Although The Red Badge of Courage is a war novel, it focuses mainly on the internal experience of the main character rather than the exterior war around him. The protagonist, Henry Fleming, enlists in the American Civil War for the Union Army but flees from his first battle for fear of his own life. At first, he feels a great sense of unity and strength from the amount of men who are in his regiment, but during his first combat experience he flees because he thinks about his own individual safety. Henry enlisted in this war because he wanted to be a part of something bigger and more important than himself. His decision to flee left him feeling cowardly, humiliated, and even jealous of the men who held their ranks and received battle wounds in the fight. After fleeing, he runs into a group of wounded soldiers, one of whom is described as “tattered” asks Henry where he is injured. Henry avoids the question but this makes him feel even more guilty about leaving his comrades mid battle. Henry leaves these men and finds a group of soldiers retreating. During this retreat, Henry is accidentally hit on the head with a rifle and injured. Eventually, he finds his way back to his regiment expecting to be shamed. However, the soldiers think his injury is from a bullet graze and so they treat his wound instead of calling him a deserter. This gives him a second chance and in his final battle he proves himself to be a valuable soldier. He takes on the role of the flag-bearer after his Sergeant dies. Henry faces his fears and becomes a hero when he leads a charge against the Confederates while completely unarmed. The Confederates retreat and Henry’s newfound bravery makes him a hero. This story is about Henry’s trials and tribulations that allowed him to develop into a hero.
6 thoughts on “Developing Hero”
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I think Henry’s experience is to some extent based on coincident. If he did not hit his head and had been considered as a solider injured in the battle field, there might not be the psychological changes that we saw in the book later on, and Henry might just ended up as a coward who ran away from the battle field.
I agree that Henry’s story is very coincidental. The fact that he does just happen to get injured in an almost artificial way (or as you say by pure coincidence) compared to the other soldiers who received their “badges” in true battle is extremely interesting especially because the way he receives the injury is by stopping a fleeing soldier, someone in the same position he had been in earlier. It’s almost as if the benefits he reaped from war (manhood and courage) are actually not inherent of war, but again merely gained by Henry during the war by coincidence.
It seems that Henry is really given a second chance to try and become the hero he desires to be. He coincidentally gets injured so that others around him don’t realize he is a coward. With this “injury” he is able to turn himself around and become the courageous soldier he wants to be.
I like how you bring up how he accidentally gets hit in the head with the rifle while fleeing from battle. It leads to the major turning point for Henry in the novel. He gets treated for his head injury as if he got shot. This allows Henry to learn something about himself as a person and a soldier; you must be courageous at all times and be willing to fight alongside your brothers in arms and help them when they need you.
What’s worth noting is that Henry’s heroism was not an innate characteristic of himself but rather one earned through suffering from the events of the story. In the beginning, Henry is just a kid playing soldier but as the story progresses and he enders hardship he becomes a hero in his own right.
I do agree that Henry’s story was coincidental. Gaining the “Red Badge of Courage” allowed him to have the respect of other soldier for his sacrifice. The psychological changes towards the end of the book are in direct relation with this scenario, and it gave him the strength and respect to complete his goal of being a war hero.