Red Badge of Courage-Maturing essays

Red Badge of Courage-Maturing essays Every person goes through a natural change in his or her lifetime. This change is the maturation process from childhood to adulthood. This process for some is easier than others. Steven Crane creates a portrayal of the maturation process through his character Henry Fleming in The Red Badge of Courage. For young Henry, the maturation process is a long and hard struggle that takes place through three skirmishes at the battle of Chancellorsville during the American Civil War. In the beginning of the story, it can be easily seen how Henry is still a young immature child. His motives for wanting to sign up for the war effort were shallow and selfish. He did not join the war effort to defend his country but rather to bring glory to himself. To put it rather simply, the youth wanted to be a Hero. Also to add to that, Henry had no real clue of what war was about. "He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life - of vague and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire. In visions he had seen himself in many struggles. He had imagined peoples secure in the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess. But awake he had regarded battles as crimson blotches on the pages of the past. He had put them as things of the bygone with his thought-images of heavy crowns and high castles. There was a portion of the world's history which he had regarded as the time of wars, but it, he thought, had been long gone over the horizon and had disappeared forever(5) When Henry finally gets a taste of war in the first battle, he comes to realize that war isnt what he expected. During this battle, Henry gains a false fear that the regiment is going to leave him in battle alone, so he throws down his rifle and ran like a rabbit(47). After his desertion, he feels ashamed of himself for running and attempts to rationalize his reasons for leaving. He threw a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ra...