This is an essay on "The Red Badge of Courage"

Essay by white_babeHigh School, 11th gradeA, May 2006

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In the novel, "The Red Badge of Courage", Stephen Crane uses a great deal of color imagery. Some of the colors he uses are green, black, red, blue, and gray. Green stands for youth, black stands for danger, red stands for the terrors of battle, blue stands for courage, and gray stands for death. The colors are subtle representations of emotion, character, and one's perception of events.

The color green in the novel, The Red Badge of Courage, stands for youth. The first line of the novel is, "As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors." Like children, the soldiers are circulating rumors around the regiment. At the beginning of the novel all the soldiers do is act like children. They are fighting and bickering over what is going to happen next. They fight and bicker over if they are going into battle.

Their actions are all child like. This shows the soldier's youth like side. Green is the subtle representation of the characters.

In the novel the color black stand for danger. In the novel it says, "When the sunrays at last struck full and mellowingly upon the earth, the youth saw that the landscape was streaked with two long, thin, black columns which disappeared on the brow of a hill in front and rearward vanished in a wood. They were like two serpents crawling from the cavern of the night." This is a warning of the dangers of the upcoming battle the regiment was marching to. The black serpents are interpreted as the danger which is about to swallow the men. The youth can sense the upcoming danger. His actions in the march show this. He was marching carelessly while in...