Red Badge Of Courage And Naturalism

ENG 232-941WB

Romanticism and Naturalism in “Huckleberry Finn” and “Red Badge of Courage”

Literature has many outside influences including nature, art, and society. Throughout the books “Huckleberry Finn” and “The Red Badge of Courage,” there are examples of Romanticism and Naturalism. One thing that is present in both books is that Naturalism is more prevalent than Romanticism.

Naturalism originated in France in the 19th and 20th century. Naturalism depicts the universe as cold and heartless, and one's fate is determined by heredity, society and natural forces. Naturalism focuses more on poverty, cruelty, and war. A major idea of naturalism is that humans could disappear and it would have no effect on the universe because we are obsolete.

For example, when he says that Henry is like a “proverbial dead chicken” or when the armies “roar” or when Henry “fights like a wild cat” all examples of humans using their animal like instincts which makes this novel an example of naturalism. In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn an example of Naturalism is “All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns—the men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses! The boys jumped for the river—both of them hurt—and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing out, “Kill them, kill them!” It made me so sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain’t a-going to tell ALL that happened—it would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night to see such things. I ain’t ever going to get shut of them—lots of times I dream about them (Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,1986).” This quote shows Naturalism because it shows the horrific killing of children.“He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a column like tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that once had been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an

While everyone is thinking about what they will do in war, Henry was thinking of how is he going to react when he goes to the battlefields. In the first chapter of the Red Badge of Courage he says “He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements shook the land. They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in them. He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see it all. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds (Crane, Red badge of courage, 1957).” The romance of war leads Henry to enlist in the first place, as it did many soldiers during the Civil War. The supposed glory that would be found in battle was a lure to many young men who thought it was a way to prove their