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The Irony of the Veteran Stephen Crane approaches his stories about the situation that happened to appear during the Civil War with a definite irony. We can clearly see it from example of his two novels: The Red Badge of Courage and The Veteran. The Veteran was written shortly after The Red Badge of Courage and it has close connection to it. First of all let us briefly look at the situation that was proposed by the author in these two novels, starting with The Red Badge of Courage because here we see the logical beginning of the issue.
Henry Fleming, who is the main hero of the story, is a young man who is always dreaming to become a war hero. He lives during the ages of the Civil War and once upon a time he has a chance to join one of the fighting sides. Prior to this he had dreamed to be a hero and one of the main ways to do it, according to his not yet established mind, was to participate in war activities. The soldiers are represented to be men of glory and honor during the time period and most younger people, that hear about the war from apart admire the role of a soldier and want to become one, and Henry is not an exception. He eventually finds out the fact what the war really is, but that happens only after, now he is totally overwhelmed by his idea. So when the army offers the opportunity to enlist, Henry thinks that this is one and only chance of his life and leaves his mother towards the glories part of his life, as he thinks.
We see several stages of his participation in the war activities: first when he joins the army, second when he impatiently tries to prove to everybody and himself that he is not a coward and finally we see the final battle, where Henry understands many things that were unknown to him before. The Veteran on the other hand is not a well-known continuation of the other story that shows off the irony of all the ideas like Henrys ones upon the real situation around the war activities. It is argued to be the best piece of literature written about the Civil War battles. Besides giving the clear expression of the main battle of Chancellors Ville it gives a further insight to the influence on Henrys character by what he lived though during the war period. It is told from the face of a veteran that was participating in the bloodiest battles of the Civil war, which was the battle of Chancellors Ville. Henry is supposed to be this veteran that tells all the horrible details of the story from his point of view.
He is actually exaggerating his glorious acts in the battle but he tells the actual horror of the battle. Henry has become a kind of an insane man that believes that he was doing very honorable and glorious acts in the battle, while all he did was ran away and eventually was blaming himself for that. The war did not really make Henry a man through his heroism but it did through his realization of the ugliness of the war. The irony of the veteran is clearly shown by Stephen Crane in his novels when we see the story of young mans fate. He had many dreams and thoughts that all collapsed after his first real acknowledgement of what he was admiring. The author represents the youth of the time period in this one person Henry.
Other characters have no detailed appearance in the novels. We see a struggle within one man that wants to be a hero through war, and we see the impossibility of this at the case. Crane is telling his stories like he was part of it, although he could not make it because he was born long after the actual events. We clearly see that the glory that the young people seek of war is just a chimera. This is not an acceptable way to get honor when you are trying to kill your peers, especially from your own nation. Eventually we see that Henry is only dreaming of peace, which is very different from what he started up with.
He as an old veteran remembers the bloodiest battles of the Civil War and never wants to have that repeated. We can clearly see the trace of irony that is drawn by the author, from a young man, who is admiring war and only sees a possibility of glory in it, to an old veteran that has seen it all and would never dream of it again. Word count: 813 Bibliography: Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of the Glory. Stephen Crane, The Veteran. Finley W.
Stephen Cranes Representation of Heroism During the Civil War, article, The Historian, vol. 89. 1996.
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