natural fear of death. He is at a point where he is questioning deserting the battle; in order to justify this, he asks Jim, the tall soldier, if he would run. Jim declared that he'd thought about it. Surely, thought Henry, if his companion ran, it would be alright if he himself ran. During the battle, when Henry actually did take flight, he justified this selfish deed—selfish in the fact that it did not help his regiment hold the Rebs—by natural instinct. He proclaimed to himself that if a squirrel took flight when a rock was thrown at it, it was alright that he ran when his life was on the line.
Not only was the war bloody and violent but also the soldier's had to deal with bad weather, poor clothing and malnutrition. This particular setting is important to "the red badge of courage" because the book is about courage and bravery. To fight in these harsh conditions you must be courageous and brave. Many times Henry wanted to back out and he did once he found courage in himself and he fought till the very end. Without Henry's courage he would not of been able to overcome this
The Red Badge of Courage uses both color imagery and color symbols. While Crane uses color to describe, he also allows it to stand for whole concepts. Gray, for example, describes the 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 Fleming's mental visions of battle. In the process, it gains a symbolic meaning which Crane will put to an icon like the "red badge of courage" (110, Penguin ed., 1983). Crane uses color in his descriptions of the physical and the metaphysical and allows color to take on meanings ranging from the literal to the figurative.
War is not meant to be glorified. War is not meant to look easy. Stephen Crane was one of the few authors during his era who realized this fantasy-like aura around war and battles and decided to do something about it. The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, was inspired by Crane’s life and his desire to portray the realistic side of war.
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.
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.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Stephan Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. New Yourk: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
"hero" in the eyes of the masses by enlisting in the army. Henry's goal of
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, one of the most significant and renowned books in American literature, defies outright classification, showing traits of both the realist and naturalist movements. It is a classic, however, precisely because it does so without sacrificing unity or poignancy. The Red Badge of Courage belongs unequivocally to the naturalist genre, but realism is also present and used to great effect. The conflict between these styles mirrors the bloody clash of the war described in the book – and the eternal struggle between good and evil in human nature.