Book Report Red Badge Of Courage

Jim eventually runs off the road and dies. Chapter 10 Henry and the man are amazed at Jim Conklin's strength. The man thought Henry was his best friend at back home. Henry runs back to the road and lets the man die.

Henry Fleming (the youth) is the main character in the book Red Badge of Courage. Henry enlists in the Union Army during the US Civil War at a very young age and fights alongside other Union soldiers in his first battle. However when faced with an immediate second battle Henry decides to run and desert his unit. Henry is so tramatized by the dead and wounded soldiers that he sees during his first conflict that he cannot accept walking straight into his own death. So he runs away as fast as he can to save himself.

“It was a good fight, wasn’t it? ‘Yes,’ said the youth shortly.” (Crane, 1957, p.30). In this quote, it shows Henry sarcasm towards that question since he escaped and didn’t see the outcome of the battle. “Where were you hit? repeated the tattered man. ‘Oh,’ began the youth, I—I—that is—oh—” (Crane, 1957, p.31). Bumping into the wounded made Henry’s conscious worse since he left the battle in vain and he doesn’t have a scar from the battle showing his cowardice and his shamefulness for fleeing. “Likely, the soldier is generalizing because he is hurt.) Embarrassed, Fleming does not answer, leaves, and longs for an injury, a red badge of courage"(Mayer, 2009).

The Red Badge of Courage is a story of humility and courage. The setting is during the Civil War with the 304th Regiment. Henry Fleming, the story’s main protagonist has many questions that need to be answered. He questions if he would run away when in the midst of a battle. Henry joined the regiment in hopes of obtaining personal glory. After false rumor after false rumor of moving towards the battle, the 304th regiment loses hope of experiencing battle. The main plot and conflict is introduced when Henry encounters his first battle: the struggle to run for his life or stay and fight until death. During his first battle, fear grips him, but he cannot flee because he is boxed in both left and right. After they push the confederate soldiers back, they are attacked soon yet again and this time Henry runs for it. When he finally stops, he tries to justify his actions by stating that the soldiers are stupid for fighting a lost battle. He comes across a group of soldiers with wounds and envies their “red badge of courage”. After hearing how generals and higher ranked officials talk about his regiment, he becomes enraged, furious. This is the turning point of the story, because he makes something of himself from then on. Henry Fleming chooses to redeem himself in battle by becoming one of the best in the 304th regiment. The climax of the novel

Meanwhile we meet two men, Jim Conklin or "the Tall Soldier" whom Henry has known for years, and Wilson or "the Loud Soldier." Wilson, afraid that he will die in battle, gives Henry a packet of letters to deliver to his family after the war. When the fighting finally starts, Henry doesn’t do too badly. However, when a second round of fighting begins after a brief lull, Henry is terrified and heads for the hills. Afterwards, he tries to rationalize his decision (to himself) by claiming it was simply a survival instinct. He oscillates between a

"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, had a wound, a red badge of courage." (Ch.9, Pg. 61) Jim Conklin, Wilson, and the tattered man are not only alike in some ways, but also have differences. The purpose of this essay is to tell you the similarities between the tall soldier, the loud soldier, and the tattered man, how they are like or unlike Henry Fleming, and what roles these major characters seem to play in the novel.

But the advance did not stop there. Much to their dismay, the Confederates charged again. This time, some of the weary and battered soldiers fled the battle scene afraid for their lives, Henry included. As the story deviates from the battle to Henry, the roars of war die down as well. After fleeing, Henry wandered about in a small forest, only to come across a clearing containing several horseback generals speaking excitedly to each other about the second victory. Ashamed with himself, Henry slowly walked back in the direction in which he came from, not wanting to face his regiment. But during his return trip, he discovered two things: a wounded procession of retreating soldiers and another large group of soldiers running away from something. After meeting and leaving the first group, Henry tried to stop one of the soldiers who was running, but the man, clearly in a hurry, brought up his rifle and whacked Henry over the head, causing him to let go, and stumble about, dazed and injured from the blow. At last, a soldier from his regiment discovered him, and slowly lead him back their camp, where he was given a blanket and a space in a tent to

War can force young soldiers to grow up quickly. In The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He enters the war with romanticized ideas of what war is like, and leaves with those ideas very much changed.

War changes people in many ways, especially the lives of the soldiers in the army. The changes that the soldiers go through are told in many novels, such as The Red Badge of Courage. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane is a coming-of-age novel because Henry Fleming changes from an immature adolescent to a mature man by the end of the novel.

“ The Red badge of courage “ was a great book. The book introduces a boy named Henry, who is the main character in the story. He wants to enlist in the army so he can have his share of showing bravery. He ends up enlisting even though his mother told him that he was not aloud. The conflict however in this story was not Henry's mother, or the fact that he enlisted in the army without permission, but its the way he feels about his first time at war. Henry is afraid that once its time to actually fight, he'll be to afraid and run away from it.

A few days later they started marching and they attacked. This is Henry's and many of the men's first battle, so he and a few others flee from the battle. Then Henry finds Jim after the battle. They talk for a while, then Jim dies. Henry feels guilty so he starts looking for the regiment. He comes across another Union soldier and they get in a fight, the soldier hits Henry on the head with his rifle. Henry makes it back to the regiment and tells them that the wound is from the battle so they won't think that he ran off. Henry is then nursed bye a soldier named Wilson. By morning Henry is ready to fight. He fights several battles and stays on the front lines, in that same day.

He described that he couldn’t escape even if he wanted to. Through this analogy, the reader can see that Henry is reducing the soldiers to unthinking, unfeeling machines, performing their duty without taking into account the threat of injury or death. As he looks around at the faces of the rest of the soldiers in his regiment, he notices their focused commitment to the firing of their rifles. He wonders if he is the only one faced with questions of morality. While the regiment began to advance, Henry was shocked to receive a packet of letters from Wilson, who feared he would die in battle. After the battle, he is glad that he made it through the first day. He begins to lose the romantic vision of war by seeing the realities, but he starts lying to himself about who is really is.

The Red Badge of Courage, written by Stephan Crane in 1895 gives a detailed, yet, fictional account of Henry Fleming, a farm boy who joins the Union Army in the American Civil War. Before Henry is battle-tested, he ponders his courage and questions whether he will be able to fight the urge to flee from battle. Henry does indeed end up deserting his comrades however he ultimately overcomes his guilt and becomes one of the best fighters in his regiment. In order to depict a realistic and relatable war scene, Crane includes Henry’s realistic thought-process and emotion in his struggles to maintain courage. The narrative simply revealed war in a manner that was divergent to all prior forms of literature in the 19th century. Previous novels predominately entailed the glorious and romantic aspects of war rather than the tedious, gritty, and gruesome details of close combat. Instead, Crane broke the barriers of literary norms in war-related literature; the novel depicted a pragmatic experience of combat from the eyes of an inexperienced and frightened youth. In the Red Badge of Courage, Stephan Crane primarily uses religious and gory imagery as well as symbolism to contrast the romantic conceptions of war versus the reality of experiencing battle.

Henry's fears take over, and his only way to achieve his self comfort again is to run away from the battle. Henry uses the forest to calm himself. The forest is where he begins to overcome his selfish ways, he reflects back on the battle and the men, and starts to believe that he can be of help to one or more of the men in the regiment. Henry eventually wins over the fear and joins with another regiment to fight against the rebels.

The Red Badge of Courage is a story of self-discovery. The novel is set during the American Civil War, on multiple battlefields. Henry Fleming is a young soldier fighting for the Union. He first joined the army because he dreams of the glories of battle and performing heroic deeds in battle. Although Henry wishes to be a brave soldier, when in battle, his survival instincts take over, and he begins debating fight or flight. His desire to become a soldier and his instinct to survive introduces the main plot and conflict of the story: During a battle, he runs away. This causes him to see the contradiction in himself and it becomes an emotional conflict for him to solve out the contradiction. Because he is so hung up on the image of the war hero, even though he wasn’t shot at, but hit by a fellow soldier, he lies to his comrades that the wound was a bullet wound. He’s lied once to them about fighting bravely in battle when in actuality he ran away, and he lied again telling them that the head would which he actually got from another soldier was a bullet wound. The climax of the plot occurs when Henry redeems himself at another major battle by fighting bravely and taking up the Union flag when the flag bearer is wounded. He ignores his fears and faces the battle like the hero he’s dreamed of and he overcomes his survival instinct. The resolution happens after the battle is over and Henry survives. He reflects on the decisions he’s made and sees how much he’d