One of the most important themes of the novel is that nature is indifferent to human life. How does the book convey this theme? What are some of its most important symbols? What does it mean for the universe to be “indifferent?”
“The Red Badge of Courage”
To begin with, the novel “The Red Badge of Courage” written by Stephen Crane, an American writer, is talking about the times of Civil War, however, the main idea is that nature, or, as the writer claims, the whole universe is totally indifferent to what is happening to a human, to his life and his struggle. The inquiry of an author’s personality is constantly much more confounded than essentially lumping him or her into a solitary development. Each essayist is an individual, and in making his individual vision, Stephen Crane utilized components of naturalism, imagery, and impressionism, while not fitting flawlessly into any of them. His work is amazingly reasonable in its advancement, its realistic delineation of fight, and its purpose.
The main character’s name is Henry, and in terms of the conditions he had to live in, he comes to an understanding that the universe, or nature, is both cruel and indifferent, and these two terms interconnect throughout the book. Thus, Henry’s first suspicion of the indifference the universe shows comes after his first fight, when he is able to observe that the sun looks really in the treetops, and feels shocked “that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment” (Crane, 2010, p. 25). Later, Henry sees the body of the officer in the church like dell in the woodland, its face swarming with ants. After Jim’s demise, Henry needs to make an energetic discourse, yet he is cut off in the novel by Crane’s portrayal of the merciless sun “pasted in the sky like a wafer” (Crane, 1998, p. 239). Each of these pictures serves as a vital image of the central impassion of nature to human undertakings: the universe not knows or considerations what happens to individual individuals.
Furthermore, Crane reinforces the thought that nature is unconcerned and absolutely indifferent towards a man by demonstrating that it is as arbitrarily accommodating as it is pernicious. For each vindictive whim that the men endure, they encounter a startling decent turn as a positive wind or smooth night. The way that the men very nearly appear to get support from nature crushes the thought of nature as a completely unfriendly constrain. Furrowed to shore and spared by an oddity wave, the reporter must grasp the way that the exceptionally thing that has placed him in hurt’s way which has spared him (Dooley, 1993, p. 55).
To sum up all the above mentioned information, it is necessary to emphasize that despite the fatality and sadness in his outlook, Crane was in a great extent right expressing the idea that nature – alongside with the universe – is not kind one, and is not able to protect or punish a human, oppositely, it is just indifferent to what is happening to a person while he is alive and tries to exercise the human-like activity, solving the problems he faces. In addition to this, the circumstances in which Henry is aware of the nature’s indifference that is the Civil War, make the reader believe the author of the novel and follow his ideology.
References
Crane, S. (1998). The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories. Oxford University Press.
Crane, S. (2010). The Red Badge of Courage, The Open Boat and Other Stories. Digireads.com
Publishing.
Dooley, P. (1993). The pluralistic philosophy of Stephen Crane. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press.
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