This is an excellent question to consider. I would want to
answer it in two ways.
Firstly, it is important to remember
that the action in the novel only occurs over the span of a few weeks. It is easy to
forget this, because during these few weeks, Henry in particular undergoes massive
changes in his own character, and greatly matures. You are right to indicate that one of
the principal ways in which he matures is through the journey from youth to manhood.
However, at the same time, perhaps one of the reasons that Crane still uses "youth" to
refer to Henry, even in the last chapter, is to remind us that although he is now very
experienced and mature, he is still a young man as regards his age, thus highlighting
the way in which war makes us wise beyond our
years.
Secondly, a key theme of this story is the precise
nature of manhood. Throughout the novel we see that Henry changes his idea of what
manhood actually consists of. As the novel begins we see that his conception of manhood
is based on rather naive and romantic notions as he believes that the more experience he
gains the greater adoration he will receive. However, at the end of the novel, Henry
realises that manhood is about how we integrate the different episodes of our lives,
both the good and the bad ones, without ignoring our mistakes and failures. He is shown
to have just managed to start this process at the end of the novel, so perhaps the
continued use of the title "youth" indicates that he still has some way to go to reach
manhood, which arguably is not an end destination, but a way of
travelling.
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