`` Red Badge Of Courage `` And John Neihardt Black Elk

Stephen Crane’s â€Å"Red Badge of Courage† and John Neihardt â€Å"Black Elk Speaks† are two tales about men experiencing a rebirth; one text details a moral rebirth within the main character’s conscience and the latter a cultural rebirth of a forgotten nation. Crane’s novel follows a novice soldier fighting on the frontlines of the American Civil War who confronts his cowardice in an attempt to be a better man and soldier. Neihardt’s book follows Black Elk, a spiritual leader who witnessed Europeans steal land from his South Dakota Indian tribe. â€Å"Black Elk Speaks† details a number of spiritual rebirths that Black Elk experienced by connecting with nature in an effort to save his people, but the more potent point is that the recording of the narrative marks a restoration of the history of Black Elk’s tribe. These two pieces of literature exemplify the human need to renew their characters and restore their environment for p ositive progression. To begin with, both texts show rebirth as they detail the passage of the main characters from boyhood to manhood. While going through this transition, the main characters examine their inner selves, shedding old qualities, to become the men that they would like to be. Crane’s main character, Henry Fleming, is striving to become a courageous man amidst a historic war and Black Elk is recounting the stories that made him one of the men tasked with preserving his tribe’s legacy. When Fleming is first about to go to war, he realizes that his