A Road To Self-Redemption

As a novelist of 20th century,Stephen Crane is regarded as the pioneer of modernist writers and one of the most outstanding naturalists.His works are highly acclaimed by reviewers for the splendid irony and expressionism.The Red Badge of Courage takes the American Civil War as the background,describing Henry Fleming's initiation through experiencing the war.Since the novel published,it has aroused a lot of interest among the scholars from both sides of the Atlantic.Most of researches studied the novel from the perspective of impressionism and naturalism and focused on the theme of the treatment of the war.In late 20th century,Chinese scholars started to conduct relevant researches about the novel,but few scholars have studied it from the perspective of Freudian Personality Structure.Therefore,this thesis tries to explore Fleming's self-redemption by analyzing his personality structure.Freud puts forwards personality structure which contains three aspects of individual psychic apparatus including the id,ego,and super-ego.The id is in the unconscious level of human mind,most part of which can't be recognized by individual,however,it is the part effects individual behavior severely.The super-ego which is related to the social morals mostly refers to individual's noble ideals.The ego is composed of a sets of self-awareness,and whose function is to balance the relationship between the id and super-ego.In The Red Badge of Courage,the protagonist Henry Fleming holds a heroic dream.When engaged in his first real battle,however,he skedaddled because of the fear to death.His escape triggered by the imbalance between Fleming's id and super-ego brings him tremendous sense of dishonour.The military moral and self-reflection play a crucial part in his reaching the balance of the id and super-ego.After returned to the battlefield,Fleming fought bravely regardless of his death and won the applauds both from the comrades and the lieutenant.Although the“pleasure principle" driven by the id brings Fleming contemporary safe,he lived a dishonour existence under the pressure of super-ego.In Fleming,it can be seen the only road to self-redemption is to fight bravely in the combat after reaching the balance of the id and super-ego.