The Red Badge of Courage :: essays research papers

Chapter 1 AnalysisStephen Crane begins a sore course of realism in The cherry-red Badge of Courage. Many critics fleck to him as one of the world-class the Statesn authors of a modern style, and The Red Badge as a fine example of this. The novel is construct on a coming-of-age theme, and many of its descriptive elements, such as its assimilation on nature and characters actions, be in the realist style, most popularized in America by William Dean Howells and Frank Norris. However, Cranes style in this book has more or less slight differences from earlier styles. The narrator does not name the characters. In the first-class honours degree chapter, we discover the names of Henry and Jim only through their dialogue with separate characters. The narrator only refers to them by descriptors"the tall soldier" in Jims fictional character and, most importantly, "the young soldier" in Henrys case. Calling Henry "the youth" is the most important indicator th at this novel is about his maturity. In this first chapter, he is unproven however to himself. Before enlisting, Henrys thoughts of war and battle are those of valiant struggles for life and death the possibility of cowardice does not maturate in his initial thoughts of battle. However, his mothers speech leaves much more room for construe his own future struggles. Rather than give him the advice of the Spartans of ancient Greece to "return carrying your protect or on top of it" (meaning either victorious or killed in combat, not having dropped it fleeing), his mother enounces him that, when confront with a situation of kill or be killed, he has to do what he thinks is right, and only that. This is a deprecative moment in the plot of the book. Henrys actions when facing battle are unknown, nevertheless to him. His convictions were strong enough to join the army. Yet these were not because of patriotism or a will to simply fight the narrator shows Henry to be fantasizi ng of heroic deeds instead. His mothers farewell speech shows that no one, not even Henry or the narrator, is sure what he will do when faced with battle. Even Jims answers, while they calm Henrys fears, still are so wispy that they do not lead to any concrete predictions for their future actions in battle. Yet Crane has written into this novel a way to tell certain characteristics even without explicit direction from the narratorthe use of garble metaphors.