Wednesday, July 26, 2006
The Red Badge of Courage-Analysis
ANALYSIS
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
BY STEPHEN CRANE
1. Crane’s fiction is part of American literature’s shift form Romanticism into realism. He is a realist, naturalist, impressionist, and a symbolist.
2. He focused on the problems and details of ordinary life in his generous use of conversational and street language.
3. In The Red Badge of Courage, Crane broke with conventional idealizations of war by showing an individual soldier’s struggle to survive the emotional ravages of combat. Henry was in the midst of turmoil of a conflict, which had to clear meaning to him.
4. He uses objective viewpoint, personifications of nature, and approaches to human suffering.
5. This story is told in episodes. Critics complained that he could not develop a plot. The story was divided into individual scenes.
6. The conflict within Henry was staged between two traits—hero vs. coward.
7 The story is built on a philosophical and symbolic pattern.
8. At the end of the story, Crane does not leave us with moral.
9. Henry Fleming is first a coward, they he is fearful, and finally he is motivated into battle by his egoism.
10. The stream of Henry’s thoughts tells the story, and we, as the reader, must perceive the hero’s environment through Henry’s subjective consciousness.
11. The battle is presumed to be the one fought at Chancellorville.
12. Crane focuses upon one Union Army volunteer.
13. Other characters enter but are only minor and show Henry’s relationship to other soldier and his relationship to the complex war of which he is such an insignificant part.
14. We are in Henry’s consciousness…
-we share his boyish dreams of glory,
-his excitement in anticipating battle action,
-his fears,
-his cowardice and flight,
-his inner justification,
-his wish for a wound,
-his gaining the “false red badge”,
-his secret knowledge of his badge,
-his “earning” his badge as he later fights fiercely and instinctively,
-his joy at thinking of his own bravery and valiant actions,
-and his final feelings.
15. After all Henry has experienced, at the end of the novel, he tells himself that now he is a man.
16. This novel, The Red Badge of Courage, is a work of the imagination that will endure as Crane intended to be…”a psychological portrayal of fear.”
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
BY STEPHEN CRANE
1. Crane’s fiction is part of American literature’s shift form Romanticism into realism. He is a realist, naturalist, impressionist, and a symbolist.
2. He focused on the problems and details of ordinary life in his generous use of conversational and street language.
3. In The Red Badge of Courage, Crane broke with conventional idealizations of war by showing an individual soldier’s struggle to survive the emotional ravages of combat. Henry was in the midst of turmoil of a conflict, which had to clear meaning to him.
4. He uses objective viewpoint, personifications of nature, and approaches to human suffering.
5. This story is told in episodes. Critics complained that he could not develop a plot. The story was divided into individual scenes.
6. The conflict within Henry was staged between two traits—hero vs. coward.
7 The story is built on a philosophical and symbolic pattern.
8. At the end of the story, Crane does not leave us with moral.
9. Henry Fleming is first a coward, they he is fearful, and finally he is motivated into battle by his egoism.
10. The stream of Henry’s thoughts tells the story, and we, as the reader, must perceive the hero’s environment through Henry’s subjective consciousness.
11. The battle is presumed to be the one fought at Chancellorville.
12. Crane focuses upon one Union Army volunteer.
13. Other characters enter but are only minor and show Henry’s relationship to other soldier and his relationship to the complex war of which he is such an insignificant part.
14. We are in Henry’s consciousness…
-we share his boyish dreams of glory,
-his excitement in anticipating battle action,
-his fears,
-his cowardice and flight,
-his inner justification,
-his wish for a wound,
-his gaining the “false red badge”,
-his secret knowledge of his badge,
-his “earning” his badge as he later fights fiercely and instinctively,
-his joy at thinking of his own bravery and valiant actions,
-and his final feelings.
15. After all Henry has experienced, at the end of the novel, he tells himself that now he is a man.
16. This novel, The Red Badge of Courage, is a work of the imagination that will endure as Crane intended to be…”a psychological portrayal of fear.”
# posted by Sister Pat / English @ 5:28 PM 
