Military Romanticism in The Red Badge of Courage The Red Badge of Courage is a novel composed by Stephen Crane which investigates an adolescents battles in his first encounters with war. Before the novel's start, Henry Fleming, a high school kid raised on a homestead, enrolls to do battle in spite of his absence of information regarding the matter beside glamorized stories. During Henry's excursion to the military camp, some of his companions, particularly reserved young ladies, laud him for his enrolling. Be that as it may, this time of acclaim and glorification just keeps going a brief timeframe before Henry is tossed into the dull everyday routine of military preparing. At the camp, Henry winds up dismissing his optimal desires for the magnificence of war. This loss of convictions Henry encounters just further advances as he learns the characters of his individual officers, who he thinks most of to be substantially less canny and respectable than he had at first anticipated.