1

A red badge of courage is a wound. Henry is uncomfortable because he has no wound to justify his departure from the battle front. He eventually gets his own wound when he is hit over the head by a soldier who was running from the battle front, in an ironic turn of events.

2

Henry does not at first recognize Jim because Jim is so badly wounded. Henry feels hopelessly inadequate at this because he has no wound and Jim is so badly hurt.

“The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.”
The usage of “wafer” from this quote, probably refers to a Eucharistic wafer, a thin disk of unleavened bread. In the Christian faith, they are used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus. The sun’s likeness to a wafer seems to draw an allusion to the Bible and Christianity.

3

Henry becomes a lean, mean fightin’ machine in the last battle of the book. This change might be caused by Henry’s eventual realization that he has been criticizing himself for the whole war/book, but has not actually done anything to improve himself.

4

Nature is depicted as being one entity. It is said to ignore the noises of the battle (p. 43): “Off was the rumble of death. It seemed now that nature had no ears.” Later, though, Nature finds her ears again (page 45): “As he ran, he became aware that the forest had stopped its music, as if at last becoming capable of hearing the foreign sound.”

7

“The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.”
“But the other . . . raised his limp hand in a prophetic manner and turned away.” (p. 26)
“He stared at the red, shivering reflection of a fire on the white wall of his tent. . . ” (p. 18)

8

(where he sees the dead bodies that “own” the piece of battlefield just beyond the fence)