The Red Badge of Courage
The main character in The Red Badge Of Courage is a young boy named Henry Fleming who experiences war for the first time during the Civil War. He is a Union soldier in the 304th New York. Throughout the book, Henry goes through a complete change of character as the war goes on. The three main stages Fleming goes through are before he actually engages in combat, his second combat experience and the second day of battle.
The entire reason Henry Fleming joined the army was to become a hero. He was completely blind to the Union’s cause as a whole and was looking more for personal achievement and well-being. This is depicted in the quote “his province was to look out, as far as he could, for his personal comfort.” Henry’s plans of heroism and bravery are cut short when his regiment does not enter actual combat, but rather continues to hear news and rumors of upcoming battle. During this time, Henry has a lot of time on his hands and does some serious thinking. He begins to feel uncomfortable and wishes he were back home with his mother on their farm. Also, he starts to feel insecure about how he will react in battle. He fears that he will run away in terror when the fighting actually begins. “He recalled his visions of broken-bladed glory, but in the shadow of the impending tumult he suspected them to be impossible pictures” is a quote that shows Henry’s insecurity about battle.
Although filled with doubt, Fleming actually fights well during his first combat experience. It is during his second battle that his fear overcomes him. When the two soldiers on either side of him run, he is fraught with fear. This causes the youth to throw down his gun and run away from the fighting. As he is running, he rationalizes his decision by telling himself that the regiment was about to wiped out, when in fact the line held and victory was achieved. It is now apparent that Henry is also extremely afraid of being teased by his fellow soldiers. During this period, Henry goes through a major change. The next day he is boastful about his acts of “bravery” and ignores his acts of cowardice.
On this second day of battle, Henry also enters his third and final stage. When his regiment engages the enemy, Henry begins to act on instinct instead of rationalizing everything.
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.
The hero of The Red Badge of Courage, which was written by Stephen Crane in the late 1800s, was a young private named Henry Fleming, who was fighting for the North in the American Civil War. Like Pip, in Great Expectations, Henry was a commoner. He was new to the Army and few people knew his name. The main difference between Henry and the earlier heroes is that Henry was not born with leadership qualities or traits like bravery. In fact, in the first battle he fought, he proved himself to be a coward by running from it.
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...
The first time Henry's flaw gets him in trouble is in chapter 10 and when he gets his chance to go into battle he flees. He at first thinks the war is boring but he soon learns that war is very frightening. When Henry flees he also shows insecurity when he tries to make up an excuse for why he wasn't with the rest of the regiment. Henry thinks very poorly of himself at this point and really anyone would run from a war, I don't think he was ready.
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.
In this chapter, Henry asks Wilson if he’s going to run, and explains that many good men end up running away. On that same page, Crane describes how Henry felt at this moment as seen in the quote above. Henry feels like a “mental outcast” at this point because he worries of what will happen if he feels the urge to run. The quotes above foreshadows the later instance where Henry runs away.
Through Henry's progression in thoughts, Crane explores this changing view of the hero. As the book opens, "the youth [Henry] had believed that he must be a hero" (Crane 50), as he set out as a newly enlisted man. Awaiting the call of his first battle, Henry reflected that "[s]ometimes he inclined to believing them all heroes" (Crane 75) based simply on their role as soldiers. However, when confronted with the reality of battle, Henry soon noticed that "[t]here was a singular absence of heroic poses" (Crane 86). Trying to cope with his own inadequacy, Henry finds himself always lacking in comparison with those around him. As they marched along he thought that heroes "could find excuses . . . They could retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars" (Crane 123). Marching among those heroes wounded in battle, "they rendered it almost impossible for him to see himself in a heroic light" (Crane 125). Henry began to despair "that he should ever become a hero" (Crane 126). However, through a new confrontation in battle, Henry found himself funct...
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.
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.
At the beginning, Henry Fleming has an undeveloped identity because his inexperience limits his understanding of heroism, manhood, and courage. For example, on the way to war, “The regiment was fed and caressed at station after station until the youth [Henry] had believed that he must be a hero” (Crane 13). Since he has yet to fight in war, Henry believes a hero is defined by what others think of him and not what he actually does. The most heroic thing he has done so far is enlist, but even that was with ulterior motives; he assumes fighting in the war will bring him glory, yet another object of others’ opinions. At this point, what he thinks of himself is much less important than how the public perceives him. As a result of not understanding
Having read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and the exploits of Greek warriors, and, as well, longing to see such, Henry enlisted into the Union army, against the wishes of his mother. Before his departure, Mrs. Fleming warned Henry, "...you must never do no shirking, child, on my account. If so be a time comes when yeh have to be kilt or do a mean thing, why, Henry, don't think of anything `cept what's right..." Henry carried with himself this counsel throughout his enlistment, resulting in his questioning himself on his bravery. As a sign of Henry's maturation, he began to analyze his character whilst marching, while receiving comments from his brethren of courage in the face of all adversity, as well as their fears ...
During the Civil War, injuries caused lots of damage on soldiers and their bodies. Usually, when a soldier gets severely injured, amputation was the best option. A common phrase, “Bite the Bullet”, became very prevalent upon the Civil War culture. The phrase literally meant during the amputation process, the surgeon gave an actual bullet to the soldier to bite on while his limb was being removed (Phrases). In the beginning of the novel, Henry constantly contemplated running when the battle started, or staying to fight for victory. Henry did not show any signs of courage until he steeped on the battlefield for the second time and began to fight. Injuries inflicted on Henry and his comrades drew out a lot of courage on themselves along with the rest army division. “At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, ...
This idea is the major framework. of The Red Badge of Courage, in which Henry Fleming aspires to be a man, a hero in the eyes of the masses by enlisting in the army. Henry's goal of the day. Returning a man from war has already marred his image of being a potential hero because his thoughts are about himself and not about the welfare of others. The.