Essay on Naturalism and Realism

Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” and Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” include parallel ideas of Man’s hopelessness in the natural world. Through out both short stories the authors bring up questions of man’s fate and his relationship with nature as well as carry a theme of naturalism. When nature seems to repeatedly play against man, the reader wonders we whether nature is cruel and sinister, making it difficult for man to live. Evidence in the the two stories such as the animal’s presence, the environments, and the different human characters, in both stories leads one to believe that nature is not in fact out to get man, but it is a neutral, indifferent factor.

Stephen Crane is a Naturalist. Naturalists believe an individual’s life is determined by environment, chance, and heredity. They also believe that free will is an illusion and that people should endure their suffering with quiet dignity. Lastly, Naturalists believe survival of the fittest and natural selection govern people as well as nature, and people resort to the animal during a crisis. Crane uses literary elements to create Naturalist themes in “A Mystery of Heroism” and “An Episode of War.” Although both of the stories have Naturalist themes, Crane uses different elements to create them.

Symbolism allows writers to suggest their ideas within a piece of literature. This is found in most types of writing. Stephen Crane expresses this in his short story, The Open Boat. Through symbolism and allegory, it is demonstrated that humans live in a universe that is unconcerned with them. The characters in the story come face to face with this indifference and are nearly overcome by Nature’s lack of concern. This is established in the opening scenes, the “seven mad gods” and in the realization of the dying soldier. The descriptions that Crane uses in the opening scenes illustrate nature’s lack of concern for their tragedy. He discusses the waves in the ocean that continually roll and crest. The waves are problems or

“Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.” In this small excerpt from his short story “The Open Boat” one can clearly see that Stephen Crane was a firm believer in the concepts of naturalism. After the harsh and violent Civil War the United States was no longer the nation it had been before. Previously, Americans had focused on the positive or romantic side of their surroundings and had written in a romantic style, glorifying man’s communion with nature. However, after the civil war that wasn’t the case. Some American’s had now experienced the harsh reality that nature was completely unbothered by the events that occurred to man. They realized

Naturalism and Realism both became important writing styles in the mid- nineteenth century. Naturalist writing portrays individuality within a character allowing a person to obtain humanistic themes. Realist writing is all about portraying real life and real situations. (Thesis)- Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” and Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” both display elements of naturalism and realism.

Naturalism is used by Steven Crane throughout his works to express the indifference nature has within ones environment. Typically, the stories that surround this naturalistic theme have characters that find themselves in dire situations and are left to deal with the indifference of nature, the struggle of courage and cowardice, and the psychological stress that they endure. Crane brings to light throughout several of his stories the theme that although nature is indifferent and may leave us with a loss of control, it is crucial that one does not allow their psyche to succumb to the fear of mortality, but to manage that fear, since Crane suggests we cannot eliminate it completely. Crane suggests that one can find meaning and eventually self-realization

Because “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” has an additional story within it, distinguishing reality from anecdote could become difficult; but this isn’t the case because of the characters’ differences in dialogue. The narrator is the one who speaks the segments of Mark Twain’s underlying story, while Simon Wheeler tells the other account. The western mannerisms of Wheeler differ dramatically from the narrator’s more standard and proper English style. While Simon Wheeler tells of “a feller…by the name of Jim Smiley,” the narrating character describes Wheeler as a man with “an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance.” The tones these characters think and talk in don’t blur together in the smooth transition between their

Naturalism is a literary movement that encapsulates the struggles of the common population. Hamlin Garland presents an excellent example of Naturalist literature in his short story “Under the Lion’s Paw”, published in 1889. In this short story, many of Dr. Stephen doCarmo’s characteristics of Naturalism are visible. Dr. doCarmo describes three broad characteristics of Naturalism: individuals are subjected to larger uncontainable forces, political undertones are prevalent within the work, and the subject matter of the work appeals to the middle-class. “Under the Lion’s Paw” possesses all three of these characteristics and radiates naturalism.

The main theme expressed by Stephen Crane in the story is nature’s indifference towards man or nature versus man. The author elaborates the realization of

The purpose of this essay is to help explore the history of Mark Twain’s short story “The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County”, and how this short story was affected by the current events going on during the late 1800’s, Mark Twain uses of the surrounding around him to help both inspire and craft that into his stories, and lastly how Mark Twain studies and understanding of literary techniques to help form The Celebrated Frog. This essay will look into three different articles that touches into each of these points that will help both and discuss and understand how Mark Twain was able to write one his most famous short story “The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County”. We will start with the history of this short story by looking at Gina Burkart article entitled “The Jumping Frog—both Old and New” which showed how Mark Twain was able to craft this short from an older story that he heard from word of mouth along with Twain’s trip out West to California. Next, we will look at Twain’s ability to use literary techniques such as making your story reflect the dialect that he was trying to target to help sell his short stories, and how Twain was a pure genesis at crafting this literary technique to a tee. Finally, we will see how the events going on during the late 1800’s affected Twain’s writing, and how Twain writing could be seen as writing of that time period.

Realism, in contrast to Romanticism, represents the reality of life in America. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, America experienced enormous industrial, economic, social, and cultural change. Realism focuses on showing everyday activities and events among the middle and lower class society without romantic ideas. In the early 20th century people started to pull away from fantasy and started focusing on the reality around them. Realism emphasises on truth, class, and social commentary.

In Mark Twain’s, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, Twain is asked to find Leonidas W. Smiley by a friend. Throughout the story, Twain uses diction in order to emphasize a sense of sophistication, and an old timey country accent feel. In paragraph two, Twain narrates, “...dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel’s.” In order to create a sophisticated tone, Twain conveys the tavern in a way that gives the setting a more depressed and rundown impression. The sophisticated tone also helps keep the reader hooked and engrossed within the story, rather than using simple phrases. Paragraph four then begins a newer piece of diction, where wheeler says, “...but anyways, he was the curiosest man about always betting...”

Stephen Crane is well known in the literary world for his many underlying themes. In Stephan Crane's "The Open Boat," one of the many themes that can be seen is that of community. He brings to life the importance of the each individual's role in the group setting. Crane uses a dire situation in which men's lives are in the hands of each other to show that without group togetherness no one would make it. He shows the group being given false hopes from outside forces but, how in the end the group must band together for survival and not rely on anything but themselves. "The Open Boat" is one of Crane's best known works. Throughout the story, paralleling an actually event in his life Crane brings the

Naturalism was a literary movement that took place from the 1880s until the 1940s. It used realism as a mechanism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had a monumental impact in changing or defining human character. Naturalism exposes the dark areas of life and how they affected people, such as sex, violence, disease, prejudice, abandonment, disease, and even death. Naturalism, in short, is a need to return to the earth. (Williams, 571) A prime example of this literary theory

In the course of this semester, we have read a number of stories that have one common element: science. In most of the stories, the science was hypothetical, but accurate, for the time and usually played an important part in the story. Today we know that most of these ideas range from simply being wrong to flat out impossible. When I say science I am referring to the sciences that are of a physical nature such as biology, chemistry, and physics. Psychology is also a science, but one of a mental nature. The few books that we had that dealt mainly with psychology will not be dealt with in this paper.