THE CONCEPT OF WAR IN "THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE" AND "A FAREWELL TO ARMS"

Abstract

The American Civil War and the destructive and bloody First World War resulted in the deaths of ten million people, twenty millions disabled people, and destruction of the values such as freedom, democracy and equality. The two wars caused important changes in the world of arts and ideas, created their own literature, and as a result, many writers produced war literature. Among the modernist authors who wrote novels about war were Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway. Wars enabled the concepts of patriotism, nationalism and heroism to prevail in the war novel genre. Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” (1895) and Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” (1929) are studied in terms of human nature, realism and romanticism. Crane described a young soldier Henry Fleming’s psychological development, and the brutal and harsh atmosphere of the war. In the novel, thesis-antithesis is shown such as idealism-instinction, romanticism-realism, and cowardice-courage. Hemingway’s maps the psychological complexity of Frederic Henry who does not know the violence in wars and serves voluntarily in the ambulance corps of the Italian army. Hemingway suggests that war is the dark side of a world that refuses to preserve true love.