The Red Badge of Courage Chapters II–IV Summary & Analysis

Summary: Chapter II

The next morning, the soldiers learn that Jim was mistaken: the army does not move. Henry continues to worry about his courage, and watches his comrades for any sign that they share his self-doubt. One day, the army is given orders and begins to march. While marching, the soldiers debate when and if they will see battle. Henry keeps to himself, too preoccupied with his own speculations to join the other men. The regiment enjoys itself, and is wildly amused when a fat soldier attempts to steal a horse but the young girl who owns it stops him. At night, the men set up camp, and Henry, feeling “vast pity for himself,” asks Wilson if he can imagine himself running from battle. Wilson indignantly claims that he would do his part in a battle and leaves Henry feeling even more alone.

Summary: Chapter III

The next night finds the increasingly exhausted soldiers marching through a dark forest. Henry worries that the enemy might appear at any moment. When the enemy fails to materialize, Henry returns to thinking that his regiment is nothing more than a “blue demonstration.” One morning, however, Jim shakes Henry awake. They hear the crack of distant gunfire, and the regiment begins to run. Boxed in by his fellow soldiers as the officers goad them toward the battle, Henry realizes that even if he wanted to run, the throng of surrounding soldiers would trample him. Pressed forward, the regiment parts to move around the body of a dead soldier. As he passes the corpse, Henry grows increasingly vulnerable, and curses the commanding officers who, it seems, are leading them to certain death.

The men stop several times, many using branches and stones to build protective trenches which they must abandon as the march drives them forward. The more the regiment moves, the faster the soldiers’ morale wanes. They gradually begin to think that their leaders are incompetent and indecisive. As the fighting draws closer and the sound of gunfire grows louder, Wilson tells Henry that he believes he will die in the battle. He gives Henry a yellow envelope and asks him to deliver it to his family, should he not make it home.

Summary: Chapter IV

The regiment stops in a grove with the chaos of battle raging around them. The regiment’s lieutenant is shot in the hand. The soldiers of the 304th take their place on the line, and veteran soldiers who mock their inexperience surround them. As a group of enemy soldiers thunders toward them, Henry and his regiment load their weapons and prepare to engage. Miserably, Henry remains convinced that when he has to confront the worst that war has to offer, he might distinguish himself not by how bravely he fights, but by how quickly he runs away.

Analysis: Chapters II–IV

The self-doubt awakened in Henry in Chapter I continues to plague him as he draws closer to battle in Chapter II. He oscillates between grand, dramatic fantasies of the “traditional courage” that leads to glory in the field and an innocent belief that the army is never going to fight—that his regiment, rendered impotent by Christian education, constitutes merely a “blue demonstration.” Henry’s experiences eventually shatter these preconceptions. His development into a man who understands that courage, duty, and manhood are complicated and sometimes compromised is the most compelling aspect of The Red Badge of Courage.

Even at this early stage, there are excellent opportunities to scrutinize Henry’s conflicted character. He is incredibly vain, obsesses over his own feelings, and seems unwilling to differentiate between moral behavior and behavior that simply wins him the envy and praise of others. In other words, he is less concerned with duty than with glory. He fears being exposed as a coward, not because cowardice marks a shirking of his responsibilities as a soldier, but because such exposure would deny him an illustrious reputation. After all, Henry’s desire for a noble name prompts his enlistment in the first place—he feels little obligation to earn the title of hero. Rather, the “lavish expenditure” of food, smiles, and compliments that he meets on the way to Washington proves to be enough to make him believe that he deserves such rewards.