At the bed of the deepest ocean, exist a distinguished sect of people. They live with no warmth or light, in the darkest, most nefarious pit of the world. They eternally drown. An occult force leisurely sips their souls, relishing every drop. It savors the thin and sweet nectar of innocence as it fluidly streams down its throat, appeasing its taste buds but never quenching the crave for more. This mystic being extracts the cherubic innocence of a child’s laughter before it even has the chance to dance upon their lips. However, it lives within the souls of the children; it is engraved in their bones, an intrinsic quality passed from generation to generation. It works from the inside to turn every person against one another, to make them fight for a life of wealth and happiness. Little do the victims know that it does not matter whether they attain the life they strive for. The battle is only an illusion. Whether they reach this fantasy or not, they will live a life devoid of any happiness or love, for the demon within will continue to imbibe their joy. It will mercilessly consume this sweet nectar until it pilfers every drop. This ambrosia is the only hope for the victims of Stephen Crane’s Bowery in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Once this hope has disappeared, the victims of his Bowery are condemned to a life of addiction and desperation. The lurking beast’s existence and power is unknown to the rest of the world. There is no way to save its victims because their destitution is invisible to those who hold the ability to lift them from the seabed. There is no way to save these pitiable victims from the depths of the ocean, for the evil spirit that lurks within their souls is too strong for anyone to surmount. Crane unleashes the ...
... middle of paper ...
...forget about the real world and thus fail in it. They become addicted to these retreats and hence die when the withdrawal comes about. The victims of the Bowery try to fight the current that the demon of the Bowery oppresses them with. However, swimming upstream is impossible because they do not believe that they can reach their final goal. Furthermore, they cannot see where they want to go because no light of hope every reaches them. Without intervention from wealthier and thriving individuals, there is no way these destitute beings can rise from the depths of their naivety, corruption, and misinterpretations. These people will always be present in society; it is just up to people like Crane to recognize them. The ideas of Naturalism will remain reality if the impoverished and the interventionists do not detain and surmount the beast that drinks the hope its prey.
In the novella Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Short Fiction by Stephen Crane, Crane tells a story about Maggie, a girl who lives in the slums of New York City in the 1800s with her family and friends. In novella it is portrayed that Maggie desperately tries to escape the slums, however, because of Maggie’s environment and social forces, it ultimately led to her downfall and demise within society.
Maggie and Jimmie are two siblings being raised within the slums of New York City in the Stephen Crane novel; Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. The parents of these two are constantly fighting as broken furniture and fistfights are an everyday occurance in the decrepid family apartment. The mother and father fight while their children hide frightened as "There was a clash against the door and something broke into clattering fragments .... (Jimmie) heard howls and curses, groans and shrieks, confusingly in chorus as if a battle were raging" (11). Crane exxagerates the furniture destruction as every night when the two parents battle, seemingly all the furniture in the apartment is destroyed. Obviously, this poor family couldn't afford to fix and/or buy new furniture everyday. This then is the environment that Maggie and Jimmie struggle with throughout the novel, but both respond to in opposite ways. Maggie dreams of a better life than of her roots while Jimmie excepts his roots and becomes nihilistic. However, the hope of Maggie sadly goes unfulfilled.
I realized after analyzing this essay that even in the darkest depths of my mind I too am trapped in my own Black Lagoon. A Creature that haunts me from my childhood lingers in and out of my subconscious thought. As a child you never succumb to the thoughts of your biggest fear because it could change at any given moment. Your biggest fear as an adult stays with you and drains you mentally, physically, and emotionally. The Creature you adopt as an adult plays against your weak imagination and weighs you down into the depths of your ceaseless Black
Since its publication in 1896, Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets has generated speculation and debate over issues like censorship (Dowling 37) and class consciousness (Lawson), but what is possibly the most heated debate concerning Maggie is less about social or literary criticism and more about a plot point—the cause of death of Maggie Johnson; some critics claim that she is murdered, while others claim that she commits suicide (Dowling 36), and, while both arguments have strong cases, they seem to have neglected the most probable cause of the death of a Stephen Crane character—death by natural causes.
Woven into the twisted short story by Joyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” stands a figure of demonic proportions; a man whose mere presence develops into an ominous fear, bringing with him a thickness of anxiety and an eerie sense of premature death. While her parents are away on a Sunday afternoon, Connie is approached by a strange man named Arnold Friend who is determined to seduce her and steal her away. Rather than use force, Arnold Friend insinuates his way into Connie’s mind and subdues her vulnerable and emerging sexuality. In the end, Oates indicates that he leads her to her death, whether spiritual or physical, and that his love is empty, but she is powerless against him. Within this novella lies a battle of wits between a young girl and a demonic man who is the metaphorical illusion of a fate – the fate of isolation and death.
Stephen Crane’s novella, “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” deals with many difficult concepts and situations. However, the most prevalent seems to be the people that find themselves caught in a vicious cycle of violence. Although some claim that a literary label cannot possibly contain Crane’s work, his ideas certainly have much in common with other naturalistic writers of his time. He portrays poor Irish immigrants, the dregs of humanity, struggling for survival during the Industrial Revolution. Even while relating terrible events, Crane remains detached in the typical naturalistic style, seeming to view the world as a broad social experiment. As the story opens, we are instantly drawn into a heart-wrenching arena where people behave like animals, tearing each other apart if it will help them to reach the zenith of the food chain. Yet in this cycle of violence, Crane definitively incriminates the environment over every other malevolent influence acting upon his victims; using a theme of violence, a tone lacking in emotion, rich imagery, and strong personification of the environment, Crane fashions a wild Darwinian view of society that leaves all of the blame resting on a person’s surroundings rather than his choices.
One of the many themes shown in Maggie: a Girl of the Streets is that of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy occurs when one pretends to be something that he or she is not. Most people associate hypocrisy with a person that speaks poorly of something, yet commits that something him or her self. In Maggie, many of the main characters in the novel display the trait of hypocrisy. The trait is displayed by the characters of Pete, Jimmie, and both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. They pretend to be what they are not.
Poe’s frightening stories acts as helpful inspiration for entertainment in the present, and for many years to come. The timeless relevance of his work, and its merciless scrutiny of the human condition, solidifies its place in history and its position of high admiration. In conclusion, the extraordinary-fleeting-tragic life of Edgar Allan Poe will forever remain on record as the tale of an orphan, a gentleman, a soldier, and one of the most prominent literary figures in American history.
Stephen Crane’s first novel Maggie (girl of the streets) is a tale of uncompromising realism. The story chronicles the titular Maggie, a girl who lives in the Bowery with her emotionally abusive parents and brothers Jimmie and Tommy. The novel revolves around the trials and tribulations of Maggie and her family in the Bowery. Highlights of the story include the death of Maggie’s father and brother Tommie which drive Pete to turn into a cold and hard person by novels end. Maggie desperately tries to escape bowery life, but in the end Maggie succumbs to the Bowery and dies a broken woman. Crane is considered a Naturalist, and in Crane’s naturalist world no one escapes their biological chains. Maggie’s parents are both unfit parents: they are emotionally and physically abusive, and have alcoholic tendencies. Despite Maggie’s and (to a lesser extent) Jimmie’s longings to escape the bleak world of the bowery they do not. Crane is making a statement on the adverse effects of industrialization and urbanization with the novel. Industrialization and urbanization on the surface create jobs and strengthen business, but upon further examination it disenfranchises the very people it promises to help. Many of the families in the bowery are immigrant families who become wage slaves. Maggie’s family is no different; because of their dependency on big business they have become disenfranchised and incapable of growth. This idea of being set into a world where there is no escape from one's biological heredity that Crane showcases the in the novel is mirrors Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory. According to Darwin only the biologically strong would survive in the world, with the weaker specimens expiring. In Crane’s novel the people are not inherently weak; it is the environment that shapes them and prevents them from growing. Ultimately, all of the characters in Maggie are victims of the Bowery life.
After the Civil War, realism became a dominant form of writing in the United States, with writers attempting to write about everyday life. After realism came naturalism, a form of writing similar to realism, but with more pessimism. One of the reasons for this pessimism stems from free will and the question of whether people possess it or not. In realism, it is definitely true, while in naturalism it seems less so, but the options are often less than ideal. Because choices do exist for characters, free will is still there, which indicates that naturalism is a derivative form of realism. In Stephen Crane’s “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,” the characters may have little chance to escape the world they inhabit, like Maggie, Jimmie, and Pete, but choices are there, even if these choices aren’t very good.
Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting poems and morbid stories will be read by countless generations of people from many different countries, a fact which would have undoubtedly provided some source of comfort for this troubled, talented yet tormented man. His dark past continued to torture him until his own death. These torturous feelings were shown in many of his works. A tragic past, consisting of a lack of true parents and the death of his wife, made Edgar Allan Poe the famous writer he is today, but it also led to his demise and unpopularity.
Tragedy acts as an antidote to human fallibility; it also warns individuals of the dire consequences of follies in a way that comedy cannot. It accentuates how a character of high rank falls from grace due to his or her character flaw. More importantly, the downfall evokes pathos, which results in the viewers’ emotional cleansing and purging. In Richard Van Camp’s short story, “Mermaids”, the main character “Torchy” is a native Indian who struggle to find a goal in life. To cope with the loss of his brother and his traumatic life, he abuses alcohol and drugs.“Mermaids” is not considered as a tragedy since the main character does not fulfill a noble tragic hero, he does not go through peripeteia, and the ending of the story does not let the
In the late nineteenth century people obtained more freedom. The American rags to riches story struck a chord with many people and they tried to change their social class. For some, even with new opportunities in life, it would be hard for them to climb the class ladder. Many people live lives full of hardship and obstacles, such as Maggie Johnson from Stephen Crane's Maggie a Girl of the Streets, who grows up in the slums of New York City. Edna Pontellier from Kate Chopin's The Awakening lives a life of extravagance and wealth but still ends up dying a sad and lonely death because she makes poor decisions. Maggie also dies in a tragic death, but not because of bad choices, but because of the situation she finds herself in throughout her life. Maggie's situation turns her into a victim and facilitates her tragic death while Edna makes herself into a victim and causes her own death.
Poe loves to write about darker, morbid things that make the reader judge the protagonist’s actions, yet pity him for doing such a thi...
Morrison dedicates an entire chapter towards explaining the apartment Pecola Breedlove moves into once her father is released from jail. The narrator moves backward in time in order to describe the storefront of the Breedlove’s apartment. Morrison produces a great meaning from small details, such as focusing on the furnishing of the dwelling. Claudia explains how the abandoned store “foists itself on the eye of the passerby in a manner that is both irritating and melancholy” (33). The unpleasant qualities of the building symbolize the unpleasantness of the Breedloves’ story—a story about the ugliness inflicted against them. The importance of a story is displayed in Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving Into the Wreck,” where she says that “the sea is another story / the sea is not a question of power” (Rich 41-42). In this piece, Rich presents the idea that a story is not a question of power, but a story is an account of one’s life experience. When Claudia discusses the storefront being abandoned, the Breedloves would also be deserted by one another and by the world around them. As she discusses the different occupants of the building, the reader is reminded that no matter hopeless the Breedloves’ are, they are just a part of the neighborhood