Courage vs. Cowardice
In the novella The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane explores a lot of territory involving the subjects that dominate most human conceptions of “War” in his story. In chapters 5-8, we follow Henry as he wins his first fight, and feels like a hero… but as he finds wars are not fought in fights, but in battles.
In the traditional norm, a hero is someone who braves every conflict, who never runs, and fights for what he or she believes in with the full force of their being. Henry of course, falls short of this. While his “red rage” and “acute exasperation of a pestered animal” (33) certainly carries him through the first wave of attack, it falls short when he calms down and the enemy forces attack again. At this he violates another heroic principle “the stoic” as he beginst to run and rationalize himself with thoughts like “He had done a good part in saving himself who was a little piece of the army.” Such acts would not cross the mind of a traditional hero!
However, courage and heroism are subjective, not objective terms. When a little girl faces up to her mean stepfather who in a mature males mind is scrawny, then we can still call that courage, becuase to the little girl, even that scrawny man is a tough opponent. If she is protecting her little brother from the stepfather, then we can call that heroism becuase she is defending something else. Courage is being able to stand up to things that you are scared of, and though you are frightened you punch your way through anyway, and heroism is having the courage to save the things that you hold dear, particularly human life.
I think that the fact that I have read a few Piers Anthony books and delved deep into the question of Heroism after 9/11 have really influenced my thoughts on the matter. Becuase Piers Anthony always includes in his works (though they be pulpish fiction) the idea that a courageous man is one that stands up to fear though he is afraid and a hero is one who works to end the problems that face his ideals. Of course, 9/11 is a terrible event that produced many heros. The firefighters who helped try to calm the blaze that happened after the explosion and even the people on the plane themselves.
Crane is trying to show us that being a hero is something that is subjective by using Henry’s thoughts to show us that he thinks of himself as a practical man for fleeing the battle. The ball that is placed on the words is that he has his animal instincts that rule his fighting, but he has human rationale’s for getting out of there!
