The Open Boat

In America, Realism is a literary movement or school of thought that avoided melodrama and emphasized verisimilitude. Subjects were taken from everyday life and authors placed a heavy emphasis on characters as real people influenced by environment and circumstances. Realism can be broadly defined as being faithful when representing reality or verisimilitude. It is a literary technique important to the school of thought. Realism encompasses the period in which Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Stephen Crane, and others like Henry James, portrayed fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of lives in America in many perspectives.
Charlotte Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper encompasses realism in numerous ways. A young upper class woman suffers from insanity, but in actuality her diagnosis is later discovered to be postpartum …show more content…
Crane writes about a real experience that he had faced when he and a few other men became shipwrecked off of the Florida coast. The story conveys their battle against nature and their fight to survive. The imagery of nature’s harshness is unquestionable. The men are completely absorbed by the power that nature has over them. Crane's metaphors are so vivid and intense and completely realistic. His words transpire the authentic fear that they experienced through being shipwrecked and lost at sea. This provides the audience with an intense and realistic account. The Open Boat withholds it’s main important theme, the conflict being man versus nature. The Beast in the Jungle is my final example of realism. John Marcher is the main protagonist. Two acquaintances John Marcher and May Bartram bump into each other. May is the only person John has ever told about his beast. The story is used at an angle where James allows us to foreshadow and relive the events taking place. The audience is aware that something weird is going to happen because of James