Red Badge of Courage

So, as my title suggests, this blog is about the Red Badge of Courage. I am going to first say, I strongly disliked the main character of this story. I myself am in the National Guard, and thinking of having "soldiers" like this in our military both frightens and angers me. For those of you who aren't sure what the National Guard is, let me try to enlighten you. It is true that we help out around the state when there is a flood, riot, or some occurance we might be able to assist with. That is NOT, however, all we are good for. When we raise our right hand and decide to serve our country, we are then shipped to BCT (basic combat training) with soldiers who are Army reservists and full time Army. We all are trained exaclty the same, but when we finish our training (five months straight for us miliary police) we go to our respective units. For me, that means one weekend a month, two weeks a year. The regular army (people who go to a duty station and work basically a 9-5 job or whichever shift they're put on) are either stateside or sent to a duty station in Germany or some country. Also, some get deployed to fight in the war. The Army reserves AND National Guard get sent home, but can and DO go to war (for a year or more just like the regular army.)

Okay, that was a little off the literary subject, but I wanted to try to explain the difference and similarities the National Guard has with regular Army. Point is, a soldier is a soldier. This "soldier" who wanted so desperately to serve his country ended up being a coward and a raving lunatic. Maybe he wasn't raving, but he was surely crazy. This is they type of guy you don't want fighting on your side; he is the guy who gets others killed because he doesn't have his head in the game and is only looking out for himself. Throughout this story I was so engrossed in my own dislike of the main character that I'm sure I missed a lot of what was going on in the story. I am surprised the author hadn't seen battle before he wrote this, because what he wrote seemed to be from that of someone with experience. Overall I was not a fan of this story. It was able to hold my attention because I have an interest in military stories and because the main character was so irritating to me, but my dislike for him also ruined my ability to truly enjoy what I read.