论文部分内容阅读
[Abstract] The American Naturalism in literature took its root from Realism after Romanticism and Idealism had faded away in a scientific-industrialized America with its economic boom and social reformation. According to Donna M. Campbell, the term Naturalism describes “a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings.” Thus, the way how the naturalists (Or say, Stephen Crane) have applied those principles in literature becomes our major concern here. There are certain distinguished features in Naturalistic writing which almost we cannot be mistaken. Let’s take a closer look at those features by analyzing Crane’s The Open Boat.
[Key Word] naturalism literature features
1. Character
Typical Naturalists write about exceptional characters out of the ordinary world. But unlike the realists, they are not that much interested in how these people live their ordinary life, they rather snapshoot the extraordinary, adventurous moments of these people.
. . . His fictional world is that of the commonplace and unheroic in which life would seem to be chiefly the dull round of daily existence, as we ourselves usually conceive of our lives. But the naturalist discovers in this world those qualities of man usually associated with the heroic or adventurous…
In The Open Boat the four characters known simply as the captain, the oiler, the correspondent, and the cook, all have their own roles to play. The four who are in the boat don’t even have their names except for Billie, the oiler. Crane intentionally leaves them called by their professions since they are not just common people of our everyday life, but who are selected by their fate to be one of the four members in the boat.
2. Narrator
In a naturalistic writing, the narrator expresses his perceptions into the characters but also evaluates them from distance. There is sometimes a frequent changing of perspectives in a single story.
In The Open Boat, the story opens itself up where four men are stranded in the stormy ocean in a small boat after a shipwreck. Crane's descriptions in these opening scenes show right away the antagonism of the men and the sea. The narrator’s changing of the point of view of provides the readers a chance to approach the life struggle from different angles. It approaches the scene in a bird view at first; the narrator is totally singled out from the adventure, calmly, emotionlessly observing the stormy ocean from high above. Then later, he dives upon the boat like an eagle and joined the four members who are fighting wearily against the nature. He starts approaching the scene from a more intimate angle, partly sharing the experience of the four. This shift of the point of view impresses readers with the carelessness of the nature which acts indifferently despite of the efforts which are made by the four desperate human beings. It brings the scene from afar to nearby, from a whole into details. It first zooms out then zooms in, providing readers a live experience of the moment.
“Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtlessly have been weirdly picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if they had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds.”
The narrator has concealed himself here like a landsman watching them from distance. Then he comes down among them and observes them from near.
“ thereupon the four waifs rode in their little boat, and with an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at the big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a drink of water.”
There are similar descriptions in the rest of the story which prove that the narrator does come so near to them that it seems like he also becomes a member in the boat. Most interestingly, we see a lot of observations made by the correspondent. They are so profound in a way that he and the narrator becomes one. This is part of Crane’s trick. It renders the narrator a more elastic position. The readers thus are allowed to inspect the scene from different angles: sometimes more subjective, sometimes more objective. The effect is enormous too: It is like they’re watched by the nature first and then they watch the nature themselves.
3. Stories & Realities
Naturalism means a dramatization of moments. The open boat comes directly from a life experience. According to Bernard Weinstein, when Crane left New York in November 1896 and went to Jacksonville, Florida, trying to cover the then raging Cuban insurrection, he finally sailed aboard the Commodore and the ship had an explosion. Thirty hours he has spent in a ten-foot dinghy with three other men in the boat. It is not hard to imagine what he has been going through during the gloomy thirty hours in the hopeless vast ocean. There is no way more impressive than to report the event as it was, to reopen the scene lively in front of the readers’ eyes. But somehow, Crane feels to report the bare truth is far less than enough to make an impression. He paints then with his pen an atrocious nature that evinces one more time its super evil power of devastation by showing the people in the boat no signs of mercy. He also witnesses the weakness and desperation of the human beings who fight against it.
Unlike Realism, who understands the reality as logic, casual and understandable, the naturalists see the world as irrational, and predetermined by social, biological, hereditary factors or driven by desires.
4. Main Themes
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
---------Stephen Crane
The Heath Anthology of American Literature gives its definition of Literary Naturalism “where environmental forces, whether of nature or of the city, outweigh or overwhelm human agency, the individual can exert little or no control over determining events, and the world is at worst hostile, at best indifferent to humankind.”
The description of the gull and their mischief over the sea and on the boat is part of the indifference and coldness which nature has showed again to human beings in The Open Boat. The stupid birds bear obviously no understanding of what is going on in the boat while the desperate men are fighting for survival. There is no evidence of mercy or sympathy from those merry creatures that enjoy the storm above the ocean. If any emotion is to be perceived from these birds, it’s a sheer attitude of stand-by and ridicule
"The birds sat comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a thousand miles inland."
The men are in a desperate situation, but the nature continues in its ways regardless of what might happen to them.
In the beginning of the fourth chapter, the speaker takes away from the scene again as to report the desperate situation. It ends with the cook asking other members in the boat a queer and irrelevant question:
“The cook’s head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the water under his nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke. ”Billie,” he murmured, dreamfully, “what kind of pie do you like best?”
What kind of pie do you like best? Why this suddenly appears in the cook’s mind when they have to face the incoming fatal fight? Lars Ahnebrink argued:
Crane was fundamentally a Psychologist, and his psychology was largely naturalistic; that is, he was interested in the psychological process, in instinctive emotions and reactions, which lay beyond will and consciousness.
If we put ourselves into that situation, we may find it understandable. Facing the death, the cook starts to think about the happy moments of his life. And of all his life experience, to enjoy a nice and delicious pie is the happiest thing he can conjure up at the moment. Or is he trying to distract his own attention from the horrible fact that they are dying with trivial talks? Or is to make a perfect nice pie the ultimate goal that he ever wants to accomplish in his whole life which makes him regret that he can never accomplish it now? Or is it a mixture of all mentioned above? We are not here to analyse the complexity of the human psychology under the circumstance of such extremes. But we’re here to witness that whether it is the fact (so indicates the subtitle), or Crane’s deep perception into human psychology, the effect is by no means ignorable. It again shows the fact that the human power is so ridiculously frail that at this very moment, making a wish, losing the fight with some pale self-console, is what one can do at all.
Later, at the end of chapter five, nature expresses its indifference of human feelings in another way:
“Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone with thing. He wished one of his companions to awaken by chance and keep him company with it. But the captain hung motionless over the water-jar and the oiler and the cook in the bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber.”
The correspondent thinks he is the only one who witnesses the threatening of the shark. Even though he finds out later that actually the captain notices the horrible creature too, at the very moment, he is having a mind that he is totally alone awake and threatened. Being mentally singled out and despair is also part of the punishment made from the nature.
In the end of the story, three out of the four members in the boat are saved by the people who come to the shore. The mysterious question remains now, why Crane let the oiler die, who actually possesses much better physical strength and who has a very practical mind and shrewd judgement? The social Darwinism out of which we expect to explain the question meets its wit’s end. Or is it a counterargument of the theory? We may not know. But we know for that if Crane was to answer the question, he is bound to say, because it happens that way. Crane is a genuine naturalist. And for a naturalist, man has no free will. He is not responsible of his own destiny. Every step of his life from birth to death is determined, either by external or internal forces, either by nature or social environment. This belief of pessimistic determinism is essential in naturalism. A quotation from the story itself seems to provide it with a perfect answer:
“…the serenity of nature amid the struggle of the individual…She did not seem cruel to him, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent…”
5. Conclusion
Crane has developed a mature naturalistic writing style. He writes about the exceptional men out of the ordinary world. These men are either dejected or controlled by the natural forces or his external environment and there is no way he can escape from his doomed fate. The nature or the social environment is indifferent and cold despite these men’s efforts made for survival. The reality is irrational, illogical and crazy; the world is crazy and chaotic; all the good values are perished.
So the life is determined and there is no way out. But with an attentive observation, a slight optimism is to be discerned in Crane. Some scholars argue Crane is totally pessimistic. However, thinking of the golden heart youth and the brotherhood in the open boat, we can hardly deny the fact that Crane still cherishes noble human emotions. The struggle to retain the fragile civilization and suppress the “brute within” in desperation is another theme of Crane and other naturalists.
Works Cited：
[1] Campbell, Donna M. Naturalism in American Literature. Literary Movements. Last Modified 05/22/2007.
[2] Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction, Pizer, Donald, Revised Edition (1984).
[3] Stephen Crane: Journalist, Weinstein, Bernard, Stephen Crane in Transition—
Century Essays, Ed. Katz, Joseph, 1972, Northern Illinois University Press.
[4] The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 2nd ed. Vol.2. Lexington: Heath, 1990.
[Key Word] naturalism literature features
1. Character
Typical Naturalists write about exceptional characters out of the ordinary world. But unlike the realists, they are not that much interested in how these people live their ordinary life, they rather snapshoot the extraordinary, adventurous moments of these people.
. . . His fictional world is that of the commonplace and unheroic in which life would seem to be chiefly the dull round of daily existence, as we ourselves usually conceive of our lives. But the naturalist discovers in this world those qualities of man usually associated with the heroic or adventurous…
In The Open Boat the four characters known simply as the captain, the oiler, the correspondent, and the cook, all have their own roles to play. The four who are in the boat don’t even have their names except for Billie, the oiler. Crane intentionally leaves them called by their professions since they are not just common people of our everyday life, but who are selected by their fate to be one of the four members in the boat.
2. Narrator
In a naturalistic writing, the narrator expresses his perceptions into the characters but also evaluates them from distance. There is sometimes a frequent changing of perspectives in a single story.
In The Open Boat, the story opens itself up where four men are stranded in the stormy ocean in a small boat after a shipwreck. Crane's descriptions in these opening scenes show right away the antagonism of the men and the sea. The narrator’s changing of the point of view of provides the readers a chance to approach the life struggle from different angles. It approaches the scene in a bird view at first; the narrator is totally singled out from the adventure, calmly, emotionlessly observing the stormy ocean from high above. Then later, he dives upon the boat like an eagle and joined the four members who are fighting wearily against the nature. He starts approaching the scene from a more intimate angle, partly sharing the experience of the four. This shift of the point of view impresses readers with the carelessness of the nature which acts indifferently despite of the efforts which are made by the four desperate human beings. It brings the scene from afar to nearby, from a whole into details. It first zooms out then zooms in, providing readers a live experience of the moment.
“Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtlessly have been weirdly picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if they had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds.”
The narrator has concealed himself here like a landsman watching them from distance. Then he comes down among them and observes them from near.
“ thereupon the four waifs rode in their little boat, and with an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at the big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a drink of water.”
There are similar descriptions in the rest of the story which prove that the narrator does come so near to them that it seems like he also becomes a member in the boat. Most interestingly, we see a lot of observations made by the correspondent. They are so profound in a way that he and the narrator becomes one. This is part of Crane’s trick. It renders the narrator a more elastic position. The readers thus are allowed to inspect the scene from different angles: sometimes more subjective, sometimes more objective. The effect is enormous too: It is like they’re watched by the nature first and then they watch the nature themselves.
3. Stories & Realities
Naturalism means a dramatization of moments. The open boat comes directly from a life experience. According to Bernard Weinstein, when Crane left New York in November 1896 and went to Jacksonville, Florida, trying to cover the then raging Cuban insurrection, he finally sailed aboard the Commodore and the ship had an explosion. Thirty hours he has spent in a ten-foot dinghy with three other men in the boat. It is not hard to imagine what he has been going through during the gloomy thirty hours in the hopeless vast ocean. There is no way more impressive than to report the event as it was, to reopen the scene lively in front of the readers’ eyes. But somehow, Crane feels to report the bare truth is far less than enough to make an impression. He paints then with his pen an atrocious nature that evinces one more time its super evil power of devastation by showing the people in the boat no signs of mercy. He also witnesses the weakness and desperation of the human beings who fight against it.
Unlike Realism, who understands the reality as logic, casual and understandable, the naturalists see the world as irrational, and predetermined by social, biological, hereditary factors or driven by desires.
4. Main Themes
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
---------Stephen Crane
The Heath Anthology of American Literature gives its definition of Literary Naturalism “where environmental forces, whether of nature or of the city, outweigh or overwhelm human agency, the individual can exert little or no control over determining events, and the world is at worst hostile, at best indifferent to humankind.”
The description of the gull and their mischief over the sea and on the boat is part of the indifference and coldness which nature has showed again to human beings in The Open Boat. The stupid birds bear obviously no understanding of what is going on in the boat while the desperate men are fighting for survival. There is no evidence of mercy or sympathy from those merry creatures that enjoy the storm above the ocean. If any emotion is to be perceived from these birds, it’s a sheer attitude of stand-by and ridicule
"The birds sat comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a thousand miles inland."
The men are in a desperate situation, but the nature continues in its ways regardless of what might happen to them.
In the beginning of the fourth chapter, the speaker takes away from the scene again as to report the desperate situation. It ends with the cook asking other members in the boat a queer and irrelevant question:
“The cook’s head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the water under his nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke. ”Billie,” he murmured, dreamfully, “what kind of pie do you like best?”
What kind of pie do you like best? Why this suddenly appears in the cook’s mind when they have to face the incoming fatal fight? Lars Ahnebrink argued:
Crane was fundamentally a Psychologist, and his psychology was largely naturalistic; that is, he was interested in the psychological process, in instinctive emotions and reactions, which lay beyond will and consciousness.
If we put ourselves into that situation, we may find it understandable. Facing the death, the cook starts to think about the happy moments of his life. And of all his life experience, to enjoy a nice and delicious pie is the happiest thing he can conjure up at the moment. Or is he trying to distract his own attention from the horrible fact that they are dying with trivial talks? Or is to make a perfect nice pie the ultimate goal that he ever wants to accomplish in his whole life which makes him regret that he can never accomplish it now? Or is it a mixture of all mentioned above? We are not here to analyse the complexity of the human psychology under the circumstance of such extremes. But we’re here to witness that whether it is the fact (so indicates the subtitle), or Crane’s deep perception into human psychology, the effect is by no means ignorable. It again shows the fact that the human power is so ridiculously frail that at this very moment, making a wish, losing the fight with some pale self-console, is what one can do at all.
Later, at the end of chapter five, nature expresses its indifference of human feelings in another way:
“Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone with thing. He wished one of his companions to awaken by chance and keep him company with it. But the captain hung motionless over the water-jar and the oiler and the cook in the bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber.”
The correspondent thinks he is the only one who witnesses the threatening of the shark. Even though he finds out later that actually the captain notices the horrible creature too, at the very moment, he is having a mind that he is totally alone awake and threatened. Being mentally singled out and despair is also part of the punishment made from the nature.
In the end of the story, three out of the four members in the boat are saved by the people who come to the shore. The mysterious question remains now, why Crane let the oiler die, who actually possesses much better physical strength and who has a very practical mind and shrewd judgement? The social Darwinism out of which we expect to explain the question meets its wit’s end. Or is it a counterargument of the theory? We may not know. But we know for that if Crane was to answer the question, he is bound to say, because it happens that way. Crane is a genuine naturalist. And for a naturalist, man has no free will. He is not responsible of his own destiny. Every step of his life from birth to death is determined, either by external or internal forces, either by nature or social environment. This belief of pessimistic determinism is essential in naturalism. A quotation from the story itself seems to provide it with a perfect answer:
“…the serenity of nature amid the struggle of the individual…She did not seem cruel to him, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent…”
5. Conclusion
Crane has developed a mature naturalistic writing style. He writes about the exceptional men out of the ordinary world. These men are either dejected or controlled by the natural forces or his external environment and there is no way he can escape from his doomed fate. The nature or the social environment is indifferent and cold despite these men’s efforts made for survival. The reality is irrational, illogical and crazy; the world is crazy and chaotic; all the good values are perished.
So the life is determined and there is no way out. But with an attentive observation, a slight optimism is to be discerned in Crane. Some scholars argue Crane is totally pessimistic. However, thinking of the golden heart youth and the brotherhood in the open boat, we can hardly deny the fact that Crane still cherishes noble human emotions. The struggle to retain the fragile civilization and suppress the “brute within” in desperation is another theme of Crane and other naturalists.
Works Cited：
[1] Campbell, Donna M. Naturalism in American Literature. Literary Movements. Last Modified 05/22/2007
[2] Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction, Pizer, Donald, Revised Edition (1984).
[3] Stephen Crane: Journalist, Weinstein, Bernard, Stephen Crane in Transition—
Century Essays, Ed. Katz, Joseph, 1972, Northern Illinois University Press.
[4] The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 2nd ed. Vol.2. Lexington: Heath, 1990.