Dehumanization in the Red Badge of Courage

Dehumanization The novel The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane forcefully depicts an epic adventure though war where the men fight for their lives. These men are subject to a scene which scars and destroys the human consciousness. The result of the war and its bloody landscape causes men to lose basic human judgment and replaces it with mindless violence. All of the men are stripped of what makes them unique and are subject to a merciless war. It is clear as shown by Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage the men are dehumanized into a drone state forced upon them by war. Evidence of the dehumanizing effects of war is revealed even in the first chapter. Henry, a universal symbol of the everyman in the novel, questions his courage to be able to go into war. Before he has even experienced war, his consciousness alerts him that his will be a demanding challenge. He makes assumptions which change throughout the novel as more and more battles occur. He admits that he believes that war only exists to make heroes, and he believes that when he comes home, he will be respected and well received. He does not take into account that he very well could not make it through the night. He admits he feels lost in this passage from chapter one:

He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity. He saw that he would again be obliged to experiment as he had in early youth. He must accumulate information of himself, and meanwhile he resolved to remain close upon his guard lest those qualities of which he knew nothing should everlastingly disgrace him. (Crane)
Henry and his conscious are undoubtedly unprepared for the future to come. He does not have the experience to know what lies ahead and in confusion begins to lose his fundamental ideas and really questions his ethics. The loss of ethics shows the dehumanizing effects already taking place before he has even experienced war.