In Stephen Crane's Red Badge Of Courage, a young soldier discovers not only the bitter-sweet sides of war, but himself as well. Throughout the work, Crane takes us, as well as the youth, on a journey to reveal the truth of warfare, and its effects on an individual. The tale is compromised .
of many pitfalls and plateaus, and Crane utilizes different literary elements to convey these .
scenarios to the reader. Impressionism, naturalism, color imagery, religious imagery, and word .
systems are all taken advantage of to convey the main theme of this story; In battle, man loses .
perspective.
Impressionism, a literary technique used to portray a character's thought as opposed to .
objective reality, is consistently allowing the youth to lose sight of reality. Often times, Henry, the .
protagonist, views his surroundings in a completely different fashion then they are actually .
occurring. He seems to do this mostly to justify his actions. It appears to be when he has made the .
wrong decision that he prefers to find a way to vindicate his mistake instead of just confessing to his .
erroneous ways. A prime example of this type of behavior is in the 5th chapter, where Henry runs .
away from battle, and then attempts to rationalize his actions by convincing himself that he was not .
alone in his decision and that it was in fact the smartest thing to do. Henry even went as far as .
making himself believe that he had acted heroically. It is at points like this in the story that we .
realize how young Henry still is, and that it is often the tendency of a younger person to pass the .
blame, and not take responsibility for their own actions and decisions.
.
Naturalism, an extreme form of realism with a deeply rooted interest in nature, is used quite .
effectively in this work. Crane applies it to this book by viewing humans as animals in a natural .
world over which they have no control and are led by the examples set forth in nature, again .
