Courage And Manhood In Steven Crane's The Red Badge

Henry fled from the second battle because he did not fully understand the responsibility of being at war. He was just a boy trying to do what’s right. Angst and inner conflict welled within his conscience from participating in the first battle, but the lieutenant of his regiment filled his and his comrades’ spirit full of false security and bravery, making the first battle easier to bear.

Henry feels he's overcome his fears, until the enemy charges again. Henry, no longer feeling part of the team, pictures the enemy as super human soldiers about to trample him. He runs. He overhears generals celebrating their victory. Chapter 7 Henry resents the victory, accusing his fellow soldiers of being stupid and lucky.

Henry’s confidence does not last for a long time. The realities of the battle become a reality and cause his fear and doubt to reappear. Henry goes from being happy because he was able to fight the enemy in the first battle to being anxious at the beginning of a second

When faced with adversities early into his first battle, he quickly reconsidered his views on war and courage. By running away from the face of battle, Henry “saw his vivid error, and he was afraid that it would stand before him all his life” (Cane 24.30).  This pushed him into believing that he would never be a man of courage of masculinity. This “error” of running away caused Henry to be angry at himself for mistakenly thinking the battle was over and abandoning his fellow soldiers. While away from the battle Henry discovers “that he had a scorching thirst” and “his body was calling for food” (Cane 11.21). From the struggle of war and the experience of Wilson, Henry learns to reflect upon his life and learn from his mistakes, rather than being angry at himself. This allowed Henry to be influenced by the culture around him, shaping him into acknowledging that courage was not depicted by a gunshot or a wound, but by the act of adhering to the line of duty and learning from your

Henry's epiphany occurs in the following "battle". He discards the expectations of his peers and declares his individuality and courage by seizing the flag from the dead color sergeant and waving it before the regiment. He risks death as the easiest of targets and thus displays his courage and strength. The seizing of the flag is Henry's ultimate rite of passage. He discards the terrified and cautious youth he enlisted as and becomes a mature, courageous adult. His reach for the flag proves he is as brave and courageous as the warriors whose stories dazzled him as a boy.

As he walks along with them one solider takes a liking to Henry and wants to befriend him. In doing so he ignites conversation about how he and his regiment fought valiantly. As he talks about his regiment sincerely he “breathed a deep breath of humble admiration” (678) which causes Henry to feel even more guilt for fleeing his regiment. As Henry continues to walk with the wounded soldiers he labels their wounds as red badges of courage, for these troops stayed with their regiments to fight and have the marks to prove it. All Henry ever wants is to be have a red badge of courage, and he realizes from these soldiers that to gain this badge, sacrifices such as giving up fear were

After he picks up the flag, the battle is very intense, he looks around and notices that people are falling back so he yells to encourage them to not run and be brave. This is very heroic because before, Henry ran from battles. Now he is helping people stay to fight out battles, showing that he has matured and become fearless of battle. When Henry is encouraging them, he says, ‘“Come on! come on!”

Initially, he found “a little panic-fear grew in his mind” (Crane 6), raising his level of anxiety about how he would react when the first shots of battle exploded around him. Eventually fear engulfed him and he “threw down his gun and fled” (Crane 30). In this moment, Henry realized how his fear drove him toward the cowardly act of desertion. However, the next day, Henry finds his fear replaced with a “wild hate for the relentless foe” (Crane 70) who would not allow him to rest. Regardless of the selfish cause of Henry’s rising anger, the results were a newly lit fire fueling his drive to battle the enemy. The transformation of Henry’s fear into vengeful anger allowed him to act as the courageous soldier he always desired to

The Red Badge of Courage. New York City, New York: D. Appleton & Company. 1895.

As the battles continue, Henry dedicates himself to fighting. He starts working with his soldiers, and not only focusing on himself. He no longer wants approval from the other soldiers, because he knows what he does is right and has a significant amount of self affirmation. This shows his maturation and

Red Badge of Courage The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, is a war novel about the meaning of courage, taking place during the American Civil War. This novel is told through the eyes of Henry Fleming, a young Union Army recruit. Henry enlisted in the Union Army with romantic notions about the glories of war, but shortly after enlisting he quickly discovers sides of himself he never knew existed. The novel shows the transition of Henry Fleming, from a naïve young boy, to a new role as a man and a hero.

“The Youth,” which Henry is referred to as, dreamt of glory in battle and being a hero (Crane 2). That is the reason why Henry enlisted himself; even though he told his comrades he was forced to be in the army. His mother’s farewell speech is ironic because he thought that she would give him a tearful and long speech, but all she really said was to “Watch out, and be a good boy” (4). She does not want Henry to be a hero even though that is what he went to war for. She told Henry that she will be fine if he does not return home. Henry tries to pull off being a confident and good soldier, while in the reality he is very nervous about what will happen in battle. Throughout the novel, he questions his courage and if he would run from battle. At an early battle, Henry continuously fires at the enemy line and feels like he is a courageous soldier. However, soon after this battle, another one erupts and Henry runs from it. This is

Most Americans didn’t really understand what was going on during battle, mostly during the time of the civil war because up to this point we we hadn’t had a war that had been this deadly and gruesome. One of the most prominent themes that you see throughout the book is courage; as the novel opens, Henry’s view of being courageous is traditional and romantic. He assumes that, he will return from the war either with or without his shield. Henry’s understanding of courage has more to do with the praise of his peers than any internal measure of his

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.