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The red badge of courage as a psychological novel
Red badge of courage critical essay
Red badge of courage critical essay
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A reason for Crane to write Red Badge* around Henry Fleming rather than a high officer is to highlight the realism of war through the eyes of a lowly private. Through a third person limited point of view, the reader is able to look at Henry’s thoughts and feelings, or “psychological realism.”* By looking through the eyes of Henry, the reader is able to see his naivety. Henry is a high school-aged soldier with little experience with death. Henry comes from a farm in New York, now he is deeply entrenched in battle inside of Virginia*. As the regiment leaves their encampment and begins the days march to battle, the regiment passes by a dead Confederate soldier. Through Henry’s perspective, the reader sees Henry “desired to walk around and around the body …show more content…
and stare, the impulse of the living to try to read in the dead eyes the answer to the Question” (11).* By witnessing Henry’s curiosity towards death, the reader sees how young he truly is.
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”
(2).** As a participant in battle, Henry witnesses the confusion and chaos of battle firsthand.** As Henry and the regiment fight on the second day of battle, Henry fights as a ***
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.
The Red Badge of Courage is a descriptive novel about the courage one can develop if he/she rises above the fear. Henry Fleming was afraid and cowardly but, saw the look in his comrade's eyes and changed his entire mindset on the battle. Henry is my favorite character and the most like me for these reasons, he changed his entire way of thought for his regiment. This book is a well written Civil War novel on how war changes people not just for the negative but, for the positive
In The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane explores the theme of courage and heroism in depth. He develops these themes through the main character, Henry Fleming. Henry is a naïve young man faced with the harsh realities of war, in this book, some argue that Henry is transformed into a heroic "quiet manhood" while others see Henry as the same young man who ran from battle in the beginning of the book. I think Henry doesn't change, his heroic status acquired at the end of the book isn't truly him, instead he merely is motivated by fear of dying and being rejected by his fellow soldiers.
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.
1. The Red Badge of Courage and The Things They Carried definitely differ with regard to their narrative voices. In the Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, Henry’s thoughts and imagination serve as the foundation for the story that it told in the first person. The narrative voice is a bit confusing because the story is being told as a reflection on Henry’s own interpretations and the way he sees things in his mind. We thus lack knowledge of any of the other’s characters thoughts or feelings. The narration makes it difficult for the reader to detect which of Henry’s perceptions and remarks are accurate, and which are instead influenced by others factors
The Red Badge of Courage is not a war novel. It is a novel about life. This novel illustrates the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Stephen Crane uses the war as a comparison to everyday life. He is semi-saying that life is like a war. It is a struggle of warriors—the every day people—against the odds. In these battles of everyday life, people can change. In The Red Badge of Courage, the main character, Henry Fleming, undergoes a character change that shows how people must overcome their fears and the invisible barriers that hold them back from being the best people—warriors, in the sense that life is war—they can be. Henry has a character change that represents how all humans have general sense of fear of the unknown that must be overcome.
Realism is a literary movement stressing the depiction of contemporary life and society as it exists or existed. In this time period, many authors base their stories off of the materialism, Darwinism, and Marxism. Materialism is the belief of separating people based on their social status. Darwinism is the belief of “survival of the fittest,” meaning one species will always outlast another. Marxism is the belief of how money and class structure controls a nation. In this style of writing, they make the universe unpredictable and make fate determined by chance. In addition, characters’ lives are transformed by their surrounding instead of their internal conflicts. In “The Most Dangerous Game,” Richard Connell uses modernistic and realistic ways of writing such as dominant mood, naturalism, and setting to criticize big game hunting, Darwinism, and the Russian Civil War and its effect on people.
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.
The Transformation of Henry Fleming in The Red Badge of Courage 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. Among the death and repulsion of war, there exists a single refuge for the warrior--his brethren.
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.
In the Red Badge of Courage, main character Henry Fleming, is faced with many obstacles and tough situations that he must deal with. Nature and the physical environment around Henry, play a big role in the decisions that he makes, the actions that he takes and the re-evaluation of lifes values he later takes.
If it was not for Stephen Crane and his visionary work than American Realism would not have taken hold of the United States during the eighteen hundreds. During the years following the Civil War America was a melting pot of many different writing styles. Many scholars argue that at this time there was still no definite American author or technique. Up to this point authors in the Americas simply copied techniques that were popular in regions of Europe. Stephen Crane came onto the scene with a very different approach to many of his contemporaries. He was a realist, and being such he described actions in a true, unadorned way that portrayed situations in the manner that they actually occurred (Kaplan). He had numerous admired pieces but his most famous work was the Red Badge of Courage (Bentley 103). In this novel he illustrates the accounts of a Union soldier named Henry Fleming. At first the writing was considered too graphic and many people did not buy the book. Eventually the American people changed their opinions and began to gravitate towards Crane’s work. The readers were fascinated by the realistic environment he creates even though he himself had never fought in a war (Bentley 103). By spreading the influence of realistic writing Crane has come to be known as the first American Realist.
9. In Chapter 17 of The Red Badge of Courage, Crane uses feelings and emotions to describe one of the attacks the soldier went through. Using the phrase “he began to fume with rage and exasperation” gives the reader a good description of the personal mindset of the soldier and how the environment shifted his mentality. This can also be seen in the description as the soldier “scowled with hate at the swirling smoke that was approaching like a phantom flood.” This hatred relates solely to the trepidation the soldiers felt within their surroundings of the
113-117. Modern Critical Interpretations: Stephan Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Cody, Edwin H. Stephen Crane. Revised Edition.