Realism In Gasie, Henry James And Abraham Cahen's The Open Boat

“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

Realism occurs everyday, one may not know but its the reason why know not everyone gets to live their lives to a happy ending, its the reason why sometimes you can't get everything you want in your life. Realism is the attitude or practice of accepting a situation as it is and being prepared to deal with it accordingly. Realism is a trend which takes place in the nineteenth century during which literature depicted life "as is," and focuses on real life. This literary movement frequently depicted everyday life; it follows the rule of a phenomenal world and that nothing is added to your life. It is the reverse job of what a filter would do to all the troubles that one may encounter later in life. Realism is

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.

The men, however, seem removed from the clockwork of their surroundings; seperate, but somehow in the midst of everything happening around them. This indifference causes the men to feel a certain isolation from nature. They even go as far as to think of the Universe as being hostile: '[The waves were] nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.'(1) This is, however, just normal activity of nature, not any act of agression against Man.

“The Open Boat” is a short story written by Steven Crane about four men stranded on a dinghy after their boat had sunk over night. The men were struggling to stay alive because it seemed as if they had no hope for survival. The four stranded shipmen were a correspondent, an oiler, a cook, and a captain. The theme of the story is that man has no control over his destinies and that nature controls everything. Naturalist themes prevail in Stephen Crane's “The Open Boat” as it demonstrates naturalist literature through the struggle that nature throws at the men. Naturalism arises throughout the men’s constant battle between their surrounding environment and keeping

“The Open Boat” is short tale of endurance, suffering, and redemption. The story focuses on four interesting sailors on a journey towards survival. They try their best to overcome the adversities of the water and raging storm. Crane focuses on the constant struggle of man’s immobility to control his own life. “The Open Boat” is a nonfictional fiction some call it. It typically is argued as only fiction, but many lean toward its nonfictional quality. Crane wrote the story based off his real life experience of a shipwreck he tragically endured. The Commodore, the name of the ship, was the victim of the waves and Crane just so happened to be one of its friends. He wrote 2 articles based on this tragedy, but “The Open Boat” became the best

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first” (Mark Twain). Realism is a faithful representation of reality that isn’t swayed by unconscious bias or idealistic aims. Realism arose in literature from the period of the civil war where authors showed more truthiness in their writings (Campbell). Jack London and Mark Twain convey the theme that humans have faults through their different styles of writing in their works, “To Build a Fire” and “The Lowest Animal”.

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

"Authors began to focus their writing on ordinary people and their everyday lives" which caused the shift from Romanticism to Realism to begin.Many American authors were influenced by this movement ("Realism"). Realism inspired these authors to take into a deeper meaning the realties of life by further examining the obstacles and circumstances they have undergone (Marshall). The main ideas of literature shifted from giving people supernatural traits to authors portraying humans as the ordinary person ("Realism"). The major theme of this time period was to preserve the foundations that America’s forefathers laid down for the country. The Civil War was ultimately a second chance for the nation to rebuild and gain back the beneficial aspects that were overlooked in times of change. Realism began around the time of the Civil War and ended in early 1900. The changes in the writing styles shifted America’s views on the works of literature in the time period and caused a drastic change in the country (Leonard). Realists wanted to use the diction of the typical person to be able to connect to them and portray the concreteness of life

Realism best represents the literary movement that America was facing at the time because the texts’ use detail that show how things really happened, how things really sounded, how they really looked, and used this literary style to get the reader more involved to see how the text will make them react while reading instead of just focusing on the narrator and the writer. While reading The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County Twain says “ He never smiled, he never frowned, and he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key” (Twain 4). Twain uses these words to show real details that the other movements would never use in their

Realism is the portrayal of the reality of everyday life and period of literature between 1850-1900. Realist fictions speculate myths, assumptions, social norms, sentimentality, collective wisdom, and prejudices. Realism stories are usually about the middle-class people, and it aims to show a truthful portrayal of truth. Regionalism is a class of realist literature distinguished by closeness to the habits, language, dialects, manners, history, traditions, beliefs of a particular geographical region. Regionalism manifests the characters of both realism and romanticism. Romanticism is cultural the period from 1830-1860 in America. Humankind is naturally good. The characteristics of romanticism are passion and emotion, nature over the man, spiritual, intuition, and insight. "A White Heron," by Sarah Orne Jewett, is an example of local color because of its realism. Jewett uses characteristics of regionalism like dialogue to show the contrast between the locals and outsiders, habits, their daily activities, the dress, features of a place. "Editha" by William is the story of realism which has many characteristics of realism like details about war; he uses dialect to hold out the trend of the story, using middle-class peoples character. Dean Howell uses a part of romantic style but all together its categorized as one of the

Everyone could relate to realism because it was more realistic. Realism lasted through the mid 19th century and included writers such as Flaubert, Zola, and Dickens.

Between the end of the civil war in 1865 to about 1910, two styles of literature dominated American literature: realism and naturalism. Realism presents the world as it really is. One of the well known writers of realism, William Dean Howell’s, wrote “realism in nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.” Realism in literature tends to be the plain and direct account of whatever is being written about. Writers of realism fill their work with facts to complement the readers’ feelings of the fact that these things can happen in their everyday lives. Realists are sure to write about normal, everyday people, living

Realism came about in literary works in the 19th century, and portrayed real life unlike the previous Enlightenment and Romanticism movements prior. Writers and people were sick of the neat, happy stories and endings that were written by the two previous movements, and those people wanted something they could relate to. Because of this, Realistic writers wrote about the boring, ordinary lives that regular folks led and did not sugar-coat anything that occurred but was brutally honest. In the words of Randall Craig, “Realistic writers educate readers, not through humiliation, but by familiarizing them with a re-presented world and enabling them to discover the rules by which it works and to apply them both to the fictional and extra-fictional

Realism in literature is basically the successor to romanticism. It first took off and gained footing in 19th century France. The literary style is a more straightforward and realistic style of writing in comparison to romanticism which was all about exaggeration and symbolism. Realism is often interchangeable with naturalism and branches out into regionalism which is interchangeable with local color. This type of writing is responsible for one of the greatest era of literary works.