Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage follows protagonist Henry's enlistment and his struggle to mature from a vanity youth that drives most of his actions through the novel until the final acceptance of the indifferent reality of war and society and the inevitability of death. Although the novel ends on an optimistic note that Henry has finally become a "heroic" man, I argue that Henry's change from naivety and vanity to selflessness and maturity is not a simple and complete change, but a subtle thought and largely incomplete, at best. this leaves readers wondering where to draw the line after which Henry's selfishness ends and naturalism takes over. This “grey” area that Henry finds himself in between selfishness and the recognition of the inevitability of death despite human intervention ultimately shows the two concepts to be more intertwined than appears at first glance. Henry's change, therefore, is illustrated as a complicated process without an exact “end point” at which readers must figure out which “side” Henry falls on at the end of the novel. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay From the beginning of the novel, readers can immediately notice Henry's youthful naivety and romantic conception of military life and war. Despite his mother's threatening words, "I know how you are... you're just a little guy among so many others," (8) Henry takes a self-centered attitude in his military duties. Imagining the military lifestyle of the Greek heroes of ancient times, Henry considers himself worthy of attention and praise before his first battle even begins. “…There seemed to be much glory in [battle],” the narrator notes, “His busy mind had drawn for him great, wildly colored, frightening pictures with breathtaking action” (7). At the beginning of the novel it seems that for Henry his commission in the army is not a means to an end (victory in the Civil War), but an end in itself. Henry is not portrayed as mature enough to grasp the cold reality of what a career in war entails. Fearing true duty and going to great lengths not to appear cowardly to other soldiers, Henry is fully immersed in his reputation and appearance in the eyes of others: duty is not as important as the glory and self-imagined revelry that comes from simply being called a soldier. soldier. However, at a crucial point in the novel Henry comes face to face with a microcosmic image of the inescapable reality of not only the army, but of life in general when he sees the corpse of a soldier from his regiment lying on the ground in the middle of a battle. This harsh image of the fleeting nature of life and nature's negligence works to undermine the theme of the delusional sense of importance that Henry has had thus far. Henry makes the connection to nature's cold indifference towards humans as he observes after a battle: "It was surprising that nature should calmly go on with her golden trial in the midst of so much devilry" (52). In this broader sense, the soldier's corpse, like nature's sun, was simply an element of the landscape; no human intervention could have prevented this inevitable death, and Henry seemed to have recognized this. This brief moment of recognition illuminates the opposite of Henry's mindset as his physical illusions and appearances of glory may not matter, as he too will experience the inevitable fate of the dead soldier, and the rest of the..