Humanity has been constantly at war. From the struggle for land, wealth, or power to the struggle for “more complex” or “more honorable” ideals such as freedom or equality, man has never lacked things to fight for. It's almost as if it were something innate, born and passed down through generations. It has great consequences – both for the people fighting and for the civilians watching their countries fall into chaos – and yet it is seen as a necessary evil. In The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane weaves a tapestry of war themes using intertwining threads of personification, metaphor, symbolism, and color imagery to describe war's dehumanization of man as Henry Fleming abandons his youth and takes up the flag of adulthood. Crane lends combat many human aspects through the use of personification while real humans in the novel are dehumanized with the stripping of their names and individuality. When the individuals of Henry's regiment move to perform a certain action, the regiment as a collective creature is given the personification of a soldier's body: "The aching joints of the regiment creaked as it struggled painfully into the position" (Crane). Although many members of Henry's regiment are young, inexperienced recruits with only a handful of veterans, the diction of this sentence shows that they are all already tired of the war; the price that violence and the horrors of battle pay to young people is terrible. This consolidation of men – of individuals – into a single entity removes what little pretense of individuality Crane gives to his characters. Even the protagonist, Henry Fleming, is only called “the young man”. By neglecting to give names to his characters and so often referring to men as merely parts of a greater whole, Crane... middle of paper... man can fool himself into thinking that battles are being fought. for higher purposes such as honor and glory when the reality is that all men are equal - in death. Works Cited Albrecht, Robert C. "Content and Style in the Red Badge of Courage." University English. 6th ed. vol. 27. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1966. 487-92. Print.Gru, Stephen. "The Red Badge of Courage." Books page by page. Np, nd Web. November 30, 2013. .Marcus, Erin. “Images of animals in the red badge of courage.” Notes on the modern language. By Mordecai Marco. 2nd ed. vol. 74. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1959. 108-11. Print.McDermott, John J. “Symbolism and Psychological Realism in the Red Badge of Courage.” Nineteenth century fiction. 3rd ed. vol. 23. Berkeley: University of California, 1968. 324-31. Press.