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Karen Poynter
Mr. Gruenberg
Short Story
December 1, 1994
Stephen Crane: Naturalism in the American Short Story
Stephen Crane was born on November 1, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey. During the 28 years
of his life, he contributed to American literature with a vast array of short stories, poems and
novels. Although his literary reputation has been based mainly on his Civil War novel The Red
Badge of Courage, at least one critic believes his major achievement was in the realm of the short
story (Gullason p. 19).
Stephen was born the fourteenth and final child of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Townley Crane
and Mary Helen Peck Crane. Crane’s father died in 1880, and three years later Stephen moved to
Asbury Park, New Jersey with his mother. Crane attended several colleges, but never completed a
degree. He also worked one summer at his brother’s newspaper. Crane then devoted himself to
writing and was called an international celebrity by December of 1895. Crane then got in trouble
with the police and was accused of alcohol and drug abuse and the solicitation of prostitutes.
During 1898 Crane served as a war correspondent for Pulitzer after being rejected by the United
States Navy during the Spanish-American War. Crane then spent the last years of his life in New
York and Europe. In 1899 Crane suffered a massive tubercular hemorrhage at a Christmas party.
He died from tuberculosis at the age of 28 on June 5, 1900 in Badenweiler, Germany. (Edwin Cady
15-16)
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According to one source, Crane had a psychological block against length in all of his
literary works. He even criticized War and Peace because of its length and felt that it could have
been done in one-third the length. In fact, in an effort to write a longer novel, such as Active
Service, Crane lost his control and his effects were “sprawling and melodramatic” (Gullason 20).
Gullason describes Crane as a shrewd observer and critic of American life. He had a partly
naturalistic literary philosophy and used an impressionistic style in his writing. His naturalist traits
developed from his close observation of people, a habit which also developed his humanitarianism,
a trait which he admired in his favorite author, Tolstoy (23).
Naturalism, a term often used in connection with Crane, is defined as “the application of the
principles of scientific determinism to fiction” (Holman, 337). Naturalism is based on the idea that
reality exists only in the world of objects, actions and forces. People are viewed as animals that
have no control over and no understanding of the environmental forces which control them.
Naturalism further contends that the actual is not important in itself, but only in what it reveals
about the nature of a larger reality. This larger reality consists of the scientific laws which
naturalists believe govern the world (Holman, 339).
Crane relied on the principles of naturalism in much of his writing. Three short stories, “An
Episode of War,” “The Open Boat” and “The Blue Hotel” are clear examples of Crane’s
naturalistic style of writing. In each of these stories Crane creates a microcosm, or miniature world.
His characters tend to represent people in general, not specific individuals. These generalizations
are shown by the fact that Crane usually did not give his characters names; he refers to them by
titles instead. Some examples include the correspondent in “The Open Boat” and the Swede in
“The Blue Hotel.”
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In “An Episode of War,” the idea of naturalism presented is that people’s lives are no
different from those of insignificant animals (Stallman, p. 16). A very important lieutenant is shot
in the arm, and the people around him are so shocked that they have no idea of how to act. The
lieutenant leaves and wanders into the battle line. He comes upon a few men who tell him where
the field hospital is, but then talk of the battle. His wound is unimportant to them, and this fact
astonishes him. He then comes to a brigade by the roadside, and here one man notices his wound
and attempts to bandage it. The lieutenant then finds a surgeon who wants to help him, but the
lieutenant refuses because he is afraid the surgeon will amputate his arm. He then returns home
without an arm.
Told by someone else, the story might reveal how the lieutenant gradually becomes
unimportant to the other soldiers. But, in Crane’s naturalistic view, the lieutenant was never
important in the first place. No one cared about his rank; people on the battlefield were only
concerned with saving their own lives. This situation expresses the naturalistic view that everyone
is equal, and that a person can only depend completely on himself.
“An Episode of War” is filled with irony, as much of Crane’s writing is. At the end of the
story, the lieutenant refuses to have the surgeon care for him because he is afraid the surgeon will
amputate his arm. However, when the lieutenant returns home, we are told that his wife, sisters and
mother weep because he lost his arm. Ironically, depending on himself gets him nowhere. This
irony illustrates the naturalistic view that people do not fully understand their circumstances and are
therefore helpless to make wise decisions.
In “The Open Boat” four men are lost at sea in a small lifeboat. The crew consists of a cook,
an oiler, a correspondent and the captain. The men are constantly hoping that they will somehow be
saved. They see a lighthouse and automatically assume it is a rescue station, although nothing about
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its appearance indicates that it is. The men see people on the shore, but no one makes an effort to
rescue them. Everyone in the boat hits rock bottom, mentally and physically. The oiler emerges as a
physically superior individual, but at the end of the story, when they try to swim ashore, he dies and
the others survive.
This story is also filled with ironies and contradictions. “The Open Boat” is the epitome of
naturalism. It shows that people tend to delude themselves with optimism and that man holds no
special place in a world which is indifferent to him. “Nature is flatly indifferent, man will lose his
struggle to survive; nature is therefore implicitly contemptuous and hostile; and man is absurd and
the proper subject of self . . . pity” (Cady 154).
Nature’s indifference to man and the frustration he feels as a result is clearly revealed in one
of the story’s passages: “When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and
that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw
bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any
visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.” (214)
Contrary to “An Episode of War,” “The Open Boat” credits the brotherhood of man as an
important source of comfort in people’s lives. The men learn the truth about the world: that neither
nature nor their fellow man cares about them. Their realization of this isolation is symbolized by
the lighthouse not being a rescue station and by the people on shore not rescuing them. Although
the men stick together as a group and support one another, their group is alone in its battle against
the sea.
“The Blue Hotel” deals with a group of men isolated from the world in a hotel. Pat Scully,
the proprietor, meets the three men at the train station and persuades them to stay at his hotel. The
three men were described in this manner: “. . .one was a shaky and quick-eyed Swede, with a great
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shining cheap valise; one was a tall bronzed cowboy, who was on his way to a ranch near the
Dakota line; one was a little silent man from the East, who did not look it and did not announce it”
(250). At the hotel, for some reason, the Swede thinks the others are conspiring to kill him. He
informs Scully of his fear, and Scully accuses the other men of frightening him. In reality,
however, it was the Swede’s own paranoia which created his delusion; the other men had nothing
to do with it. Later, the Swede accuses Johnny of cheating at cards and challenges him to fight it
out. All the men go outside into a snowstorm and watch the Swede beat Johnny up. None of them
interfere with the fight, which was strange because none of the men believed Johnny was cheating.
After the fight, the men go back inside and the Swede leaves. The Swede braves the snowstorm and
eventually finds shelter in a bar. Ironically, the very place which he finds as shelter is where he
dies; the bartender murders him. A few months later, the Easterner and the cowboy are talking and
the Easterner says that Johnny really had been cheating. The story ends with this final irony. Cady
contends that Crane includes this final episode in the story “to enrich it by deliberately reversing its
moral perception and restoring them [the characters] to the same challenging ambiguity between
the naturalistic and at least humanistic perspective of ‘The Open Boat.’” (157)
"The Blue Hotel" demonstrates clearly the idea that people cannot depend on others for
support or help. Each man in the hotel represents a different type of person, and together they
epitomize the idea that people's lack of conviction will bring about the downfall of society. If the
characters would have acted upon their morals, some tragedies might not have occurred; for
instance, if the Easterner had spoken up about Johnnie's cheating, the Swede might not have died. If
the men would have helped Johnnie, he would never have gotten so badly hurt. If the Swede had
not been so obnoxious in the bar, he would not have been killed. In each case, someone was hurt
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because of the failure of someone else to act. These tragedies illustrate the naturalistic idea that
people cannot control their own fates.
Stephen Crane was definitely a unique person. His writing displays his unusual outlook on
life. He seemed to think that the only way to look at life was with the rather negative attitude of
naturalism.
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Works Cited
Crane, Stephen. “An Episode of War.” Great Stories of Heroism and Adventure. New York: Platt
and Munk, 1967. 353-359.
---. “The Blue Hotel.” Great Stories of Heroism and Adventure. New York: Platt and Munk, 1967.
249-292.
---. “The Open Boat.” Great Stories of Heroism and Adventure. New York: Platt and Munk, 1967.
189-226.
Stallman, R. W. Sullivan County Tales and Sketches. Edited by R. W. Stallman. Ames, Iowa:
University of Iowa Press, 1968.
Gullason, Thomas A. The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane. New York: Platt
& Munk, 1967.
Holman, C. Hugh. A Handbook to Literature. New York: Bobs-Merrill, 1972.
Cady, Edwin H. Stephen Crane. Boston: Twayne, 1962.