In the book
“The Red Badge of Courage”, the main character, Henry, enlists in the Union
Army at the start of the Civil War. He is shocked at the true nature of battle.
He discovers the amount of pain and death there is when faced with the terror
of an actual fight. While wandering about the country side, Henry watches his
friend die and gets terribly hurt himself. And yet, a few times he says that he
would give anything to trade places with the dead. I think that it is his fear that
is making him think these awful thoughts.
When Henry
decides that it is better to die at war than live through it, he isn’t really
thinking about what he means by this statement. If the people who have died
came back to life, they would probably say that they would much rather live
than die the way they had died. It is somewhat disrespectful to the dead in
this way, so I think it is wrong for Henry to think like this. But it better
explains how he feels about war because now I understand that he dislikes it
enough to desire death. Because he repeats how he wishes he were in the place
of the corpses so often, it makes me think that he is serious. I know that
sometimes my friends are in an uncomfortable situation that is not actually
that bad, but they say that they wish they would die. This is an instance where
they do not actually wish to be dead.
This is the way I thought about Henry the first time he said this, but then I
realized that he is stating what he would truly want.
When Henry
gets severely hurt when trapped in a stampede of soldiers, he is faced with the
idea of death. I think that this will make him realize that he would rather be
the way he was before than to die like this: painfully and slowly without
anyone by his side or his family knowing that he has died. He will realize
everything I have said about the disrespect he had been giving the deceased and
how he probably did not even mean it (but lo! I thought of it first). To me, it
is perfectly understandable to make the mistake of saying/thinking this when
you are under the pressure of death every moment of the day, but the way things
have been turning out for Henry, I know I would rather be in his position than another
soldier who has died.
Henry is
working hard to do well in battle, just like everyone else, and he is doing
pretty well. But even so, multiple times he says that he wishes he were dead.
This is reasonable in the fact that he is in a very difficult war and under a
lot of pressure. But because he himself is having semi-good luck, it may be
somewhat disrespectful to the dead, but also the wounded and even other
soldiers who do not have such good luck.
