Fighting in a war can be a very scary and worrisome task. Some people cant handle this task, in the novel The Red Badge of Currage Henry doesn't think that he can handle it. He has never fought in a battle before and he feels panicky that he might run away when the battle starts. He talks about it with other soldiers but they don't show any sign that they are scared to fight.
When the battle starts the next day Henry does not want to fight he is dumbfounded and doesn't know what to do. As he see's people die he runs off the battle field and runs until he is safe away from the battle. He feels like a cowered and he knows that he shouldn't have run.
Soon after he finds all the wounded men walk in a road and he joins them.
There was a tattered man that had got hit by an exploding shell and starts to talk to henry, he asks him if he thought it was a good battle.
Jim Halpert
English: 304th Infantry Regiment Coat of Arms
This map shows movements and battle sites of Canad...Henry feels imbarised and shrugs him off, the tattered man says where ya hit? Henry again feels imbarised because he wasn't wounded. Henry then see's his friend Jim, he also has been hit by an exploding shell. Jim is dieing, he falls down then gets up and runs up a hill off the road. He talks and falls down dramatically and dies. The tattered man was there with Henry and starts going on about dieing and how he would just die and not make a big production out of it like Jim did. The tattered man too is dieing. He tells Henry and Henry cant take it he doesn't want to be there when he dies so he leaves the tattered man alone to die by himself.
Henry has just done the most cold harted thing he could have done and now he will never be able to make it up. No matter what he does he cannot become a man for what he did or didn't do for the tattered man.
As Henry is walking throw the woods men that are retreating from a battle start running toward him. Henry trys to stop one of them to find out what is going on but the man doesn't want to stop so the man hits him with his gun and knocks him out.
A "happy"ÃÂ soldier gets him up and brings him to his regiment. When Henry gets to his regiment he tells them that he was off fighting with other regiments.
They believe him and he finds out that other men had the same story as him, so he wasn't the only one who ran from the battle as he thought. This makes him feel better he thinks to himself "I performed my mistakes in the dark, so I am still a man"ÃÂ, but he wasn't.
When morning comes his regiment is off to battle again. This time the 304th regiment "Henrys regiment"ÃÂ are going to lead the attack. The feel like leading the attack is a honor but the truth is they are probily going to die in the attack. They start the attack, many of the regiment are dieing. The flagman gets shot so Henry picks up the flag and runs with it he doesn't stop he runs and captures the enemies flag and wins the battle.
The regiment is very proud of him. Henry doesn't feel good though after what he did before about running away from both the battle and the tattered man.
He pulls aside his friend in his regiment, Tom. He tells Tom that he ran away the first battle but then feels stupid so he lies and says that he only ran away for a minute then he went back fighting. Tom then tells Henry that he had ran away too but he didn't go back. The two men are both thankful they are alive, But no matter what Henry did he could never become a man for what he did.
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