, Research Paper

The Red Badge of Courage is non a war novel. It is a novel about life. This fresh illustrates the tests and trials of mundane life. Stephen Crane uses the war as a comparing to mundane life. He is semi-saying that life is like a war. It is a battle of warriors the every twenty-four hours people against the odds. In these conflicts of mundane life, people can alter. In The Red Badge of Courage, the chief character, Henry Fleming, undergoes a character alteration that shows how people must get the better of their frights and the unseeable barriers that hold them back from being the best people warriors, in the sense that life is war they can be. Henry has a character alteration that represents how all worlds have general sense of fright of the unknown that must be overcome.

In the first portion of the novel, Henry is a young person that is really inexperient. His motivations were impure. He was a really selfish and self-seeking character. He enters the war non for the footing of functioning his state, but for the attainment of glorification and prestigiousness. Henry wants to be a hero. This represents the natural human feature of selfishness. Worlds have a privation and a demand to fulfill themselves. This was Henry s chief motivation throughout the first portion of the novel. On more than one juncture Henry is resolved to that natural selfishness of human existences. After Henry realizes that the attainment of glorification and gallantry has a monetary value on it. That monetary value is by lesions or worse yet, decease. Henry so becomes self-serving in the fact that he wants to last for himself, non the Union ground forces. There is many a clip when Henry wants to warrant his natural fright of decease. He is at a point where he is oppugning abandoning the conflict ; in order to warrant this, he asks Jim, the tall soldier, if he would run. Jim declared that he d thought about it. Surely, thought Henry, if his comrade ran, it would be all right if he himself ran. During the conflict, when Henry really did take flight, he justified this selfish title selfish in the fact that it did non assist his regiment keep the Rebs by natural inherent aptitude. He proclaimed to himself that if a squirrel took flight when a stone was thrown at it, it was all right that he ran when his life was on T

he line. This was a selfish ground for flying, in the wide sense.

Henry s fright of decease was a natural human fright that would non work in a war. This is where Henry s character alteration took topographic point. In mundane life, worlds frequently go about their natural concern non believing at about what they are making. Henry, in a sense, represented this in his war attempts. Henry was so busy believing about decease and running and all these selfish thoughts about the war that he could non run as a good soldier. A good soldier is one that goes about contending, killing, supporting and even deceasing for the cause. These may non be great things, but they are what soldiers do. Henry was the prototype of non making these soldier s undertakings. In order for Henry to make his occupation the best, he had to go unreflective. This was a altruistic act instead than a selfish act that would profit the ground forces, instead than impede it. Once Henry got past his unseeable barrier, his fright, he was able to go an unreflective war machine. This is similar to mundane life. For worlds to make the best occupation possible, whatever it may be, they must non believe. If they think excessively much about the undertaking at manus, they will go bemused with it and neglect. This was Henry s job ; he overcame his fright of decease and became the war machine. As an unreflective machine, Henry altruistically sacrificed his consciousness and became an outstanding soldier. In bend, his replete kicked in, and he was able to last the quandary he was in.

The character alteration in The Red Badge of Courage illustrates the at odds nature of human inherent aptitude. The replete wants to function itself, but it can non function itself if it is preoccupied with itself, such as in Henry s instance. Henry s quandary in The Red Badge of Courage shows how he had to get the better of his self-seeking fright of decease in order to carry through the really same thing, lasting decease. This is basic human nature. Henry s ordeal is a little expression at how worlds need to get the better of the fright of what they are making in order to map at maximal capacity at what they are making. The conflict of life is won by counterbalancing for one s failing by disputing and get the better ofing that failing, as Henry Fleming did in The Red Badge of Courage.