The Death Consciousness in The Red Badge of Courage

Abstract

The Red Badge of Courage, considered as the first modern war novel, uncharacteristically tells the experience of war from the point of view of the common soldier and also sets up the main character as a coward. And the large portions of the article about death also make the reader face the issue of war death. Through Freud’s Eros and Thanatos, this paper analyzes the three stages of the protagonist Fleming’s changing consciousness of death, and discusses whether he finally becomes a so-called “hero”.