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The red badge of courage is about a young boy named Henry Flemming and his experiences in the Union army. He is a young boy just old enough to enlist in the army. It is safe to say the book is about Henry’s introduction into manhood. Henry thinks that war is no longer a mans battle but a battle of a man behind a machine. He does not know if he will be brave before the conflict but he pictures himself doing great deeds and selfless acts in the heat of the battle.Some of the lessons Henry learns during the heat of the battle are very profound into entering manhood.

In the first battle he learns that sometimes you don’t need to think and be the smartest person in the battle field to survive but you should rely on your instincts rather than your brains. He quotes that you need to fight like an automatic affair. He thinks that the person with the best state of mind in a battle will survive.

In the second skirmish Henry losses control of himself and runs from the battle. Henry undergoes a series of experiences that lead to the finding of a rotting body. Here he learns that he cannot rely on god to help him through this struggle. He realises that the animals have no religion so they feed on the body. But the man chose to kill himself in the chapel like grove of trees so he would feel close to god.

In The fourth phase of the battle Henry gets minorly injured while wandering behind the lines of me fighting. He feels great regret in leaving his companions behind. He finds a man in his last minuets of life and he watches him die a horrible death. After moving on after the mans death he finds a man walking through the forest like a drunken man. He later finds that the man is mortally wounded and is in the last hours of his life. He is really ashamed when the man is more concerned about Henry’s wound rather than his own.

The red badge of courage was written by Stephen Crane. It was a 1895 war novel. It was base on the American civil war. The book was very hard to follow. The reason I think this happened is because it was writen over 100 yaers ago and the litreture is very different then. You would have to be a experienced reader to undersstand this book and to follow its plot. I would recomend it to young audults intrested in the American Civil war.