Youth of the Red Badge of Courage and the Youth of Today As a young member of today's society, I do not fear death. If I feared death, I would be "dead." There are so many sources of death today, such as car accidents, shootings, drugs, and disease, that if I were constantly afraid of all of them, I couldn't leave my backyard. Therefore, I refuse to believe that death will happen to me. In the novel The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, the youth of the 19th century, like the youth of today, are not afraid of death, but his reasoning is different, so he actually welcomes death. The average young person today is not afraid of death. death because it seems to happen to other people. Death is far away. Every day we read about people being killed in this or drowned in that, but it never happens to anyone we know. If someone we know dies, we are shocked and forced to reconsider our lives because, for a moment, we realize that we could die too. Unlike us, the young man in The Red Badge of Courage knows death firsthand, and he is not afraid. When the young man was young, his father died. Through the novel, the young man fights in the bloodiest war on American soil and the war that caused the greatest number of casualties per capita of any U.S. war. He saw dead bodies and walked with dying men. He was trying to help one of his injured friends when his friend convulsively died. Earlier in his experiences, especially when he first encountered combat, he had an enormous fear of death, so afraid that he ran away from battle. Throughout the passage, and later in the novel, he knows that he could die at any moment but has no apprehension. When death strikes a loved one, I feel it is unfair. "Why," I ask, "did Grandma have to die? She was such a kind old woman. Why couldn't some tramp have died instead?" I didn't want him to die and I feel like he didn't deserve to die. Likewise, young people feel that death is unfair, but exactly the opposite. He wishes that death would not fall upon the Unknown Soldier, but upon him. Like us, he sees death as a fortuitous and unfair event, but unlike us, in this passage, he thinks that death is lucky..