Red Badge Of Courage Essay

The Red Badge of Courage The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane is the story of a young man named Henry Fleming who enlists with the Union Army in the hopes of becoming a war hero. Shortly after enlisting, the reality of his decision sets in. Instead of becoming a hero immediately, he finds himself waiting most of the time. When he finally has his first battle, he fires into the battle haze, never seeing his enemy. As the next battle approaches, Henry begins to run from the field. Even when Henry hears that his army is winning, he still runs in fear. Henry finally slows down and hears of a new battle beginning. He then returns to the same battle field he ran from earlier. On his way to the battle field he sees many wounded men returning from getting medical assistance. Henry meets one of these wounded soldiers who calls himself "a tattered soldier.” They begin to have a conversation and the tattered soldier asks Henry where he is wounded. Henry avoids the question by drifting into the crowd of soldiers. Henry also sees one of the soldiers from his company, Jim Conklin, who is seriously wounded. While Henry is with Jim he suddenly collapses and dies. This really hurts Henry and he becomes very sad. The tattered soldier asks Henry about his wound again. Because Henry can 't explain that he has no wound, he leaves the wounded, tattered soldier in the field. Henry can 't overcome the guilt and that stops him from returning to the battlefield. He then begins to hear the noise of a battle and sees troops heading toward the front. The battle turns against the Union forces, and the men begin to retreat. Henry tries to stop a retreating soldier to find out what is happening but the soldier wants to get away, so he hits Henry on the head with his rifle. This left Henry with a serious head wound. He becomes dazed by the blow and beings to wander back through the woods. Henry then meets another soldier who gets him back to his regiment. When Henry enters his camp, two soldiers, Wilson and Simpson, see his injury and immediately begin treating him. They assume that Henry was hurt in battle but Simpson asks Henry how his injury happened and Henry can 't answer. Right after Henry’s return, his groups is planning to move out. Wilson asks Henry to return a packet of letters that he had given Henry before the first battle. …show more content…
When you first meet Henry, he is a young, eighteen year old boy who just enlisted into the military. At first he is very excited and is fighting but the reality of war quickly sinks in. It’s interesting to see how he reacts to this because death is a huge factor when it comes to fighting in a battle. One of the best parts in this story is seeing how he changes the emotions of guilt and fear into confidence and strength. At first when he leaves the “tattered soldier” out in the field he does not think anything about it but shortly after he realizes exactly what he did. This ignites a fire inside of him that can not be stopped. It was great to see him go from scared and running away from war to being considered one of the best soldiers in his regiment and becoming the color