The Red Badge of Courage Study Guide

As the title of the work suggests, the main theme of the novel deals with Henry Fleming's attempt to prove himself a worthy soldier by earning his "red badge of courage". The first twelve chapters, until he receives his accidental wound, expose his cowardice. The following chapters detail his growth and apparently resulting heroism. Before the onset of battle, the novel's protagonist romanticized war; what little he knew about battle he learned from books: "He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see it all". Therefore, when confronted by the harsh realities of war, Henry is shocked, and his idealism falters. Finding solace in existential thoughts, he internally fights to make sense of the senseless world in which he finds himself. When he seems to come to terms with his situation, he is yet again forced into the fears of battle, which threaten to strip him of his enlightened identity. Joseph Hergesheimer wrote in his introduction to the 1925 Knopf edition of the novel that, at its heart, The Red Badge of Courage was a "story of the birth, in a boy, of a knowledge of himself and of self-command."

However, the text is ambiguous, making it questionable that Henry ever matures. As critic Donald Gibson stated in The Red Badge of Courage: Redefining the Hero , "the novel undercuts itself. It says there is no answer to the questions it raises; yet it says the opposite.... It says that Henry Fleming finally sees things as they are; it says he is a deluded fool. It says that Henry does not see things as they are; but no one else does either." Although Crane critic and biographer Stallman wrote of Henry's "spiritual change" by the end of the story, he also found this theme difficult to champion in light of the novel's enigmatic ending. Although Henry "progresses upwards toward manhood and moral triumph", as he begins to mature by taking leave of his previous "romantic notions," "the education of the hero ends as it began: in self deception." Critic William B. Dillingham also noted the novel's heroism paradox, especially in terms of the introspective Henry's lapse into unreasoning self-abandon in the second half of the book. Dillingham stated that "in order to be courageous, a man in time of physical strife must abandon the highest of his human facilities, reason and imagination, and act instinctively, even animalistically."

The indifference of the natural world is a reoccurring theme in Crane's work. At the beginning of the novel, as the regiments advance toward battle, the sky is described as being an innocuous "fairy blue." In chapter seven, Henry notes the inexplicable tranquility of nature, "a woman with a deep aversion to tragedy", even as the battle rages on. Similarly, Heaven itself is indifferent to the slaughter he encounters on the battlefield. The dichotomy between nature's sweetness and war's destructiveness is further described in chapter eighteen: "A cloud of dark smoke as from smoldering ruins went up toward the sun now bright and gay in the blue, enameled sky." After his desertion, however, Henry finds some comfort in the laws of nature, which seem to briefly affirm his previous cowardice:

This landscape gave him assurance. A fair field holding life. It was the religion of peace. It would die if its timid eyes were compelled to see blood.... He threw a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ran with chattering fear. High in a treetop he stopped, and, poking his head cautiously from behind a branch, looked down with an air of trepidation. The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the law, he said. Nature had given him a sign. The squirrel, immediately upon recognizing danger, had taken to his legs without ado. He did not stand stolidly baring his furry belly to the missile, and die with an upward glance at the sympathetic heavens. On the contrary, he had fled as fast as his legs could carry him.