Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets

I believe the book fever, 1973 is about overcoming hardship. In the book Mattie over comes death loss homelessness and the fear of the unknown . Mattie is 15 years old living with her mom grandfather and there cook Eliza when fever hits Philadelphia killing thousands.

Have you ever noticed how some people just stand out from the crowd? Like the clouds in the sky and blades of grass, people are all different. “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker has a good example of an interesting, unique character. Maggie is a young girl who is not only physically but also mentally scarred. The way the burning house, her stuck-up sister, and society affects Maggie makes her different from everyone else.

Beginning in the early years of Stephen Crane’s life, he was the last son of thirteen other siblings. Being raised by a Methodist family on both sides, Stephan’s parents focused a lot of their time writing religious articles. He also had two brother’s that were journalist, one working as a reporter. Growing up with several

The author uses a seemingly endless cycle of poverty to emphasize the cage in which the characters are trapped. As Lizabeth muses over her childhood, she recalls the daily cycle of how “each morning our mother and father trudged wearily down the dirt road and around the bend, she to her domestic job, he to his daily unsuccessful quest for work.” (1). Every morning began the same way, passed the same way, and ended the same way. Lizabeth feels trapped, forced to go through the same series of events for what seems to be the rest of her life, with the same people, in the same place. When the author pairs this with the “dusty” setting of the town and the time placement of the Great Depression, it creates an effect of hopelessness for the first part of the story. This is only furthered by Lizabeth continually returning to the idea that “Poverty was the cage in which we were all trapped.” (1). Lizabeth opens the story by first giving a description of her hometown as “dusty”, remembering the poverty and hopelessness. She then continues by referring to the cage of not having enough money, and the cycle that it put them through, and ends by alluding to her future being limited to her poverty.

The novel, Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets, by Stephen Crane, takes place in the slums of New York City during the 1890’s. It is about a girl, Maggie Johnson, who is forced to grow up in a tenement house. She had a brother, Jimmie, an abusive mother, Mary, and a father who died when Maggie was young. When Maggie grew up, she met her boyfriend, Pete. In Maggie’s eyes, Pete was a sophisticated young man who impressed Maggie because he treated her better than she had been treated to all of her life. Once Maggie’s mother and brother found out that Maggie was sleeping with this man, Mary threw Maggie out into the streets, condemning her to a life of evil. Eventually, Pete decided he no longer wished to see Maggie.

Maggie is described as being unattractive, very shy and self-conscious about the way she looked. Maggie always looked down at herself and thought she could not compare to her sister. She thinks her sister lives a life that she missed on, by getting an education and having the finer things in life. The scars she has on her body from the house fire done more than just scare her skin but has scared her soul too. Maggie, mother talks about her daughter in a way a person would think no mother should ever do.“ Have you ever

Imagine: A young boy scavenges for food to provide for his impoverished family which was composed of his ill mother and starving siblings or a homeless, single mom desperatley seeking for shelter. These synopses from "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt and "The Street" by Ann Petry share a common theme: perseverance through hardships. In "Angela's Ashes," a memoir by Frank McCourt, he stells about the harships he endured through his childhood, such as, struggling to assist his family in the midst of poverty by stealing food to provide for them. Futhermore, in "The Street," a novel by Ann Petry, tells the story of young Lutie Johnson, a homeless single mom who is seeking shelter for herself and her children. In these two excerpts, the authors use the characters, settings, and events to develop the theme, which I've identified as perseverance through hardships.

The children have an abusive mother and that motivates them to perform the actions they do. The way they were raised and the environment they grew up in was not the ideal situation. I believe that crane blames the mother as well and Pete for the downfall of the characters. The characters grew up in a household that was abusive and it showed why the children were doing the things they were and Pete was even worse of an influence. He would egg on Jimmie and get him in situations he could have avoided, and he also got Maggie disowned from her family and kicked

She was old, around her 60’s to 70’s. Each cheekbone outlined to the slightest. Her hair frizzy on top like cotton. She wore a shawl pinned together by a safety pin. Her name was Evelyn Marshall Thomas. Evelyn worked at a hair dresser, and everyone knew her. She was respected amongst everyone in the town and was the “grandma” of the town. People would go to her to talk and express their feelings like she was their therapist, but Evelyn had problems too; she lived in heavy poverty. Everyday Evelyn had the same routine: she woke up, readied herself for the day, and left for work, on the walk to work she say the same people: the newspaper boy on his runs, the florist tending to her flourishing flowers, the corner store owner who zealously ran around his store preparing for the forthcoming day. Her life was as simple as possible.

“Maggie” is a story that is pessimistic. It is not only a story of a character who ultimately succumbs to her situation by becoming a prostitute because she feels she has no other way if supporting

How is it possible that two young children from seemingly similar backgrounds could have such opposing futures? Each coming from the poverty of the streets of New York City and yet somehow, one will be successful and the other will commit suicide. This is exactly the case in the novels Ragged Dick, written by Horatio Alger, and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, written by Stephen Crane. Both set in the rough streets of New York City in the mid 1800’s, the novels follow the lives of two poverty-stricken youth, Dick and Maggie. While the two appear similar on the outside, their fates are nothing short of opposites. Upon the reading of each novel, one must ask themselves, what is the American Dream? Is it either of the lives led by these two

In the opening stages of the novella, Maggie tries to escape her troubling life through her relationship with Pete. As Maggie grows up, she becomes a beautiful girl who hates her life in Rum Alley. She sees Pete as a savior who could lead her away from her poverty stricken life and bring her into the world of leisure because he introduces her to popular music, dances, and dramas, all of which seem extravagant to her. Maggie “begins to note the well-dressed women she meets. She [envies the women’s] elegance (11).” Most of the melodramas that Maggie watches with Pete show the American dream of a person going from rags to riches, which is a goal that she thinks Pete will help her in achieve.

Being known for writing what he saw and experienced gave Crane his recognition in his book “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” was said to be a very brutal story of a prostitute that lived on the streets. Crane’s eye for detail gives “A Dark Brown Dog” full life; that this was just a short story based off of what he experienced while living on the street. He wrote about the life of a little boy that he watched and the tragedy that the boy had to deal with in

Stephen Crane wrote many short stories, one of which was Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. His stories contained various aspects of Naturalism, a literary movement that sought to replicate a believable everyday reality, as opposed to Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment. Poverty, abuse and a survival of the fittest way of life created an environment which Maggie was negatively influenced by. Her environment is made up of many circumstances that affect her, one of which is poverty.

After the Civil War, realism became a dominant form of writing in the United States, with writers attempting to write about everyday life. After realism came naturalism, a form of writing similar to realism, but with more pessimism. One of the reasons for this pessimism stems from free will and the question of whether people possess it or not. In realism, it is definitely true, while in naturalism it seems less so, but the options are often less than ideal. Because choices do exist for characters, free will is still there, which indicates that naturalism is a derivative form of realism. In Stephen Crane’s “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,” the characters may have little chance to escape the world they inhabit, like Maggie, Jimmie, and