Hero Codes In Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge Of Courage

Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage is a classic war novel remarked by Ernest Hemingway as “the only real literature about the Civil War”.As standards to evaluate what is a hero,hero codes not only represent values that the Civil War promotes,but also reflect Stephen Crane’s ethical ruminations about the template for humanity in war,thus deserving a systematic study.By showing the protagonist Fleming’s hero dream from its development,collapse to rebuilding,The Red Badge of Courage unveils the illusion of traditional hero codes and clarifies possible remedies for their reconstruction,which demonstrates Crane’s endeavor to explore the nature of war and the exemplary humanity.A review of hero codes in western civilization tells varying expectations on heroes,from Homeric heroes’ valor and honor,Aristotle’s stress on heroes’ noble courage,medieval knights’ emphasis on commitment,villain heroes’ attention on self-awareness,Byronic heroes’ self-consciousness,to Carlyle’s heroism calling for genuine sincerity.Shared by heroes are three codes,namely,commitment,honor and courage.In the novel,the martial ethical environment of the Civil War generates illusive hero codes under the media’s inauthentic propaganda and the public’s fever for manliness,which leads to honor and courage trumpeted,yet commitment to duty neglected.The sham codes soon collapse on the battlefield,resulting in three ethical predicaments between duty and survival instinct,conscience and vanity,and humanity and bestiality.The shattered codes are eventually reconstructed through the protagonists’ ethical choices,which reveals the absurdity of factitious honor and courage in the war context,and meanwhile highlights the true hero codes: a hero is not defined by his fervent killings or glorious titles,but by his courage to fulfill the commitment even in despair.The Red Badge of Courage rectifies much-touted yet much-distorted hero codes and uncloaks the war’s implicit torment on soldiers’ humanity,showing Crane’s ethical responsibility as a candid novelist.Also,a more serious threat to western civilization is exposed: while the public hail some virtues to the utmost,they lack awareness to prevent them from potential distortion.In modern society where standards for a hero are multi-faceted,the novel provides an answer from which readers of this age still find resonance: a true hero is not the person enslaved to honor,but the one who maintains courage all the way to fulfill his commitment even in hopelessness and helplessness.