Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
Courage
Given the novel’s title, it is no surprise that
courage—defining it, desiring it, and, ultimately, achieving it—is
the most salient element of the narrative. As the novel opens, Henry’s
understanding of courage is traditional and romantic. He assumes
that, like a war hero of ancient Greece, he will return from battle
either with his shield or on it.
Henry’s understanding of courage has more to do with the praise
of his peers than any internal measure of his bravery. Within the
novel’s first chapter, Henry recalls his mother’s advice, which
runs counter to his own notions. She cares little whether Henry
earns himself a praiseworthy name; instead, she instructs him to
meet his responsibilities honestly and squarely, even if it means
sacrificing his own life.
The gap that exists between Henry’s definition of courage
and the alternative that his mother suggests fluctuates throughout The Red
Badge of Courage, sometimes narrowing (when Henry fights well
in his first battle) and sometimes growing wider (when he abandons
the tattered soldier). At the end of the novel, as the mature Henry
marches victoriously from battle, a more subtle and complex understanding
of courage emerges: it is not simply a function of other people’s
opinions, but it does incorporate egocentric concerns such as a
soldier’s regard for his reputation.
Manhood
Throughout the novel, Henry struggles to preserve his
manhood, his understanding of which parallels his understanding
of courage. At first, he relies on very traditional, even clichéd,
notions. He laments that education and religion have tamed men of
their natural savagery and made them so pale and domestic that there
remain few ways for a man to distinguish himself other than on the
battlefield. Having this opportunity makes Henry feel grateful to
be participating in the war. As he makes his way from one skirmish
to the next, he becomes more and more convinced that his accumulated
experiences will earn him the praise of women and the envy of men;
he will be a hero, a real man, in their eyes. These
early conceptions of manhood are simplistic, romantic, adolescent
fantasies.
Jim Conklin and Wilson stand as symbols of a more human
kind of manhood. They are self-assured without being braggarts and
are ultimately able to own up to their faults and shortcomings.
Wilson, who begins the novel as an obnoxiously loud soldier, later
exposes his own fear and vulnerability when he asks Henry to deliver
a yellow envelope to his family should he die in battle. In realizing
the relative insignificance of his own life, Wilson frees himself
from the chains that bind Henry, becoming a man of “quiet belief
in his purposes and abilities.” By the novel’s end, Henry makes
a bold step in the same direction, learning that the measure of
one’s manhood lies more in the complex ways in which one negotiates
one’s mistakes and responsibilities than in one’s conduct on the
battlefield.
Self-Preservation
An anxious desire for self-preservation influences Henry
throughout the novel. When a pinecone that he throws after fleeing
the battle makes a squirrel scurry, he believes that he has stumbled
upon a universal truth: each being will do whatever it takes, including running
from danger, in order to preserve itself. Henry gets much mileage
out of this revelation, as he uses it to justify his impulse to retreat
from the battlefield. His conceits—namely that the good of the army
and, by extension, the world, requires his survival—drive him to
behave abominably. He not only runs from battle, but also abandons
the tattered soldier, though he knows that the soldier is almost
certain to die if he does not receive assistance. Soon after his encounter
with the squirrel, Henry discovers the corpse of a soldier. This
sets in motion Henry’s realization that the world is largely indifferent
to his life and the questions that preoccupy him. Courage and honor
endow a man with a belief in the worth of preserving the lives of
others, but the pervasiveness of death on the battlefield compels
Henry to question the importance of these qualities. This weighing
of values begs consideration of the connection between the survival
instinct and vanity.
The Universe’s Disregard for Human Life
Henry’s realization that the natural world spins on regardless
of the manner in which men live and die is perhaps the most difficult
lesson that Henry learns as a soldier. It disabuses him of his naïve,
inexperienced beliefs regarding courage and manhood. Shortly after
his encounter with the squirrel in the woods, Henry stumbles upon
a dead soldier, whose rotting body serves as a powerful reminder
of the universe’s indifference to human life. As the drama of the
war rages on around him, Henry continues to occupy his mind with questions
concerning the nature of courage and honor and the possibilities
of gaining glory. Death, he assumes, would stop this drama cold.
Yet, when he encounters the corpse, he finds that death is nothing
more than an integral and unremarkable part of nature. As he reflects
at the end of the novel: “He had been to touch the great death,
and found that, after all, it was but the great death.”
