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Essay on Survival Of The Human Spirit
The major theme of the novel The Red Badge of Survival by Stephen Crane is the inability to know how one will act when faced with great danger. The Youth's ability to face this fact sets him apart from his comrades at the beginning of the novel. While they boast loudly of how bravely they will fight the enemy, the Youth withdraws alone and broods on his fear of his own inadequacy to face battle. When he does face battle the first time, he finds it so confusing and frightening in its disorganization and noise that he runs. When he faces battle subsequently, not only is he not afraid, he seems oblivious of the danger he is in. Both his valor and his fright are responses to battle that he could not have known ahead of time. The real experience of warfare is that the soldier cannot predict the circumstances that will make him run or stand and fight.
The central theme of the book is survival-what it is and how to get it. When the book opens, Henry Fleming thinks survival is displayed by storybook heroes, the knights and Greek warriors he read about in school. Despite his mother's warning that he cannot fight the whole war alone, Henry thinks he will. That is what survival means to him. Once he joins the army, and sees how horrible war is, he becomes terribly frightened. He worries that he will be a coward.
A number of other characters in the novel show various types of survival. Hasbrouck, the young lieutenant, is always brave, always urging his men forward, and always sticking up for them. Jim Conklin, Henry's friend, is calm and collected, follows orders, and faces death with matter-of-fact dignity. Henry's mother shows survival, too, when she sends Henry off to war even though she loves him and needs his help on the farm....
