'The Red Badge of Courage' follows Henry Fleming, an ordinary farm boy turned soldier with romantic notions about the glory of war. But amid the acrid smoke, the filth and the cold, the numbing monotony, and the unworldly wail of the dying, he is forced to come face to face with his own all-too-human feelings of terror and guilt. Henry's transformation from a fearful, lost, doubting youth to a courageous, confident, duty-bound soldier is the essence of the novel: a story of the growth of a young man from innocence to maturity.