The Red Badge of Courage is not a war novel. It is a novel about life. This novel illustrates the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Stephen Crane uses the war as a comparison to everyday life. He is semi-saying that life is like a war. It is a struggle of warriors—the every day people—against the odds. In these battles of everyday life, people can change. In The Red Badge of Courage, the …showed first 75 words of 808 total…

…showed last 75 words of 808 total…in order to accomplish the very same thing, surviving death. This is basic human nature. Henry’s ordeal is a small look at how humans need to overcome the fear of what they are doing in order to function at maximum capacity at what they are doing. The battle of life is won by compensating for one’s weakness by challenging and defeating that weakness, as Henry Fleming did in The Red Badge of Courage.