Essay Outline For The Red Badge Of Courage
Thesis Statement: Crane’s use of imagery, impressionism, and realism presents a startling picture of war that in effect makes the story an example of anti-war literature.
I. Introduction
II. Imagery
III. Impressionism
IV. Realism
V. Conclusion
“The Red Badge of Courage”: An Anti-War Novel Throughout history, literature has glorified war as a romantic event, where men won honor through acts of heroism. Many novels have been written to this effect. What is war, really, though? The one fact that people seem to forget is that no matter how just or righteous a cause is, war only produces death and destruction. Most war literature is about generals winning their glorious campaigns. Not often is the story told from the viewpoint of the common soldier who is fighting and dying. Few books show this side of war, the ugly …show more content…
It is here that we also see for the first time the deterioration of Henry. While the book shows him as a hero to his fellow soldiers later on in the book during his second battle, a reader can see that this change is not for the best. Henry becomes more animal-like in his actions, more bloodthirsty. How can war be so romantic when a young man can be changed into a killing machine? While it is true that he does mature by losing his naiveté, his change overall is a degeneration to a more primitive, less civilized state of mind. “Combat, far from being an instrument of the heroic spirit, is really an instrument of human waste” (Huff 5) . Crane’s realism shows how he is trying to destroy the romantic ideals of war. “A romantic telling of this story would have emphasized courage, heroism, and glorious death rather than cowardice, fear, and rotting corpses” (Cumberland 2). “The writing style is ahead of its time: a direct reporting style without fancy decoration but presenting the kind of psychological realism that would become standard in the twentieth century” (McMillan
I. Introduction
II. Imagery
III. Impressionism
IV. Realism
V. Conclusion
“The Red Badge of Courage”: An Anti-War Novel Throughout history, literature has glorified war as a romantic event, where men won honor through acts of heroism. Many novels have been written to this effect. What is war, really, though? The one fact that people seem to forget is that no matter how just or righteous a cause is, war only produces death and destruction. Most war literature is about generals winning their glorious campaigns. Not often is the story told from the viewpoint of the common soldier who is fighting and dying. Few books show this side of war, the ugly …show more content…
It is here that we also see for the first time the deterioration of Henry. While the book shows him as a hero to his fellow soldiers later on in the book during his second battle, a reader can see that this change is not for the best. Henry becomes more animal-like in his actions, more bloodthirsty. How can war be so romantic when a young man can be changed into a killing machine? While it is true that he does mature by losing his naiveté, his change overall is a degeneration to a more primitive, less civilized state of mind. “Combat, far from being an instrument of the heroic spirit, is really an instrument of human waste” (Huff 5) . Crane’s realism shows how he is trying to destroy the romantic ideals of war. “A romantic telling of this story would have emphasized courage, heroism, and glorious death rather than cowardice, fear, and rotting corpses” (Cumberland 2). “The writing style is ahead of its time: a direct reporting style without fancy decoration but presenting the kind of psychological realism that would become standard in the twentieth century” (McMillan