Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

These are the key concepts you need to pay attention to while reading The Red Badge of Courage. I will expect to see references to these concepts, along with examples, in your response blogs.

Themes: an idea that recurs in or pervades a work

Courage- This is when, at the end, he is fighting for his life, and he is able to fight to his best ability. It took courage for him to not run away from the fighting. Instead, he became of the best fighters in his regiment and got a noticed by his Lieutenant.

Manhood- He became a man toward the end of the book when he was no longer referred to as "the youth".

Self-preservation- He kills a lot of men so that he himself will not die. Also in the begining he ran away because he didn't want to die.

Disregard for Human Life- To keep himself alive, all he needed to do was kill all the others that were trying to kill him, he didn't even realize that they were also humans who had lives back home.

Motifs: distinctive feature or dominant idea

Noise and Silence- I think that the noise represents the war, and i think that Silence represents peace.

Light and Dark- I think that the light in to book, for example at the end when there is a ray of sunlight, represents the peace and i think that the dark represents the war.

Clean and Dirty- I think that clean represents his fears and i think that dirty represents his will power to fight.

Youth and Maturity- Youth is Henry at the begining of the book and Maturity is him at the end. I think it also represents the difference in courage.

Symbols: objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas

The Dead Soldier- Represents just how important your life is, and if you don't take care of it properly then it will just rot away.

The Flag- This represents power. When Wilson took the flag, it meant that we had the power over the opponents.

Characters for your list:

Henry Fleming- He is referred to as "the youth" in this book. "The youth" represents the inexperience of the soldiers.

Jim Conklin- The tall soldier. He dies right in front of Henry during a battle.

Wilson- He is Henry's best friend in the book. He thinks that he is going to die, so he gives Henry a letter to give to his parents just in case.

Tattered soldier- He is the one that made Henry feel guilty because he didn't have any injuries yet. He kind of change Henry in a way because Henry didn't feel as if he had done anything important in this war.

Lieutenant- He is the leader of Henry's regiment and he makes a comment about Henry's fighting toward the end. He says that if he had 10,000 more soldiers like Henry, then they would win this war in a week easy.

Henry's Mother- She was kind of Henry's conscience in the book. She helped him make major and minor decisions.