"Cliff Notes - Red Badge of Courage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

comes upon a dead man in the woods, and he watches the death
agonies of his friend Jim Conklin. When the tattered soldier
questions him about his own wound, Henry runs away again. His
discomfort at being found out is stronger than his feeling of
responsibility for a dying man.

Being wounded by a retreating Union soldier is the beginning
of a change in Henry. Until now he has been full of
rationalizations and denial. He is afraid not only of battle,
but of being teased by his fellow soldiers. When the panicked
soldier strikes him on the head, Henry has a real wound to match
his inner wound of fear and shame. (The tattered man had asked
Henry whether he was wounded inside, and in a way the answer was
yes.) Even though Henry's "red badge of courage" is phony, it
helps him to feel and act like someone who has experienced war.
As Henry begins to think about the previous day, he realizes
that he has really seen a lot.

But Henry's achievement of courage and maturity isn't easy.
Even after he is wounded, and finds his regiment again, he is
full of poses and hot air. He tells the others a lie--that he
was wounded while fighting with another regiment--and they
believe him. By the next day he feels pretty good about
himself, conveniently forgetting about the cowardly and
irresponsible things he did. Henry is feeling so smug that he
begins to criticize the generals and boast about his own
heroism, until he is brought down a peg by one of the other
soldiers.

When the regiment goes into battle on the second day, Henry
stops thinking about himself and begins to act on instinct.
Then he is able to fight bravely, even heroically. He is
pleased with these real achievements, and enjoys being singled
out for praise by the lieutenant and the colonel. When the
fighting ends, and Henry has time to evaluate all of the events
of the past two days, he is able both to take pride in his
courage and to look at his cowardice realistically. Now, at
last, he has become a man.

Some readers of The Red Badge of Courage disagree about
Henry's character. Those readers who think that the book is a
Christian allegory (that the red sun in the sky is a communion
wafer and that Jim Conklin represents Jesus Christ) think that
Henry is redeemed by Jim's death. Others, who see it as a
psychological study of the effects of war on a young man, think
that in human terms Henry has grown and matured, that he has
given up his dreams of individual glory and learned the real
meaning of courage, the giving up of selfishness. These readers
see Henry's realistic evaluation of himself in Chapter 24 as
proof of his development.