In The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, the story is told of a teenager named Henry Fleming who enlists in the Union army during the Civil War. He leaves his mother and life at home to become a war hero, but soon realizes that being a soldier isn’t at all what he thought it would be. Fleming enlists expecting instant glory and fame, and when the reality of what war really consists of sets in, he begins to doubt his previous decision to enlist. The Red Badge of Courage is a tale of a teenage boy who leaves for war an egotistical child and comes back a humbled man from his experiences. When the notion of impending battle is first brought up to young Henry Fleming, he starts to worry about what his reaction to being in the heat of battle will be. The longer Henry waits …show more content…
When the time comes to fight, Fleming gets scared and fires blindly into the battle shortly before retreating as the next wave approaches. After his departure from the battle, he ironically returns to the battle from which he previously fled. On his way in, he meets a wave of injured soldiers returning from the battlefront. One particular “tattered soldier” befriends Henry and starts a conversation, but when the soldier inquires about his wounds, Henry evades the question by leaving him and disappearing into the crowd. He continues walking among the injured and eventually sees a veteran in his unit, Jim Conklin, who has been mortally wounded. They’re joined by the “tattered soldier”. Fleming is devastated when Conklin suddenly dies and again dodges the other soldiers question about his wounds. Henry still doesn’t return to his regimen and is soon caught up in another retreat. He tries to stop another soldier to find out what’s going on and receives a swift blow to the head from the butt of the man’s rifle. He’s dazed by this and wanders through the woods until he’s redirected by a fellow soldier