Religion In Stephen Crane's A Man Adrift On A Slim Spar

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The poetry of Stephen Crane, at first glance over, might be taken as poetry against religion, depicting the god in a harsh, cold manner. But Stephen Crane does not write his poetry to denounce religion and a god, but he writes it with the mindset to disillusion the fanatics who only see one side of the equation. For Stephen Crane sees more to know better than to just blindly accept the religion he’s a part of, or any predominant religion for that matter, as wholly good and just based solely on the fact that it’s a religion following a god. In the poem “A Man Adrift on a Slim Spar”, the phrase “God is cold” (Crane) is repeated constantly throughout. This phrase is only written in this poem, but it is apparent in the telling of the other poems, that “God is cold”, and that it’s expected for that point to come across to the reader. And if they hadn’t read “A Man Adrift on a Slim Spar”, they would of found, most likely, through the other poems that it is implied that “God is …show more content…

They ask if this life of virtue “can offer [them] a gardened castle? A flowery kingdom?” (Crane), and find out that the only thing it can offer is hope, they renounce the thought of following this religion and the god with it, not seeing the worth in parting with what they already have for something they don’t have a need for. What the person is keeping instead of renouncing by following this new faith is important, because the fact that they’re accepting something more physical, possibly something more natural than the romanticized religion proves that they show more care for nature than for a ‘man-made’ way of living. Because of this, the person most likely doesn’t lose sight of the importance of the natural world, and they most likely live with content for most of their life, given the style and thought process of Stephen Crane with his

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