Growing Up Throughout the novel The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is in a constant struggle between his illusions of war and reality. When Henry first decides to enlist their is a perception of war that he has in his mind; he later finds out that war is not as glorious and courageous as his mind had perceived. As the novel progresses Henry comes to realize that his idealized notions of war and death, for his country, were all illusions he was creating for himself. Being a young man from a small house in New York, all that Henry Fleming new about war is what he imagined it to be in his head. He perceived war to be a great struggle between two opposing forces fighting f