Crane's use of color

No matter how angiotensin converting enzyme qualifies it, a literary symbol must somehow be an image which points to something else, something usually conceptual (Cady 196).

This describes the problem rattling well. Moreover, the amateur must preserve such a exemplary scheme, and this requires truly much explaining and rationalizing. The color symbolism in The red mark of courageousness is far too complex to be reduced to either scheme. And an attempt to do so can become so intricate that the critic is likely to forget what The rosy-cheeked tag of Courage is really about: a terrified two-year-old man trying come to terms with the realities of war.

First, let us consider the sassy's narrative voice: third person limited. exsert is very strict about this. The point of view is enthalpy's and no one elses. This makes it all the more remarkable that, throughout The Red Badge of Courage, Crane rarely tells us what Henry is thinking. Instead, he shows us what Henry is experiencing, bringing all five senses vividly into play - with particular attention to light and color. And through this rigid practice of showing and not telling, Crane manages to convey Henry's inside experience.

The book, then, is virtually a chronological list of Henry's impressions of warfare. For this reason, The Red Badge of Courage has often been called an impressionistic book. R.W. Stallman, a Crane disciple and Crane's biographer, has written:

During the pages that follow, we get the comparable pattern again and again: impressions and reactions, impressions and reactions. Eventually, these experiences seem to lead Henry to a kind of serenity (and the word "seem" is very important). This serenity, illusory or not, makes it possible for him to return to his regiment and fence bravely.

Indeed, the book seems to ask whether Henry can learn at all. Is his role in his own story scarce a passive one? Crane seems to hint this through his pressure sensation on describing Henry's thoughts purely through sensory impressions. True, Henry seems to hurl his romanticistic illusions and look forward to an end of war and a peaceful life.

But at the same time, he seems incapable(p) of real introspection. Is Henry acting or merely reacting? Is this apparent inner growth something he consciously wills, or is it merely an accident of his sensory experience?

But does all this advert that The Red Badge of Courage is not a symbolic novel after all? To the contrary, the book is, if anything, ultra-symbolic. One of its most important themes is how symbols, the natural emblems which surround us, dictate what we are. It is about how they take shape our moment-by-moment awareness and, in a larger sense, our destinies.

The message that the novel brings home (the letters of which the youth remains unable to decipher) is that the lethal and horrifying laws which govern the battlefield are not very different from those which govern nature . . . . As the youth drops the "Red Badge of Courage," he puts on the Green Badge of Peace. twain Badges signify one form or another of romantic enchantment (Husni 18).

Then, almost immediately, Henry comes across the dead soldier:

Accordingly, Henry's supposed "realization" has been subjected to critical scrutiny during the last coupling of decades. Khalil Husni maintains that, at the book's end, Henry's newfound

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