His biggest fear is being attacked by the enemy and the thought of deserting occurs to him more then once. Eventually he becomes friends with two soldiers, a tall man named Jim Conklin, and a loud man named Wilson. When they hear rumors that the Confederates are attacking, Henry asks Jim and Wilson how they’ll do. Jim isn’t worried and believes they “won’t be the best, but certainly not the worst of the regiments.” Wilson says he would never run under any circumstances. When Henry gets caught in the middle of the charging soldiers, he realizes there is no where to run even if he wanted to.
When he finally engages in his first battle, he blindly fires into the battle haze, never seeing his enemy. As the next enemy assault approaches, Henry's fears of death overwhelm him, and he runs from the field. Henry continues his retreat for some time, even after he overhears that his regiment repelled the enemy. When he finally slows and rests, he hears the sound of a renewed battle and, ironically, he returns to the battle from which he has fled. He comes upon many wounded men returning from the front to get medical assistance.
Summaries for Reference XIX. (19)- The charge begins. Henry runs toward a clump of trees, expecting to meet the enemy at that location. As Henry runs, he hears the shouts of the enemy and sees men fall to the ground in agony and death. As the charge continues, the men begin to cheer; however, this pace takes its toll on the soldiers, and the charge begins to slow.
He has never been under fire before. That is why he is scared. When they go to their first battle, Henry doesn’t think it is that bad. When the Confederates charge at them, he gets terrified. He tries to run.
South What is a “red badge of courage”? When the main character of the book encounters a number of soldiers walking back to the rear, he is envious of them. Why? Yes, because he is still having thoughts of running away from the battle Did the youth run away from the battle? Yes What was the youth doing when he was injured?
In the heat of battle, he completely forgets about his previous anxiety, a “red rage” overtakes him and the regiment and they successfully force the enemies to fall back. The real test of Henry’s courage is yet to come though – when the enemies charge back a moment later, Henry is frightened by their confidence: “He began to exaggerate the endurance, the skill, and the valor of those who were coming. Himself reeling from exhaustion, he was astonished beyond measure at such persistency.”(31) He panics and flees from the battle. Afterwards, Henry finds out that his regiment defeated the enemy without him and becomes even more anxious. He tries to justify his deeds by claiming that escaping danger is completely natural, and proves it by tossing a pine cone at a squirrel, which then runs away with fear to a treetop.
Beah and his friends chose to run from both the rebels and the army, while both were corrupt and taking part in the same murderous actions. While hiding from the armies, the boys were confronted with suspicion when traveling through villages. They were quickly judged as undercover soldiers and had to find ways to prove there trustworthiness to the village people they came across. The fragments of childhood memories that Beah remembered would constantly be running through his head to try and keep his mind at ease with all of the devastation that was going on around
Henry had joined the military to earn a name amongst other men. Instead he would flee from a battle and cause his own injury. When Henry returned to camp and lied about the nature of his wound, he highly doubted neither his manhood nor his right to behave as pompously as a veteran. Henry’s lack of a true moral sense manifested itself in the emptiness of the honor and glory that he seeks. A great change occurs within him as he fought, he lost his sense of self.
Other character as well, but I think he represents the most of the characters in the book. First, when he got the letter saying that he should join the army and go to the war, he was so afraid and he didn’t want to give up everything that he had and go to the pointless war, so he planned to run away from home to Canada. But then when he was almost there, he realizes that it’s not the matter of if he wants to or not. He thought about the family that he left, the patriotic town people, and all of his memories there. He couldn’t just run away from his home leaving all the things behind him, and also he didn’t want the town people to talk about him.
These situations and moments define them and affect them for the rest of their lives. Both Tim and Philip have no knowledge of what the war is even about. They are both running away from their fears in order to avoid facing their problems and reality. Tim is running away from the war, while Philip is running towards it. Tim runs away because he feels as though his life is being turned upside down, he goes from two extremes, graduating college president of his student body to this draft notice.