And Henry looks at the world at him in a different way. He now thinks of himself as a "man" who has gone through something horrible and survived. He moves toward the ray of sun.
Not everyone agrees about the ending. Some think that it is positive, because Henry has been in war and learned how to accept it and be brave. Others feel that he is again lying to himself. He is telling himself that he was able to cope, when he really did not. Those who believe the second ending, say the world away from war is not sunny and carefree. Henry still is a young man living with his dreams. Can he really forget the horrors and think he is a hero?
Crane is saying that even living from day-to-day in the natural world is very complicated and difficult, even without the horrible aspects of war. Even though Henry is blinded by "a golden ray of sun" that breaks through the clouds, his world will not be perfect from now on. His dreams will end and he will see the real world. Part of him will always remember the horrible things that he saw in the battles and how he lied. Maybe he can continue to lie to himself. May he can't.
No matter what the ending means, the rest of the book is very clear. It tells in a lot of detail how horrible war is. The book has little detail about the locations and soldiers, such as "the youth," so it can be any one fighting in any war, from the Civil War to the one that is in Iraq today. Without some detail about the characters, the readers become the soldiers. They begin to walk in the shoes of the infantry and become part of the battles.
The beginning "And at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness,...
Red Badge of Courage and Nabokov on "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" One of the easiest ways to understand how literature can implicitly function as propaganda in the service of the powerful is to imagine Henry Fleming, the main character of Stephen Crane's novel The Red Badge of Courage, if he had chosen to return home following his desertion rather than stay with the military. Crane's novel is a shameless piece
.. It was a goddess, radiant, that bended its form with an imperious gesture to him. (Conrad 81) Crane thus suggests how the heat of battle becomes focused on a symbol, in this case the flag, and soldiers emerge from battle with this new symbol clearly in mind. The imagery used makes an association between the flag and a goddess, thus indicating a sexual appeal at the same time. Henry changes in
Red Badge Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage offers remarkable psychological insight into the experience of war. With vivid detail sparing nothing, Crane shows the reader the brutality of war. More importantly Crane shows how one soldier confronts his own mortality and fear. Although Red Badge of Courage takes place during the Civil War and the setting is striking, the novel centers on psychological conflict far more than social or political
Red Badge of Courage and the Things They Carried both use the experience of war to highlight changes in the characters' self-perception and perception of the world. In both stories, the protagonists struggle with societal expectations and especially with normative masculinity, which is intimately linked with the experience of being in battle. Courage is a central theme in both stories, and becomes an elusive ideal for protagonists Lieutenant Cross and
Red Badge of Courage Realism and naturalism are two separate but related literary terms. The former is a term which refers to any art form which endeavors to recreate a true-to-life sensibility even in a fictional work. Naturalism on the other hand refers to the natural laws which give order to human beings and also to the natural world. Works of art which utilize realism and naturalism try to duplicate
At first, he flees from battle, convinced that the charge he embarks upon is doomed to failure. He justifies his action by rationalizing that a single man leaving makes little difference to the whole mission. However, Fleming learns that in fact the army won a victory, and begins to feel guilty. Worse yet, when he returns the men assume that he was wounded in battle, even though he only has
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