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 …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