Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets

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

We hear of her moving to New York to escape her life as a child bride after being orphaned at a young age. This story allows the audience to gain a sense of sympathy for Holly, and enhances the pathos of the story. This pathos puts the audience into the shoes of Holly and enables them to understand the reasoning behind her escape. The use of language features like pathos and literary allusion allow the authors of both texts to convey the theme of escapism.

The novel “The Street” by Ann Petry demonstrates the relationship of Lutie Johnson and urban setting by personifying the wind, using imagery to show how brutal the wind was, selection of detail and figurative language in which refers to a deeper meaning of the wind-racial discrimination.

Crane was giving the abysmal family life because again he was trying to give readers a background as well as a peak into the life of these people. He was explaining and analyzing the level of literacy buy writing passages how they would sound if you said it out loud. He was also showing how hard it was for people growing up in that lifestyle.

The author of “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker, portrays that society values people like Dee more so than Maggie. The two sisters in the story are described as two complete opposites in personality, how they carry themselves, and even overall appearance. Walker describes Maggie with a quote, “she has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground” (71). This description of Maggie relates to someone who is clearly shy, not very confident, and appears closed off to the world. Society does not appear to value people who are not very confident and not open to the world in general. Describing the illiteracy of Maggie also adds to the view of society valuing Dee over Maggie.

“Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,” is a novella written by Stephen Crane and published in the year 1893. This work was published during the time of the Industrial Revolution, when factories were appearing everywhere. Their workers were often not paid enough to lead a decent life, and suffered from their situation. They were not very civilized and sometimes aggressive in their behavior. Perhaps because of this radical change from a more agricultural lifestyle to one of industry and factories, some pieces of literature were starting to transition from the classification of Realistic writings to works that are now categorized as works of Naturalism. While the two categories are

Roberts organizes his book based on certain themes, such as culture and day-to-day life, paying special attention to the pre- and post-War periods so as to emphasize the evolution of the slum throughout the period of time covered. He divides it into chapters that cover specific aspects of society and day-to-day life in order to accentuate certain points. His writing style is a unique and well-chosen blend of personal reminiscences and historical research. Much of his writing, including his own experiences, is presented in a very matter-of-fact way. The impact this style has on the reader is great because he is able to state such horrors so bluntly, as only someone who was truly there can. Occasionally, however, his emotions break through, as is evident in his explanation of his parents' separation and subsequent death on page 238. Lastly, the work is scholarly and concise, as Roberts chooses to get straight to the point and elaborate on it rather than saying the same thing in many different ways.

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, a novella written in 1893 by Stephen Crane, focuses on a poverty stricken family living in the Bowery district of New York City. This novella is regarded as one of the first works of naturalism in American literature and it helped shape the naturalistic principle that a character is set into a world where there is no escape from one’s biological heredity and the circumstances that the characters find themselves in will dominate their behavior and deprive them of individual responsibility. Throughout the story, the primary goal of the main characters is to escape the lives they lead and to find more comfortable lives away from their current problems, which differs from the romantic ideal that the main characters usually turn inwards to solve their problems.

Crane tells of how the wife "was not pretty, nor was she very young." She is also unfamiliar, as a cook, of the train they ride together to Yellow Sky. Crane sets this scene to show how Jack's new wife is far from spectacular, and not a person that the people of Yellow Sky will have much respect for. However, after explaining the relationship of the newly weds, Crane reveals the admiration of Jack Potter in Yellow Sky. The reverence of the bartender towards Jack Potter is apparent as he explains the town situation to a visitor. However, once Jack Potter arrives and runs into Scratchy Wilson, the story unfolds. Thomas Beer, author of a Stephen Crane biography is astonished by the way Crane ends the story: " Crane is done with the business. All the ordinary values of his situation have bee thrown away; the marshal and the woman merely plain people" (248).

Crane’s “Maggie: A Girl in the Streets” is a story of unyielding realism. The story follows Maggie, a girl who resides within the Bowery with her physically and emotionally abusive parents and brothers, Jimmy and Tommie. The story focuses on the life and struggles of Maggie and her family within the slums. Maggie desperately tries to escape the life within the Bowery, but eventually succumbs to it and passes away a broken woman.

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

Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif,” tells of a friendship started between two young eight-year-old girls, Twyla and Roberta, one black and one white, who find themselves in an orphanage after their mothers are deemed unfit to care for them. Through Twyla’s perspective, she tells us her mother “danced all night, and Roberta’s was sick.” (239) The story follows the two girls, Twyla and Roberta, through specific encounters and dialect shared well into their thirties. At each encounter, the women recount their time at St. Bonny’s, specifically discussing Maggie, the “kitchen woman with legs like parentheses” (240) whom the girls thought to be a deaf-mute. Maggie’s character, although not in the forefront, is specifically important in understanding the girl’s memories and the overall story. It is through Twyla and Roberta’s sporadic dialogues that Morrison’s ambiguous writing encompasses not only social class, economic status, and racism, but contains an underlying message that truth in memories is subjective. This powerful message, reinforced at the end of the story, leaves the audience wondering how much of Twyla’s recollection is, in fact, true, when Roberta uncovers her tearful face and asks Twyla, “What the hell happened to Maggie?” (252)

Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets opening scene features violence, which is a taboo subject during the time period he wrote the piece; “His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut in his head”(946). The three children experience abuse, both physical and emotional, from the mother and the father in the early chapters of this work. Stephen Crane states, [ Youse allus fightn’, Jimmie, an’yeh knows it puts mudder out when yehs come home half dead, an’ it’s like we’ll all get a poundin’ (949).] Furthermore, this abuse is evidenced by the following quote from Stephen Crane [The mother’s massive shoulders heaved with anger. Grasping the urchin by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he rattled(949).] Violence is a

Clifford Shaw is the author of, The Jack Roller: A delinquent boy’s own story. This is an amazing book that describes the life journey of a delinquent boy named Stanley, who encounters many obstacles and behavioral struggles in life during the time from his adolescence adulthood years. During his childhood years, where most of his delinquency began, he lived in the large Polish neighborhood which is known as the “Back of the Yards.” It was one the ugliest and poorest neighborhoods in the city. According to the author it is “surrounded by packing plants, stock yards, railroads, factories, and waste lands. The population is composed largely of families of unskilled laborers who depended on stock yards and local industries for employment” (Shaw 34). It was not a community of wealth. After Stanley’s mother died at the age of four, his life was not the same.