Fantasies and Reality in The Red Badge of CourageIn The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane the main character, Henry Fleming, thought he understood the war between the North and the South. However, his understanding came “from his knowledge of fairy tales and mythology” (Gibson 21). Henry thought he was like the heroes he read about in these stories. He soon learned that real warfare was very different from his imaginative expectations. Crane took Henry's fantasies and contrasted them with the reality of war to develop this main character into a mature person. Henry spent his early life on a farm in Virginia. Henry's perception of the world was shaped almost entirely by the books his mother gave him to read. After the war began, “newspapers carried accounts of major battles, in which the North was victorious. Almost every day the newspapers published accounts of decisive victories” (Walcutt), Henry's mother was reluctant to let her son leave home and go south to fight against the Confederate army. He knew that Henry's vision of war did not match what war really is. He tried to persuade Henry to change his mind about joining the army, but was unable to do so because “tales of 'the war in his country' inevitably began to move him. Many of them were not clearly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in them'” (Cody 122). Henry "is motivated" by his "heroic expectations of 'great things'" (Colvert 97) as well as his keen interest and curiosity in what he sees as the elements of war. Henry thought that if he didn't get a red badge of courage, then he was a coward. Henry had “battles” in mind. “Fleming would enter an absorbing trance in which… middle of paper… n, IA: Perfection Learning Corporation, 1979. Gibson, Donald B. The Red Badge of Courage: Redefining the Hero. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988. Lowell, Amay. Introduction. The work of Stephen Crane: "The Black Knights and Other Lines." By Stephen Crane. vol. YOU. 1926. Rpt. in Discovering the authors. Version 1.0. CD-ROM. Detriot: Gale, 1992. Magill, Frank N., Magill's Survey: American Literature Realism to 1945. California: Salem Press, Inc., 1963. Walcutt, Charles C. Stephen Crane: Naturalist and Impressionist in his American Literary Naturalism, a Divided Stream, University of Minnesota Press. 1956. Rpt. in Discovering the authors. CD-ROM version 1.0. Detriot: Gale, 1992.Wolford, Chester L. “Stephen Crane.” Critical investigation of long fiction. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Series in English. vol. 2. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, 1991.