Naturalism Research Paper

Naturalism in Literature

Naturalism is the literary movement that directly followed, and was born from, the Realistic Movement. Unlike Realism, which focused on the middle class, Naturalism focused on the lower class. The characters of naturalist writers were usually poor, disenfranchised, living in impoverished conditions and struggling to survive hardships. This is how naturalism is explained according to The American Novel, “While it is strongly associated with realism, in the shared emphasis on depicting surface reality, naturalism is more than a literary technique, involving as it does the philosophy of determinism. Naturalism is antiromantic in emphasizing the limited ability of humans to impose will upon their own destiny, and also in devaluing the imagination's embellishment of reality. For the naturalist, it is the duty of the writer to present to the reader reality without illusion, to offer a scientific, detached view of it rather than to adorn or mislead or simply please the reader” (Matterson).

Naturalism also focuses on nature and how humans are subject to the laws on nature. Naturalists believed that circumstances were what controlled your life. The belief was that your environment is what determined the rest of your life or who or what would become of you. In Crane’s The Open Boat the story is a perfect model for naturalism because of the way it pessimistically depicts life. The four men in the story are at the mercy of the natural setting of the sea. Nature is portrayed as heartless and unsympathetic toward the circumstances of men. The characters of the story are not given supernatural powers to fight and win against nature as they would have been given in romanticism. The motif of the story seems to be ...

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...y similarities. Both forms were reactions to and against Romanticism. They both try to simulate and parallel real life and both were to uncover and unmask the social ills and bigotries of society. These bigotries not only related to racial divides but also classism. Naturalism, which is an offshoot of Realism, focused more on the underprivileged and lower classes because Realism seemed to have left this group out. Naturalism also focused more on the power of nature and the environment, whereas Realism focused more on the characters. Naturalists often left their characters unnamed to ensure the focal point was the conditions or surroundings and not the people. Naturalisms themes are despair, cruelty of nature and how uncaring it is about people. The characters in naturalism often end up dying with lengthy periods of reflection of life before the death occurs.