The Power of Fear Exposed in The Red Badge of CourageThe Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, is a book based on a young soldier's commitment to the Civil War. The psychological conflict he faces throughout the story is both internal and external. Battles are fought in the reader's face to show the young soldier's conflict with himself, with other soldiers, and with the battle itself. Thanks to Stephen Crane's extraordinary descriptive power, the reader becomes involved in the ongoing battle and feels that the soldiers' conflicts are becoming his own. The main topic of the book is fear and how it would affect a young person in a bloody situation. war like the Civil War. War becomes the young soldier's worst nightmare, giving him conflicting thoughts, emotions and fears. The young character soon realizes, as all these things affect him emotionally and physically, that the war is very different than he had hoped it would be. Although the soldier becomes nervous and even runs away during the Battle of Chancellorsville, he eventually returns to find that he and his fellow soldiers have grown up. They had learned more about themselves than they ever thought possible. At the end of this book the young soldier becomes a man full of courage. When we first meet Henry with his regiment, the 304th New York, he is bored and even lonely and longs to return to the farm. As his time at camp passes, Henry begins to realize that being a hero in war may not be as easy as he once dreamed. The internal conflict begins with Henry wondering how he will react when the battle begins. He wonders if he will run away like a chicken or fight bravely. In the first battle Henry fights bravely, but as time passes... middle of paper......en Crane also uses his powerful descriptions in the parts of the book where the character fights battles. He puts the reader in front of the enemy and describes every little detail, letting him know what every detail was like. If Crane had made the battles less dramatic, the reader would have had a hard time following what Henry was having an emotional conflict about. Since Crane put you right there in battle, you also experienced the same sensations as Henry. Stephen Crane used the internal and external battles of the young soldiers to give the reader a real sense of what the Civil War must have been like. The reader will visualize the battles, smell the gunpowder, feel the weapons, and feel everything that happens in the book through Crane's use of description. The reader even begins to experience and sympathize with Henry's emotions and feelings.