The Red Badge of Courage

The woods are quiet as the sun sets. Soon, the crashing of opposing armies sounds nearby, and Henry runs toward the commotion. He becomes aware of a far larger battle raging all around him, dwarfing his own experience, and notes the smallness of the individual soldier in the scheme of things.

At the heavily overgrown edge of the forest, he peers out for a better look. As he catches sight of the distant battle, a morbid curiosity spurs him toward it. On approach, he sees corpses littering the landscape and feels like an invader. Closer to the waning battle, he sees injured, maimed, and dying men attempting to hold up in a myriad of emotional states from laughter to sullen anger. Henry stealthily joins their marching procession.

Marching, Henry falls in with a seriously injured man of roughly his own age. In innocent awe, the man attempts to commiserate with Henry about the great fight in which he’s just participated, and Henry attempts to avoid him. Finally, the man asks Henry where he’s been hit, and Henry, ashamed, slinks further into the crowd to avoid the question.

Still walking among the war wounded, Henry walks self-consciously among his fellow soldiers. He envies their war wounds: “He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage” (43).

One mortally wounded man with an ashen grey face attracts the attention of a crowd of soldiers, who wonder what to do with him. The man rejects their attempts to help. Soon, Henry recognizes him: It is Jim Conklin, the man with whom he discussed issues of fear and courage earlier. Jim tells Henry that his greatest fear is that he’ll fall and that the artillery wagons will crush his corpse. Henry devotes himself to Jim’s care, but Jim begs Henry to lay him out on the side of the road. A tattered soldier nearby concurs.

With an uncanny burst of energy, Jim runs toward a nearby field, with Henry and the tattered man following him. Jim picks a place and lies down. Henry and the tattered man are witnesses to Jim’s final, dying convulsions. Afterward, Henry is horrified and angry.

The tattered man is less affected by Jim’s death, announcing that Jim was a “reg’lar jim-dandy” and that the two of them “might as well begin t’look out fer ol’ number one” (47). For the first time, Henry notices that the tattered man himself is wounded and uncertain on his feet, though far from death. Both men stop to consider the corpse a moment before returning to the march.

The tattered man jokes about his children at home and about how he would have kept fighting if one of his friends hadn’t pointed out that he’d been shot in two places. He notes that his wound is small and wants to ensure that Henry’s wound doesn’t require immediate attention. Again, Henry bitterly rebuffs the man’s inquiry. He leaves the worried man behind to the march, crosses a fence, and disappears into a nearby forest. Henry is plagued by self-hatred and wishes he were dead.

Later, Henry watches a large movement of what appear to be friendly retreating troops, and he is oddly encouraged by their number. Soon, however, he sees a new group of charging infantry heading toward the battle, and he returns to feelings of shame.

As he thinks more about the heroism of the men marching forward, he begins to rekindle courage in himself. He imagines himself returning to the battle in glory, but he soon remembers that he’s lost his gun. He goes back and forth this way, conflicted within himself, and his courage is deflated.

Hunger and thirst begin to plague him. In shame, he realizes that he is rooting for the destruction of his side’s army to better disguise his own retreat. He imagines public opprobrium falling upon the generals, for whom he can muster no sympathy, and retroactive vindication for his own foresight in running away. Recrimination and thoughts of self-harm soon follow. Thinking again about his return, he begins to imagine a tale he can tell his fellow soldiers, but nothing to his mind feels adequate. He imagines ridicule and rebuke from his peers.

The brave infantry he saw charge into battle now bursts from the trees in retreat. The men, in their panic and fright, charge straight at Henry, and he, too, panics. He begins reaching out for the men, and one of them swings a rifle butt into Henry’s skull. The blow nearly knocks him unconscious, but he struggles hazily to his feet. He feels for the wound, and his hand comes away bloody. As he wanders away from the scene, he hears friendly artillery turn and fire at the advancing enemy.

He wanders down the road in the dark of night, surrounded by distant voices. He worries over his swelling wound. He thinks nostalgically of home and loses his way in rose-colored memories of swimming in a shaded pool and of his mother’s home cooking. He is overcome by immense weariness and debates laying down by the side of the road.

Soon a cheery voice appears at his side, pointing out Henry’s injured and weary appearance. A firm hand grasps the boy’s arm, and Henry is held up by the stranger, walking side by side with him. The stranger seems very knowledgeable of the war’s formations and various regiments, yet talks like a common soldier, sympathetic with the struggles and fears Henry shares. Through gentle questioning he finds out Henry’s rank and regiment and expertly navigates a series of patrol officers until they come upon a thickly peopled forest, with a fire blazing. The stranger points out Henry’s regiment and then disappears without ever having identified himself to Henry.