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Examine the differing attitudes to Henry Fleming communicated by the narrator during the course of the red badge of courage and conclude by defining what you see as the narrator's final view of him.

'The Red Badge of Courage' is a classic male bildungsroman – the rite of passage of a young man from innocence to experience. For generations of men throughout history, war has provided the landscape for this shedding of youthful promise, and ascension to adulthood. Literature has often strived to depict this – from Sophocles' Oedipus through Shakespeare's 'Henry IV' through the poetry of the First World War and past Jennifer Johnston's 'How Many Miles to Babylon'.

In the opening exchange of 'The Red Badge of Courage', Henry Fleming is placed at the threshold of combat – a place of introspection and reflection; a time to contemplate his past, his present and his future. The human fixation, indeed the natural call, to violently defend one's own is something that has been with Fleming from his early days – "he had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life – of vague and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire." The heroism that is associated with military triumph, and the historical resonance that war inevitably provides in terms of shaping future generations, is a heady drug for a young man. Isolating a sense of triumph from the overall sense of war is unnervingly easy for those that have become unwittingly intoxicated by its flavours.

The level of his initial naivety is displayed in the circumstances that precede his enlisting. His understanding of war is confined to the pages of history books and newspapers; the romanticism of "heavy crowns and high castles" and the daily reports of a "decisive victory". The geographical and experiential distance between a young farm boy and the war that was providing "the gossip of the village" was such that Fleming could not help but become fixated with enlisting, if only to discover the truth – and dismiss his sense of "distrust… (that it was) some sort of play affair." Indeed, the images that Fleming has in his mind are 'playful' – "his busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds." His imaginings do not equate with reality as they are the sum parts of his own naked interpretation of reported events. His firsthand contact with war is non-existent. Everything is purely an imagining. The coupling of such a curiosity and a strange sense of male purpose – be that purpose selfish or selfless – provide the pincers that escort the willing Fleming into the military.

His mother, meanwhile, has a more practical appropriation of war. She sees it as something that has inevitable power over her son, and allows him his own sense of destiny. But her tears that accompany the news of her son's enlisting are the result of a real emotion – of real knowledge – that pay the respect to the realities of war that her son knows nothing about. On leaving his "quivering" mother, Henry "bowed his head, feeling suddenly ashamed of his purposes." The 'purposes' are not just war, and the savage blood-letting of combat, or the sense of achievement or brotherhood, or patriotism, or potential heroism, but to grow into an adult – to make his own decisions.

The impressionability of youth is again exposed when Henry "felt the gulf now between them (his schoolmates) and… swelled with calm pride" This calm pride would give way to an eventual storm that Henry would not be able to engage in or even fathom at this juncture. Instead, he "strutted" towards war. But not in confidence; in ignorance.

As a youth, Fleming has been sheltered. His experiences have been simple and palatable: "In his life he had taken things for granted, never challenged his belief in ultimate success, and bothering little about means and roads". The questions that occupy Fleming 'the soldier' are ones of doubt: "It had suddenly appeared to him that perhaps in a battle he might run." Furthermore, he concludes that "… as far as he was concerned he knew nothing of himself." This is a young man who is forcing himself to confront his own purpose, his own make-up; this is a young man searching for something. His engagement in the future, and in his own fate, is absolute; a man who is seeing through his own eyes for possibly the first time, "…and in the shadow of the impending tumult he suspected them ("his…recalled visions of broken-bladed glory") to be impossible pictures."

The prospect of battle provides Fleming with the ultimate opportunity for self-knowledge. He understands "that the only way to prove himself was to go into the blaze, and then figuratively to watch his legs to discover his merits and faults." To prove himself has become less a question of belonging within his peers, but more a question of belonging within his own estimation of himself – he seeks to vindicate his own instinct to enrol. And all the while, he is incapacitated by self-doubt and neurotic second-guessing. "His emotions made him feel strange in the presence of men who talked excitedly of a prospective battle as of a drama they were about to witness, with nothing but eagerness and curiosity in their faces. It was often that he suspected them to be liars."At this point, Fleming makes the distinction between being ensconced in the physical personal threat of a battle and the relative safety of observing same battle; a distinction that he seemed incapable of before enlisting.

The prospect of combat looms over Henry like a circling hawk or "a row of dragons". He talks of a "mystic gloom", and the unknown arena of battle continues to provide a strange fantastical quality in his mind; still his innocence continues to pervade the ominous battleground. The act of waiting – of physically and mentally preparing for battle – provides Henry with an uneasy sense of fulfilment. He finds no solace in his fellow soldiers and finds distinctions between his own mental preoccupations and theirs. When confronted with a young girl wrestling for control of her horse, he observes the other soldiers become embroiled in the release of the simple drama, while he "would have sacrificed all the brass buttons on the continent to have been enabled to return to them (milking duties). He told himself that he was not formed for a soldier."and more than that… it occurred to him that he had never wished to come to the war. He had not enlisted of his free will. He had been dragged by the merciless government." Whether this was something that he had subconsciously known from the beginning, it was only when placed in the reality of the moment that he gained clarity on his 'decision'.

Throughout his service Fleming wrestles with his own escapist instincts and the sense of duty that is part and parcel of being a soldier: "once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get killed directly and end his troubles". He views death as a place "where he would be understood." Once his own status as a soldier is somewhat reinforced by the decision of the loud soldier to choose Fleming as the deliverer of his personal contents to his family, his fraternal bond to his regiment strengthens. When the group are placed in 'crisis', Fleming "…suddenly lost concern for himself, and forgot to look at a menacing fate. He became not a man but a member." The unity of the men is cast not in a shared purpose as much as a shared fate, 'born of the smoke and danger of death.' The initial triumph leaves him with 'the most delightful sensations of his life', bestowing upon himself a sense of achievement and pride that he had hoped to discover in himself as a newcomer to the war, but felt uncertain truly lived within him. But the unrelenting nature of war quickly deposits him back in the uncertain moments of combat, which only serves as a reminder of his impractical understanding of the longevity of his soldier's fate. The constant military movements and skirmishes guaranteeing that a "…scowl of mortification and rage" were the fixture of his facial expressions as his regiment became more and more depleted.

The status of the men is regularly reduced to that of children. Men weep, or babble incoherently like babies. Fleming cannot help but recognise that war reduces everyone to their newborn states. And yet for him, he believed it to provide the way for him to relinquish his youth and become a man. Seemingly, the acceptance that man is both child and adult is the true arrival at adulthood: "The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again… And they were men."

By the end of the novel, Fleming is prepared for death. Indeed, at times he actively welcomes it as a way of displaying his commitment to the cause, and to eradicate the pain of past failures : "Some arrows of scorn had buried themselves in his heart had buried themselves in his heart had generated strange and unspeakable hatred. It was clear to him that his final and absolute revenge was to be achieved by his dead body lying, torn and gluttering, upon the field." But beyond confronting death as merely the end of resistance, Fleming starts to see it as something not to fear as he strives to complete his service"… he knew that he thought of the bullets as the things that could prevent him from reaching the place of his endeavour. There were subtle flashes of joy within him that thus should be his mind." He joins the battlefield as if it is firm ground, either as his chosen burial ground, or the terrain for his military success.

As Fleming considers his service, he is able to resolve his successes and failures as he yearns for the simple pleasures of his youth, and his soul changes. He has arrived at the point of manhood that was fabled: "He felt a quiet manhood… He was a man." Such contact with his own mortality, and the mortality of others, has provided him with the answers that had peppered his youthful curiosity. The grim reality of his experiences has banished the childish fantasy and romance of war – and standing before us at the end of the novel is a young man with history, with knowledge, with integrity and with pride.

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