The narrator, Maggie, is an exemplary example of an unconnected character. This relation adds to the scientific perspective of the work. Ideas of Social Darwinism and the survival of the fittest are incorporated in the novel. They also believe free will is an illusion, survival of the fittest and natural selection govern people as well as nature, and people resort to the animal within during crisis situations.
Naturalists also. Naturalists depict their characters as having little or no control over their lives, as they are usually removed of their free will by uncontrollable external forces such as nature or if they are in a lower class of society. Some characteristics of naturalist writing include determinism, pessimism, indifference to the environment, and survival. 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. Faulkner refuses to accept the naturalists theme that human beings are dominated, controlled, and overwhelmed by their environment and nature. He does not accept the end of man, but rather says that man will prevail.
Though many have accepted the easy way out by saying man will simply. Stephen Crane is considered to be one of the leading writers of Naturalism and has many naturalistic viewpoints evident in his poetry. As a naturalist, Stephen Crane ridiculed the romantic and questioned the existence of a God. He viewed humanity as an ordinary, insignificant product of nature. Throughout various poems the idea of a. Encourage them to tinker with the conventions perhaps as an at-home activity with their parents so that they can continue to develop a nuanced view of the genre.
Ask students to write a page essay in which they compare and contrast the narrators of "To Build a Fire" and "The Open Boat" and each story's "plot of decline. Skip to main content. Lesson Plan. Photo caption. Wikimedia Commons. How do the two stories differ as representations of American literary naturalism? Understand the literary context for Jack London and Stephen Crane's work. Lesson Plan Details Background.
Jack London's "To Build a Fire" Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" Naturalism is often described as the representation of the negative forces of real life, and fiction in this literary sub-genre is often populated with characters whose relationship with their surroundings is especially difficult or challenging.
Literary critic Donna Campbell defines naturalism as follows: "The term naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike realism, which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, 'human beasts,' characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings.
Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and websites. If necessary, download and print out any documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing. Knowledge or Instinct? Activity 1. As a summary, Walcutt notes the following themes in naturalism: The "brute within"—which is the notion that everyone has "strong and often warring emotions: passions, such as lust, greed, or the desire for dominance or pleasure," leading to behavior considered taboo by society.
Encountering the indifferent universe can cause this brute to rise up, often in violent ways. Students will likely see similarities to certain comic book heroes like The Incredible Hulk. The indifference of nature as man struggles to survive. The influence of "heredity and environment" or one's background and surroundings on the development of a person. This emphasizes the difficulty of moving between or mixing social classes even if successful, the repercussions can be tremendous.
Determinism: the inability to express free will or personal agency. Activity 2. Analyzing Naturalism's Common Themes Divide students into groups appropriate to your class size. Themes: The "brute within" The indifference of nature The forces of "heredity and environment" one's background or environment An indifferent, deterministic universe lack of free will or agency After students have spent 10 or 15 minutes in their groups, ask the group leader to share one or two of their passages from the text and explain why it relates to their assigned theme.
Activity 3. Navigating the Naturalist Plot of Decline Now that students have explored many of the general themes of naturalist fiction, reintroduce them to the idea that naturalist plots typically follow a noticeable "plot of decline," or a plot that often depicts a character's progression or retrogression toward degeneration or death.
Ask students the following questions: How does each event affect the following event? Like other scholars, students in class often are concerned with Crane's attitude toward God. Crane writes about extreme experiences that are confronted by ordinary people.
His characters are not larger-than-life, but they touch the mysterious edges of their capacities for perception, action, and understanding. In both, individuals are shown to struggle for communication while being buffeted by tumultuous forces.
Crane's works reflect many of the major artistic concerns at the end of the nineteenth century, especially naturalism, impressionism, and symbolism. His works insist that we live in a universe of vast and indifferent natural forces, not in a world of divine providence or a certain moral order. But Crane's vivid and explosive prose styles distinguish his works from those by many other writers who are labeled naturalists.
Many readers including Hamlin Garland and Joseph Conrad, who were personal friends of Crane have used the term impressionist to describe Crane's vivid renderings of moments of visual beauty and uncertainty. Even Crane's "discontinuous" rendering of action has been identified as impressionist.
In "The Open Boat," Crane has been seen as a symbolist. Perhaps it is most appropriate to see the story as a skeptical balancing of concern with vast archetypes with an equal concern with psychology of perception: personal and cultural symbol grids. Crane was a "star" journalist, and he published many of his best fictional works in the popular press.
Nonetheless his comment that a newspaper is a "collection of half-injustices" indicates his skepticism about that medium of communication. Crane's brief free-verse poems invite comparison with those of Emily Dickinson Howells read them to him , and with a number of twentieth-century poets, particularly those influenced by imagism Carl Sandburg, Amy Lowell , Ezra Pound , William Carlos Williams , for example.
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