Henry Fleming in Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane gives a sarcastic narration for narcissistic behavior.

Dec 16, 2008 Niki Cruz

Throughout the novel Crane writes Henry as a narcissistic, self obsessed, self consumed man. The character becomes so predictable that in turn it becomes humorous.

Crane's depiction is filled with sarcasm, as if he's laughing along with the reader at Henry's disillusionment. The soldiers depicted in The Red Badge of Courage are scared and fearful before battle, but these men have something to prove not only to themselves but to each other. It's set in their minds that the only way to be an honorable soldier is to kill and stand up for one another in the line of fire.

Henry's Disillusioned Self Importance

To understand Henry's disillusionment and lack of progress, is to understand the idealism of the soldiers. Henry in his blatant attempt to posses some inner self importance, takes this value and runs with it into the ground along with his self indulgence. Henry is his own worst enemy. He runs from the battles, accuses his fellow men who didn't follow him out of battle as "idiotic", and then proceeded to be self deprecating because he hasn't been injured yet. Henry wants to be brave and awarded without the consequences and will do everything in his passive aggressive power in order to blanket that. For example, choosing to decide his fate with the finicky behavior of a squirrel that he sees in the woods. If the squirrel flees that he shall too!

Henry's Behavior

It is to understand Henry's behavior throughout the novel before one can truly see that he has made no progress at the novel's end. Yes, Henry finally fights with the men, and yes they win, but at what cost? Henry fights out of guilt for leaving two men behind. He's just as disillusioned as he was in the beginning of the novel. His sense of importance has escalated because he fought. He cites his self importance as being there for the men which is even greater because they managed to win. Because he helped the soldiers, he has absolutely no problem with putting everything else to rest.

This isn't a change or progression for Henry, because he's still making excuses for his mistakes that he made in the past. He's excusing his behavior because he decided to "grow a pair." Any and all the decisions that he's made in this novel has been on the behalf of himself. Even if he took into consideration of the other soldiers, it's always been out of fear of what they might think of him and not their welfare. Henry's behavior like Crane's sarcastic narrative in writing the depiction was constant throughout the novel, and while there was no progression, It was a good laugh at the irony of Henry's stream of conscious, the self indulged banter, and the actions he took to soothe his prattled perception.

ISBN: 1580495869

date of first publication · October 5, 1895

publisher · D. Appleton and Company

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