The Red Badge Of Courage Naturalism And Realism Essay

Naturalism in literature applies a philosophical way of thinking to the actions of human beings through a larger force, while Realism takes that way of thinking and backs it up with definitive facts and background information found in the real world. Few writers were able to pioneer the combination of these two literary techniques. However, the Civil War era was a perfect opportunity to take real life experiences and use those to develop a plot where the character tries to overcome a predestined law. An author who was able to successfully combine Naturalism and Realism making it one of the most influential in his time was Stephen Crane. By using Naturalism and Realism, Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage to shed light upon the psychological effects from fighting in the Civil War to the general public.

Stephen Townley Crane was born almost a decade after the start of the Civil War in Newark, New Jersey on November 1, 1871. His father was a Methodist minister and mother was committed to speaking out on social concerns that were brought about in the time period. Crane started his education at Claverack College, a military school, in

Most of the press and readers were amazed at how he was vividly able to express and depict a war he had never seen through his use of symbolism and description in The Red Badge of Courage. The book’s success also gave instant recognition to Stephen Crane from newspapers such as the New York Times and the Philadelphia Press. Critics such as the New York Times London editor, Harold Frederic, applauded The Red Badge of Courage for shaping future American literature by saying, “Crane’s journalistic description and ironic understatement compromise a stylistic legacy which has descended through Hemingway and early Mailer and done a great deal in shaping American literature as we know it”