Preview

The Red Badge Of Courage Character Analysis

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1991 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Red Badge Of Courage Character Analysis
In “The Red Badge of Courage” by Stephen Crane written in 1895 and set during the civil war, Crane presents a fiction novel on a young man named Henry wanting to become a U.S soldier who discovers the truth of war. He goes to war and figures out the hard way that war is not the place for him until he meets a man name Tall Soldier and that man he meets and looks up to doesn't make it. From that man dieing it shook Henry up and then Henry really thinks hard and figure that his live is on the line it is either die what he wanted to do or get his stuff together and get the business done so he has to take it serious. Henry retreats from the battle and he come upon a building like structure and inside was a body, the body of the Tall soldier.Henry …show more content…
Henry goes to battle and sees the enemy coming. He is thinking in his head, do i retreat or stay and hold my ground and them off? henry’s thought came quick when he asked himself,” He ran like a rabbit” (Crane 56).He heard a noise in a shelter like build. He ran in there to check it out and to get away and out of the line of fire. He finds the Tall Soldier laying there. Eric Solomon point soul,”The death of Conklin has particular meaning to the hero, just as in Crane’s story, The Open Boat, the stronger personality does not survive the test”(270).The body of the Tall Soldier laying here on the ground in front of Henry really opens his eyes and explains right there what ar is really like and it is not a joke. War is not a game. It impacted the whole book. It made Henry notice that it is time to grow up, be an adult he's not a kid anymore, “He scrambled upon a wee hill and watched it sweeping finley, keeping formation in difficult places”(Crane 59).HE was watching as people were shooting at each other. He has to grow and become a man and go out there and fight like his brothers and sisters that were drafted to come not just because they wanted to. They had to come, they were told to but Henry wanted to come because he wanted to be know as a hero in everyone's eyes. He needs to get out there and fight like a man he wants to be. That is why he signed up and came to war because he loves war and did not think war was as bad as it really is. He did not want to listen to his mom just because she is a female and he doesn't think women know what they are talking about when it comes to war and men

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Braggart Soldier tells the story of a cunning slave’s plan to free himself from his egotistical soldier using a mistress to seduce him. Community tells the story of a group of misfits attending Greendale Community College that form a study group and become best friends despite religious, social, political, academic and age differences. I have chosen the area of characters and the similarities between the Roman Braggart Soldier and NBC/Yahoo’s critically acclaimed hit sitcom Community.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Red Badge of Courage is about a young soldier named Henry Fleming,who is drafted during the war. The book traces the thread of emotions and reactions to events that he goes through, in the civil war. Being an an average farmer from New York, Henry wanted to go to war and become a hero like the ones he has read about in his school. The book starts off with a bunch of boys sitting at camp by the river, and while everyone is thinking about what they will do in war and how heroic they would be, Henry was thinking of how he would react when he goes to the battlefields. How would he react if he was severely injured or even died? Though he said that, no matter what happens he will not run from a fight or a battle, he did, during the second war, when he was scared and he saw a few other soldiers scamper due to the smoke. Henry kept telling himself through and through that he was protecting himself, even when the…

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Red Badge of Courage requires a less restricted from of reference, for Solomon realizes that Crane was not directing his attention against the Cooke-Cable-George Eggleston celebration of heroism. Instead he found his real subject in the psychology of motivation under stress and anticipated a view of warfare which had become almost universal in our own country.”(web) There is not many books that have been published in the view of a young soldier from the civil war period, and this book gives the reader a glimpse inside of solider mind. “The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture of four or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon their knees with bowed heads as if they had been stricken by bolts from the sky. Tottering among them was the rival color bearer, whom the youth saw had been bitten vitally by the bullets of the last formidable volley. He perceived this man fighting a last struggle, the struggle of one whose legs are grasped by demons. It was a ghastly battle. Over his face was the bleach of death, but set upon it was the dark and hard lines of desperate purpose. With this terrible grin of resolution he hugged his precious flag to him and was stumbling and staggering in his design to go the way that led to safety for it.” (book) Solomon really gives credit to Crane for writing his book in this fashion and credits this book one of Cranes best works. “Solomon has an acute sense for telling word and image, and without straining has revealed the complexity of texture in the best of Crane’s work.” (web) After reading the critics work I believe that Solomon wrote this because he agrees with Cranes prospective on how young boys grew into men in a time of war. They all start out scared and weak, but by the end they are strong and mighty. Solomon…

    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly in Stephen Crane’s immortal masterpiece about the nightmare of war was first published in 1895 and brought its young author immediate international fame. Set during the Civil War, it tells of the brutal disillusionment of a young recruit by the name of Henry Fleming who had dreamed of the thrill and glory of war, only to find himself fleeing the horror of a battlefield. Shame over his cowardice drives him to seek to redeem himself by being wounded; earning what he calls the “red badge of courage.” Praised for its psychological insight and its intense and unprecedented realism in portraying the experience of men under fire, The Red Badge of Courage has been a bestseller for…

    • 1873 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    “He, too, threw down his gun and fled. He ran like a rabbit.” (Stephen Crane, page 33). Running away is what basically defines a coward, and that is what Henry does. Just because others were doing it, doesn't make it right. Henry made the choice to join the war, even after his mother warned him, so it was his responsibility to stay and fight. Instead, Henry runs away and tries to convince himself that it was the right thing to do, but deep down he knows that this situation makes him a coward.…

    • 140 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    he book Unwind the character Connor shows he is brave when he take the risk by going through dangerous course. Conner show bravery, “Conner wastes no time and picks the kid off the ground and flips him over his shoulder” (Shusterman 38). When Connor gets close that he sees a cop twenty yards away, raising his weapon at him, he had not wasted any time a ran with a kid and ran without leaving him behind. Secondly, Connor shows bravery with, “Help!” Scream Roland at the top of his lungs. “Help, he’s crazy! Come in here and let me out!” but his scream don’t make it out of the hold. Connor gets up and makes his way to the entrance. ” (Shusterman 249). When Roland is taking a scream for help connor had to help him Connor couldn't help Roland when…

    • 165 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt is a coming of age story about a young man, Holling Hoodhood, who learns over the course of his seventh grade year that there is more to life than what he sees in his own world. With the help of a strict but caring teacher, Mrs. Baker, his flower child sister, Heather, a host of friends and heroes, and even Shakespeare, Hoodhood learns lessons about discrimination, becoming an adult, war, and determining one's own…

    • 82 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Red Badge of Courage

    • 851 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The main character of this book is Henry Fleming, mostly referred to as The Youth or Youth. The Youth has dark, curly brown hair also; he is a young teenager and is average height when compared to the Tall Soldier. Henry is insecure because he is going through a difficult stage between being a "man" and being a "boy". Henry can't wait to get to war when he signs up but during the book Henry learns that war has a lot of affects on people emotionally and physically. Henry's flaw is that he is afraid of making himself look bad and he is worried that he is going to be a coward and run away from battle. Henry really wants to be a "man" and be courageous. I once heard a swim coach give an extremely good definition of courage. He said "To me courage is not to be unafraid but it is to be afraid but one does it anyways and doesn't worry about being afraid. I think Henry thought of courageous as fearless and that is also part of his flaw.…

    • 851 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the beginning of the book, Henry only thought about one thing, himself. Henry makes choices without realizing how they can affect other people. When Henry leaves the battlefield in the beginning of the book, he doesn’t even think about how it affects others. He doesn’t realize that he could get punished for being a coward and leaving the…

    • 711 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Romanticism aimed to glorify and make-beautiful the tragedies of brutality and death. Typical literary accounts of the Civil War up until this time had taken a style of Romanticism, dignifying the nobility of war. Authors would speak little of the emotional trauma and the devastating damage generated by ruthless and barbaric bloodshed. Rather, the focus shifted to courage, valor, and the esteem earned by those who served in the war. Crane takes a shockingly different direction in his story, as well as in his depiction of war. He speaks of the cost of the experience being a loss of innocence. When a man witnesses death, decease, infections, amputations, and even goes so far as to take another man’s life, he no longer sees the world the same way. They lose their child-like nature. Crane achieves this theme by the use of Naturalism (Stephen Crane 1871-1900). The violence is graphic, and the death toll is high. It paints a truly deplorable scene of war. The protagonist of The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Flemming, struggles internally with cowardice and overcoming egoism. While Crane’s character is developing, the battle rages on. He grows under the adverse conditions of war, further showing the effect of intense conflict. Crane uses a detached approach narrative to present an honest image of the tragedy of war. His revolutionary account of the Civil War shocked and…

    • 1103 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen crane shows us Henry Fleming's journey through war. Crane develops Fleming by using animal imagery, patterns of speech, and interactions with other characters.…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Henry hows the greatest fear out of anyone in the novel. Early within the novel he shows his fear. He tried to “mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from battle.” here is where the fear is slowly consuming him. He is completely overwhelmed with fear of dying or running from the battle and this is destroying him. Fear can even corrupt the mind even with Henry. “As his imagination went forward to a fight, he saw hideous possibilities.” Fear at this point has overwhelmed him leading him to mindless thoughts. Henry is slipping fast. Fear has gotten to him and is destroying him.…

    • 625 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Henry is a very strong headed boy and he is brave but I feel as if he was too young to go into battle. He doesn't need to be seeing people bleeding out all over and lying dead on the ground with nothing to look forward to. henry had anxiety growing through his body. Almost every day he would see something terrible and sometimes he even lost people that met a lot to him which destroyed him even more. Eventually the war was over and henry got to go home to his loving…

    • 494 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When someone thinks of a mature person some qualities that might come to mind are honesty, humility, and respect. Unfortunately they are traits that not everyone poses and some may never poses. In the beginning of the novel Henry is a whiney, unrealistic teenager. However overtime he starts to develop some traits that lead to him acting more mature, and adult-like in the environment he is in. In The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Henry goes from being an immature teenager to demonstrating traits of an adult and reevaluates his own personal values of wanting the fame and glory of being a soldier, and also his value of taking responsibility for his actions.…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “‘Here they come!’” With these words the 304th regiment readied themselves for battle as the Confederate Army drew nearer, and Henry prepared himself to face his first moment of truth. In the novel The Red Badge of Courage, written by Stephen Crane, Henry struggled with the notion of what he would do once the time to fight actually came. The internal conflict between his courage and fear is illustrated in chapters 5 and 6, during his first and second battle of the Civil War. His vast difference of reactions to both battles had quite a few related causes.…

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays