Realism is a literary portrayal of the lives of people without sentimentalization. Naturalism naturally grew out of realism. Accordingly, “Like the Realist writers... they often focused on the working class and the poor, presenting the futile battles of individuals against a brutal society or an indifferent universe"(Glencoe, 476). Realism is more mundane than naturalism and though people may die it generally is not at the hands of Father Nature. This foundation having been laid let the reader now examine the deviation in the depiction of the natural world and human nature between Stephen Crane's The Open Boat and Edith Wharton's April Showers.
Stephen Crane joined the congregation of the dead 150 days before his twenty-ninth birthday. He …show more content…
Covici remarks,” Each of the men adrift in Crane’s open boat “feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying, “Yes, but I love myself” (17).In Crane’s literary universe there is only the environment and those who live in it, no divine intervention or direction is indicated at any …show more content…
Human nature in Crane’s short story leads the men to form a bond they otherwise would not have formed to counterbalance in pursuance of a shield against a “cruel and unrelenting nature” (Sparknotes).Human nature in Wharton’s story is similar in that a shared experience of suffering strengthens a bond, but dissimilar in that it is not foisted upon the reader as merely a result of primitive animistic pack survival instinct. Instead a father commiserates with his daughter because he too had experienced a similar
Stephen Crane joined the congregation of the dead 150 days before his twenty-ninth birthday. He …show more content…
Covici remarks,” Each of the men adrift in Crane’s open boat “feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying, “Yes, but I love myself” (17).In Crane’s literary universe there is only the environment and those who live in it, no divine intervention or direction is indicated at any …show more content…
Human nature in Crane’s short story leads the men to form a bond they otherwise would not have formed to counterbalance in pursuance of a shield against a “cruel and unrelenting nature” (Sparknotes).Human nature in Wharton’s story is similar in that a shared experience of suffering strengthens a bond, but dissimilar in that it is not foisted upon the reader as merely a result of primitive animistic pack survival instinct. Instead a father commiserates with his daughter because he too had experienced a similar