Chapter Four
Realism and Naturalism
Henry James
Mark Twain
Stephen Crane
教案纸
Lecture I:
Realism·Henry James
教 学 1) Grasping the main representatives.
目 的 2) Grasping the main features of their works.
与要
求
教 学 1) William Dean Howells’ realism
重 点 2) Brief understanding of William Dean Howells’ masterpiece, The Rise of Silas
与 难 Lapham
点
3) Appreciation and analysis of Henry James’ The Jolly Corner
教 学 1) Lectures: providing essential background knowledge
方法
2) Seminars: discussing on the given topics
教 学 1) Traditional teaching
手段
2) Multi-media equipment
学 时 Four periods
分配
教
学
过
程
Step one: Leading in
Step two: Historical background
I. The Civil War With the development of Northern industrialization, the conflict
between the North and South was becoming more and more fierce, and finally the
Civil War broke out. As a result, the factory defeated the farm, and the United States
headed toward capitalism. The war made many people question the assumption
shared be Transcendentalists, and marked a change in the quality of American life, a
deterioration of American moral values.
II. Post-war development After the Civil War, commerce took the lead on the
national economy.
1. Railroads tripled in 15 years and multiplied five times in 25, and petroleum was
discovered in sizeable quantities. Industrialization and mechanization of the country
were fully developing.
2. Wealth and power were more and more concentrated in the hands of the few
“captains of industry” and “robber barons”, such as, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew
Carnegie, and J.P.Morgan. When young, they tried to avoided military service and
made great fortune during the war. The spirit of self-reliance by Emerson was
2
perverted into admiration for driving ambition, and a lust for money and power.
Children now were brought up on the idea that a person with ambition could make
his own world.
3. The frontier was closing. The worth of American dream, the idealized romantic
view of man and his life in the New world, began to lose its hold in the imagination
of the people.
III. In literary scene
1. The age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism were ended Younger writers
appeared on the scene. William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain were
becoming established as novelists of no small talent.
2. Nature of American realism As a literary movement realism came in the latter
half of the 19th century as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and
transcendentalism. It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the
commonplace, and for the familiar and the low.
3. The common features of the realists “verisimilitude of detail derived from
observation,” the efforts to approach the norm of experience—a reliance on the
representative in plot, setting and character, and to offer an objective rather than an
ideal view of human nature and experience.
4. There were 3 staunch advocates of 20th century American realism, William Dean
Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain.
Step three: William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
I. His life experience (p118)
II. His literary position He was a prolific writer, writing volumes of drama, poetry,
and novels in addition to criticism, travelogues, and autobiography, As a critic of
eminent standing and as a prolific writer, he helped to mould public taste and
became the champion of literary realism of America. It is estimated that he wrote, in
addition to the great number of social novels, 8 critical books and about 1,700book
reviews to spread the credo of realism.
III. His ideas on realism
1. His definition of realism He defines realism as “fidelity to experience and
probability of motive,” as a quest of the average and the habitual rather than the
exceptional or the uniquely high or low.
2. His aim of realism
2.1 to do nothing more than “talk of some ordinary traits of American life”
2.2 to interpret sympathetically “the common feelings of the common people”
2.3 to seek man not in his “heroic or occasional phase,” but “in his habitual moods
of vacancy and tiresomeness”
Thus man in his natural and unaffected dullness was the object of his fictional
representatives. To him, realism is by no means mere photographic pictures of
externals but includes a central concern with “motives” and psychological conflicts.
3. Defects in his realism
3.1 much of his realism was external characters and events viewed from without
3.2 rarely achieved or sought to achieve “psychological depth”
3
3.3 his realism having a “smiling aspect”, only saving himself from pessimistic
defeatism by his constructive use of novel to promote brotherly love .
IV. His ideas on literary criticism
The literary critic should not try to impose arbitrary or subjective evaluations on
books but should follow the detached scientists in accurate description,
interpretation, and classification. The critic’s job is “to identify the literary species
and explain the weaknesses of a work in the light of the author’s intentions”.
V. His masterpiece：The Rise of Silas Lapham (p121-p123)
1. Literary position: the fine specimen of American realistic writing.
2. The symbolic meanings of “the house” in the novel (p121-p122)
3. Understanding of the love subplot (p122-p123)
Step four: Henry James
I .His life experience
II. His literary career Generally speaking，his literary career can be divided into 3
periods:
2.1 In the first period (1865-1882), he produced a number of novels that won him
fame and reputation and reveals his fascination with his “international theme”.(The
portrait of a Lady)
2.2 The second period extends from 1882 to 1895, in which he dropped his
“international theme” and wrote his tales of subtle studies of inter-personal
relationships, and plays, which proved to be failure.
2.3 Between 1895 and 1900 he wrote a few novellas and tales dealing with
childhood and adolescences, which was a revival of his earlier theme.
III. The influence from other writers on him
3.1 George Eliot his ideal of the philosophical novelist, impressed him by her
looking into the minds and soul of her characters
3.2 Turgenev served as a guide for him.
3.3 The French writer, Flaubert and his masterpiece, Madame Bovary
3.4 Hawthorne whose insight into human psyche impressed him deeply
IV. The range of his international theme the meeting of America and Europe,
American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadence, and its moral
and psychological complications.
V. His contributions to literary criticism
5.1 He developed gradually from early evaluation in terms of stiff moral standards to
inductive inquiry, flexibility, and a subtle perception of aesthetic nuances.
5.2 Novel primarily has a “large, free character of an immense and exquisite
correspondence with life”. The aim of the novel is to represent life. The air of reality
seems “to be the supreme virtue of a novel”.
5.3 “Art without life is a poor affair.” “The province of art is all life, all feeling, all
observation, all vision.” Though art must be related to life, art is important in its own
way. “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.” A work of art must
lift up the heart; there is no substitute for the force and beauty of its process.
5.4 He was concerned with “point of view” which is at the center of his aesthetic of
4
the novel. He just used this method to emphasize the inner awareness and inward
movements of his characters in face of outside occurrences rather than merely
delineating their environment in any detail. He was probably the first of the
modern psychological analysts in the novel and anticipated in his works the modern
stream-of-consciousness technique.
VI. His political and social ideas (p128-p129)
VII. Appreciation of his The Jolly Corner
7.1 Plot summary
Spencer Brydon returns to New York City after more than thirty years abroad. He
has agreed to tear down his old family house to build a more lucrative apartment
building. Before the wreckers move in, he starts to prowl the house at night. Brydon
has begun to realize that he might have been an astute businessman if he hadn't
turned his back on moneymaking for a more leisurely life. He discusses this
possibility with Alice Staverton, his woman friend who has always lived in New
York.
Meanwhile Brydon begins to believe that his alter ego—the ghost of the man he
might have been—is haunting the "jolly corner," his nickname for the old family
house. After a harrowing night of pursuit in the house, Brydon finally confronts the
ghost, who advances on him and overpowers him with "a rage of personality before
which his own collapsed." Brydon eventually awakens with his head pillowed on
Alice Staverton's lap. It is arguable to whether or not Spencer had actually "passed
out" or whether he had died and has awoken in an afterlife. She had come to the
house because she sensed he was in danger. She tells him that she pities the ghost of
his alter ego, who has suffered and lost two fingers from his right hand. But she also
embraces and accepts Brydon as he is.
7.2 Main Characters
7.2.1 Spencer Brydon
A wealthy, cultured man, Spencer Brydon returns to New York City after spending
thirty-three years living in Europe and pursuing an interest in art. He is overwhelmed
by the changes he finds in the city.
Now fifty-six, Spencer revisits the house on the “jolly corner” of Manhattan where
he grew up. His parents, sister, and two brothers have passed away, leaving him the
sole owner of his childhood home and another property.
While Spencer oversees the renovation of one of his properties, he discovers an
affinity for project management and negotiating a business deal. Surprised by his
natural business acumen, he wonders what his life would have been if he had stayed
in New York. Soon is obsessed with thoughts of what he has missed.
7.2.2 Alice Staverton
Alice is a childhood acquaintance of Spencer’s. She accompanies him on his
business trips and listens to him reflect on his past. She seems to be the only person
who enjoys listening to his reminiscences.
A single, middle-aged woman, Alice seems lonely and suggests that Spencer move
back to New York City for good. At the story’s end, Alice confirms that she is not
only very fond of Spencer but possibly in love with him.
5
7.3 Themes
7.3.1 Memory and Reminiscence
Spencer Brydon’s return to New York, his friendship with Alice Staverton, and his
attraction to the house of his youth illustrate his overwhelming need to analyze his
past. He needs to reflect on past events in order to understand who he is now. In
particular, Spencer needs to come to terms with what he could have been had he
remained in New York; in that way he can accept himself and move on with his life.
7.3.2 Alienation and Loneliness
When Spencer left New York as a young man, he was rejecting a life in business and
embracing a career in art. Upon his return, he discovers the full implications of his
decision. He has he lost his family; also, New York City has irrevocably changed to
the point where he hardly recognizes it. In some ways, Spencer’s experience is
universal: in an attempt to recapture the past, he discovers that the world he
remembers does not exist anymore. As a result, he feels alienated, cut off from his
past and his own identity.
7.3.3 The American Dream
After living abroad for so many years, Spencer is able to view the American Dream
as an outside observer. As a child, Spencer grew up in a wealthy, privileged
household. As an adult, Spencer has continued to live comfortably on inherited
wealth. When he returns to New York, he is disgusted by the ambitious and
materialistic nature of the American businessman. From his privileged position, he
views the capitalistic system as one that robs its citizens of integrity and culture.
7.3.4 Art and Money
Spencer rejects a career in business and escapes by pursuing a career in art in
Europe. Yet while Spencer vilifies the American scene as materialistic and obsessed
with money, he continues to live off the profits of that world. The rents from his
properties make it possible for him to travel without financial restriction and to live
abroad without having to work. The story implies that the pursuit of art is
inextricably linked with money; to deny the connection is hypocritical.
7.3.5 Gender Roles
Spencer’s rejection of a business career raises questions about what it means to be a
powerful man in the early twentieth century. When he leaves New York City, he
seems to have left behind the opportunity to marry and have a family as well as a
thriving business career. By linking Spencer’s rejection of business to his absence of
family, the story implies that personal choices are related to public pressures. In a
sense, Spencer’s pursuit of art is a protest against one-dimensional concepts of
masculinity — concepts that relate economic power to one’s worth as a man.
Alice also raises questions about how women are supposed to live their lives. While
she stays in Manhattan her entire life, she never marries. The reader learns little
about her life apart from her relationship to Spencer. Is her final embrace of Spencer
a strong assertion of her will or a late and failed capitulation to the stereotypic
woman’s role of passive and dutiful wife?
7.3.6 Transformation and Change
The story hinges on Spencer confronting his alter ego. The story’s conclusion
6
suggests Spencer and Alice will end up together and that Spencer’s wandering has
ended. But what has Spencer learned? It is an open question whether Spencer has
accepted his past and truly been transformed.
7.4 Style
7.4.1 Point of View and Narration
7.4.1.1 In “The Jolly Corner,” the narrator is nearly omniscient, relating exactly what
Spencer sees, thinks, and feels. However, this perspective is a limited one. For
example, Alice’s opinions are presented by Spencer; all impressions of her character
— as well as others — are presented through him.
7.4.1.2 At a few points in the story the narrator addresses the reader directly,
implying perhaps collaboration between the reader and narrator.
7.4.1.3 Another narrative technique utilized by James is the slightly different
narrative tone used for the different sections of the story. (answer to question 1 in the
selected reading). In the second section, Spencer wanders the house alone and the
narrative voice nearly becomes his point of view. In the first and third sections, the
narrator is more objective in explaining not only Spencer’s impressions but other
characters’ actions and opinions. The second section chronicles Spencer’s attempt to
track down his alter ego and is characterized by dense narrative description.
7.5 Symbol and Images
Spencer’s childhood home is the most fully developed image in the story. As a
symbol, the house operates on many different levels. While walking in the rooms of
the house Spencer recalls the time when the building was his home. The house also
symbolizes his economic circumstances; his choice to protect the building as a
sacred space is enabled by his wealth, partially generated from the rents he collects
on the other property. Spencer’s personal quest to revisit the past is connected to the
business operations he has attempted to avoid.
In Henry James’ other writings, he utilizes architectural metaphors — including “the
house,” and “the window” — metaphorically, symbolizing the structure that
organizes and communicates meaning in fiction. In the preface to his novel The
Portrait of a Lady (1881), James describes the ideal “house of fiction” as having
millions of windows, each representing distinct perspectives on the world.
7.6 Critical Overview (how to understand Spencer’s alter ego)
“The Jolly Corner” has generated much critical commentary. On one level, Spencer
Brydon’s experience is quite familiar and represents a painful but inevitable aspect
of the human condition. Critics explore the implications of his self-doubt and
insecurity as well as the meaning of the story’s conclusion. Is the final scene a
moment of redemption for Spencer; or, is Spencer incapable of really coming to
terms with his past?
Some commentators view the story as autobiographical. Like Spencer, James left the
United States (in 1875), lived in Europe for a long period of time, and returned to
find America much changed. Spencer’s conflict between Europe and America is
subject of much of James’s fiction, literary criticism and diary entries. Moreover,
Alice Staverton’s name echoes James’s beloved younger sister.
Spencer’s alter ego represents a personal and philosophical crisis that James’s
7
father often spoke about — the “vastation.” Henry James, Sr. was influenced by the
moral philosopher Emmanuel Swedenborg, whose ideas explored the unmanageable
energies of nature and the extremes of human consciousness. The “vastation” was a
visitation by one’s evil self that forced one to confront their most sensitive
weakness.
One well-established view is that by facing the “black stranger,” Spencer confronts
Henry James’s alter ego. Leon Edel, James’s most meticulous and authoritative
biographer, considered Spencer’s conflict emblematic of whether James regarded the
United States or England as the source of his fiction. Brook charged James with
turning his back on the United States in an ineffective attempt to associate with the
more highly esteemed, genteel class literary tradition of England.
Keenly aware of his alter ego’s presence, he holds to the conviction “to show
himself, in a word, that he wasn’t afraid.” While walking down the stairs he
imagines himself “a physical image, an image almost worthy of an age of greater
romance.”
Throughout the story, Spencer considers himself brave because he has resisted the
call of the New York business world. Instead he wants to find “values” other than
those that depend on the “beastly rent-values” of New York. As a young man he
rejected his father’s advice and turned his back on business and the United States,
leaving for Europe where he pursued his interest in art. Spencer’s confrontational
egotism saturates the image of the honorable knight. He manages to build his heroic
status only by dominating someone else. His search for the alter ego runs parallel to
his confrontation with the “representative of the building firm” at his other property
to whom Spencer also “[stood] up.”
Spencer masters a threatening adversary. His alter ego is a personification of this
violent opposition: “some erect confronting presence, something planted in the
middle of the place and facing him through the dusk.” Spencer yearns to win, to
“turn the table on the apparition,” proving again that he is not scared by
scaring someone else.
In the end, the plot’s thickening depends on questioning the way Spencer has lived
his life. As Spencer stands at the window, he realizes the full force of his isolation.
Instead of seeing a vulgar world against which he can elevate himself, he sees a
“void.” The void lacks any sense of proportion or measure and reflects a deeper
crisis in Spencer’s perspective on the world. His confusion at the window represents
his final inability to separate himself from the world he had believed himself to have
transcended.
7.7 How is Alice characterized by the narrator
7.7.1 The narrator characterizes Alice as “[listening] to everything” and as “a woman
who answered intimately but who utterly didn’t chatter.” In these terms, Alice seems
to be a mere complement to Spencer’s heroic musings.
7.7.2 The narrator characterizes her in a static, one-dimensional fashion as “you
were born to be what you are,” “you’re a person whom nothing can have altered.”
Such terms erase Alice’s entire life experience and feeling through a gross
generalization in contrast to which Spencer fills his own crisis with dramatic depth.
8
7.8 Alice is considered an enigmatic figure in the story.
7.8.1 A few critics have examined the character of Alice with interesting results.
In‘“Doing Good by Stealth’: Alice Staverton and Women’s Politics in’The Jolly
Corner” (1992), Russell Reising views Alice as a major character. Within the context
of her time, Alice seems to be an anomaly or outcast — unmarried, no children and
self-supporting.
7.8.2 However, instead of symbolizing failed femininity, Alice is viewed by some
critics as manipulative and deceptive. Some have even characterized her as an artful
liar. It is a bit disconcerting, however, that despite Alice’s apparent strength and
independence she is so set on marriage to Spencer. Has she spent thirty-three years
merely waiting for her man to come home?
7.8.3 Recent criticism has both emphasized Spencer’s egotism and attempted to
uncover the full role of Alice in Spencer’s resurrection. In “A New Reading of Henry
James’s ‘The Jolly Corner’” (1987), Daniel Mark Fogel contends that as the story
ends Spencer realizes that the monstrous stranger is his alter ego. Only Alice’s love
will save him. In Alice’s embrace and Spencer’s return, Spencer saves himself from
tragic fate. At the story’s end, Spencer is “loving and beloved,” enjoying “at last a
blessed state the beauty of which the black stranger had never tasted or could never
taste.”
Step seven: Assignment.
1. Review the textbook.
2. Tell the nature of American realism
3. What are the common features shared by then American realists?
4. What is William Dean Howells’ definition for realism?
5. State the symbolic meanings of “the house” in The Rise of Silas Lapham.
6. Tell the range of Henry James’ international theme.
7. List the themes in The Jolly Coner.
8. The three questions on P100 of the Selected Readings of American
Literature.
9
教案纸
Lecture II. Local Colorism·Mark Twain
教 学 1) Grasping the features of American local colorism
目 的 2) Grasping the main representatives and their works.
与 要 3) Understanding the term, local colorism
求
教 学 1) Features of American local colorism
重 点 2) Understanding and analysis of Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
与难
Calaveras County
点
教 学 1) Lectures: providing essential background knowledge
方法
2) Seminars: discussing on the given topics
教 学 1) Traditional teaching
手段
2) Multi-media equipment
学 时 Four periods
分配
教
学
过
程
Step one: Leading in
Step two: Local colorism
I. Local colorism
Local color writing has old roots but produced its best works long after the Civil
War. Obviously, many pre-war writers, from Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel
Hawthorne to John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell, paint striking
portraits of specific American regions. What sets the colorists apart is their
self-conscious and exclusive interest in rendering a given location, and their
scrupulously factual, realistic technique.
(A literary term) Definition: Local color or regional literature is fiction and poetry
that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features
particular to a specific region. Influenced by Southwestern and Down East humor,
between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century this mode of writing
became dominant in American literature.
1. Bret Harte (1836-1902) is remembered as the author of adventurous stories such
as "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," set along the
western mining frontier. As the first great success in the local colorist school, Harte
for a brief time was perhaps the best-known writer in America -- such was the appeal
10
of his romantic version of the gun gun-slinging West. Outwardly realistic, he was
one of the first to introduce low-life characters -- cunning gamblers, gaudy
prostitutes, and uncouth robbers -- into serious literary works.
2. Hamlin Garland (p131)
3. Several women writers are remembered for their fine depictions of New England:
Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), and
especially Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909). Jewett's originality, exact observation of
her Maine characters and setting, and sensitive style are best seen in her fine story
"The White Heron" in Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). Harriet Beecher Stowe's
local color works, especially The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), depicting humble
Maine fishing communities, greatly influenced Jewett.
All regions of the country celebrated themselves in writing influenced by local color.
Some of it included social protest, especially toward the end of the century, when
social inequality and economic hardship were particularly pressing issues. Racial
injustice and inequality between the sexes appear in the works of southern writers
such as George Washington Cable (1844-1925) and Kate Chopin (1851-1904),
whose powerful novels set in Cajun/French Louisiana transcend the local color label.
II. Features of local colorism
Many critics have argued that this literary movement contributed to the reunification
of the country after the Civil War and to the building of national identity toward the
end of the nineteenth century. According to Brodhead, "regionalism's representation
of vernacular cultures as enclaves of tradition insulated from larger cultural contact
is palpably a fiction . . . its public function was not just to mourn lost cultures but to
purvey a certain story of contemporary cultures and of the relations among them"
(121). In chronicling the nation's stories about its regions and mythical origins, local
color fiction through its presence--and, later, its absence--contributed to the narrative
of unified nationhood that late nineteenth-century America sought to construct.
A variation of this genre is the "plantation tradition" fiction of Thomas Nelson
Page and others.
1. Characteristics of Setting The emphasis is frequently on nature and the
limitations it imposes; settings are frequently remote and inaccessible. The setting is
integral to the story and may sometimes become a character in itself.
2. Characters Local color stories tend to be concerned with the character of the
district or region rather than with the individual: characters may become character
types, sometimes quaint or stereotypical. The characters are marked by their
adherence to the old ways, by dialect, and by particular personality traits central to
the region. In women's local color fiction, the heroines are often unmarried women
or young girls.
3 Narrator The narrator is typically an educated observer from the world beyond
who learns something from the characters while preserving a sometimes
sympathetic, sometimes ironic distance from them. The narrator serves as mediator
between the rural folk of the tale and the urban audience to whom the tale is
directed.
4 Plots It has been said that "nothing happens" in local color stories by women
11
authors, and often very little does happen. Stories may include lots of storytelling
and revolve around the community and its rituals.
5 Themes Many local color stories share an antipathy to change and a certain degree
of nostalgia for an always-past golden age. A celebration of community and
acceptance in the face of adversity characterizes women's local color fiction.
Thematic tension or conflict between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values is
often symbolized by the intrusion of an outsider or interloper who seeks something
from the community.
Step three: Mark Twain
I. Life experience
II. Major works
III. His literary features
1. Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew up in the
Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri. Early 19th-century American
writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious -- partially because they
were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly as the English. Twain's
style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American
writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author
to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous
slang and iconoclasm.
2 For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not
merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding
worn-out conventions. Thus it was profoundly liberating and potentially at odds
with society. The most well-known example is Huck Finn, a poor boy who decides
to follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape to freedom, even
though Huck thinks this means that he will be damned to hell for breaking the law.
3. Two major literary currents in 19th-century America merged in Mark
Twain: popular frontier humor and local color, or "regionalism." These related
literary approaches began in the 1830s -- and had even earlier roots in local oral
traditions. In ragged frontier villages, on riverboats, in mining camps, and around
cowboy campfires far from city amusements, storytelling flourished. Exaggeration,
tall tales, incredible boasts, and comic workingmen heroes enlivened frontier
literature. These humorous forms were found in many frontier regions -- in the "old
Southwest" (the present-day inland South and the lower Midwest), the mining
frontier, and the Pacific Coast. Each region had its colorful characters around whom
stories.
IV. The differences among Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain in writing
themes and in writing technique: (p133-p134)
V. The Appreciation of The Adventures of Huck Berry Finn (p135-p139)
VI. Understanding and analysis of his The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County
1 Introduction
Written in 1865, this short story by Mark Twain was an overnight success and
12
reprinted all over the country. In fact, this is the piece of writing that launched Mark
Twain into fame (read more). "The Celebrated Jumping Frog" focuses on a narrator
from the East suffering through a Western man's tall tale about a jumping frog. The
story was made into an opera and performed at Indiana University in 1950. Today,
the city of Angel's Camp, California, the setting for this short story, calls itself the
"Home of the Jumping Frog."
2 Brief Plot Overview
A man from the East comes to a western mining town. At the request of a friend, the
narrator speaks with Simon Wheeler in order to ask after a man named Leonidas W.
Smiley. Instead of giving the narrator the information that he asks for, Wheeler
launches into a tall tale about a man named Jim Smiley.
The story goes something like this: Jim Smiley was a man who would bet on
anything. He turned a frog into a pet and bet a stranger that his frog, Dan’l Webster,
could jump higher than any other frog. While Smiley wasn't looking, the stranger
filled Dan’l Webster with quail shot, and Smiley lost the bet. Before he could figure
out what happened, the stranger disappeared with the $40 he won by cheating.
Sick of the long-winded tale about Jim Smiley and his frog, the narrator tries to
escape from Wheeler before he launches into another story. The narrator realizes that
his friend probably intended for him to suffer through Wheeler's tedious tale.
3 Themes
3.1 Cunning and Cleverness
Though Jim Smiley appears to be extraordinarily lucky, it is partly through his
cunning and cleverness that he is able to win bets. He is finally outsmarted by a
stranger, who beats him through cheating. Nonetheless, the story poses a moral
distinction between honest and dishonest cleverness. It also shows that you don’t
necessarily have to be educated and well spoken to be clever, nor is a good education
a defense against getting fooled.
Quote: I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is ... a myth; that my
friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old
Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would
go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as
long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly
succeeded. (Para 1)
Thought: The narrator realizes that his friend might have played a big joke on him.
But it’s something of a mystery why his friend would want to bore him with
Wheeler’s stories. Does the friend think that maybe the narrator, Mr. Fancy Eastern
Narrator, has something to learn from Wheeler? Or is the friend just a jerk, which
might cause us to wonder: why are they friends in the first place?
3.2 Competition
Jim Smiley is an incorrigible gambler. Though he may like the money he wins, it is
also clear that he just enjoys the thrill of competition. He frequently bets on the
underdog or bets on really awkward and tactless things (such as whether the parson’s
wife will recover from her illness or not). He also cultivates animals – a horse, a dog,
and then a frog – that he can use in his various competitions.
13
Quote 1: "…but any way, he was the curiosest man about always ... betting on any
thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get any body to bet on the other side;
and if he couldn't, he'd change sides. [. . .] Why, it never made no difference to him
he would bet on any thing the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick
once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn's going to save her; but one
morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was
considerable better thank the Lord for his inftnit mercy and coming on so smart that,
with the blessing of Providence, she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought,
says, "Well, I'llrisk two- and-a-half that she don't, any way." (para 4)
Thought: Jim Smiley’s main characteristic is his love of or addiction for betting. He
likes the competition, even though he’s good-natured about it. His honesty shows
that even pastimes as shady as gambling have codes of honor attached to them.
Unfortunately, he can also be quite tactless, like when he bets that the parson’s wife
will stay sick.
3.3 Lies and Deceit
Smiley himself tends to be fairly honest, though it might be possible to argue that his
animals allow him to practice deception, since each in turn looks like nothing special
or even like it could never win. But that is not the same kind of deceit that the
stranger uses when he fills Dan’l Webster with quail shot in order to win his bet.
Smiley is righteously indignant, though he fails to capture the stranger and get his
money back.
Quote 1: Thish-yer Smiley had a mare the boys called her the ... fifteen- minute nag,
but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that and
he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the
asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used
to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always
at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate- like, and come cavorting
and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and
sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and
raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose and
always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it
down. (Para 5)
Thought: Part of the fun in the competition, perhaps, is Smiley’s ability to fool
others into believing that he’s a fool to engage in the bet that he makes. The animals
he chooses to bet on don’t ever look like much, but they usually pull through in the
end. How does Smiley manage to find such extraordinary animals? Maybe this it
part of the "tall tale" element of the story.
3.4 Contrasting Regions
Though the eastern and western United States aren’t specifically contrasted in this
short story, we do see a contrast between the educated, refined narrator from the East
(who also happens to be "green") and the uneducated but slick characters who
populate Angel’s mining camp in the West. The characters in the West love a good
tall tale, while the narrator appears to find it pointless and tedious, but maybe that’s
because he doesn’t get it.
14
Quote 1: I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove ... of the
old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he
was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity
upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. (Para 2)
Thought: The educated, well-healed easterner describes the simple, rustic westerner
in our first subtle contrast between American regions. By taking note of Wheeler’s
"winning gentleness," is the narrator being a generous guy, or is he just being
condescending?
4 Plot analysis:
4.1 Classic Plot Analysis ( a literary term)
Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation,
conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers
sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
*Initial Situation
The narrator enters the tavern in Angel’s mining camp.
(A friend has asked the narrator to find Simon Wheeler and to ask him about the
Reverend Leonidas W. Smiley. Simon Wheeler doesn’t remember a Reverend
Smiley but he does start to tell a tale about Jim Smiley, a man who loved to make
bets.)
*Conflict
Smiley makes bets with an old horse and an old dog.
(We learn from the start that Smiley loves to gamble, but more important perhaps, he
likes to bet on animals that don’t seem like they have a good chance of winning. He
has an old asthmatic mare that doesn’t look like it can win horse races but always
manages to come out on top in the last few seconds of the race. He also has a dog
named Andrew Jackson that doesn’t look like he can win a fight – and in fact loses
fights until there is money on the table.)
*Complication
Smiley starts to educate a frog so that it can beat other frogs at jumping.
(One day, Smiley starts educating a frog that he names Dan’l Webster. For three
months, he does nothing but teach this frog how to jump higher and faster than any
other frog. Then he puts the frog on the market, so to speak, and starts making bets.)
*Climax
A stranger fills Smiley’s frog with quail shot and the frog loses.
(One day, Smiley bets a stranger forty bucks that his frog can beat any other frog.
The stranger says he doesn’t see anything special about Dan’l Webster. The bet is on
but while Smiley goes to get the stranger a frog, the stranger fills Dan’l with quail
shot. When the two frogs try to jump, Dan’l can’t even move. The stranger takes the
money and leaves.)
*Suspense
Smiley goes after the stranger but the stranger has already skipped town.
(When Smiley discovers what the cheater has done, that is, when Dan’l Webster
burps out quail shot, he starts out after him—but he’s too late. The stranger has
disappeared with Smiley’s money.)
15
*Denouement
Wheeler is interrupted from his story-telling.
(When Wheeler is interrupted from finishing the story, he tells the narrator to wait.
When he comes back, he tries to continue his tall tale but the narrator interrupts and
says, not quite good-naturedly, that he needs to go. )
*Conclusion
The narrator leaves the saloon. The narrator leaves, thinking his quest was fruitless.
4.2 Three Act Plot Analysis ( A literary term)
For a three act plot analysis, at the end of Act One, the main character is drawn in
completely to a conflict. During Act Two, she is farthest away from her goals. At the
end of Act Three, the story is resolved.
Act I
The narrator enters a saloon and asks about the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley. Instead,
old Simon Wheeler corners him with a tall tale about a man named Jim Smiley, who
loved to gamble.
Act II
Simon Wheeler tells about Smiley’s old mare, who never looked like she could win a
race but always gathered enough stamina towards the end to beat her competition.
Then he tells about Smiley’s old dog, Andrew Jackson, who also didn’t look like
much and wouldn’t win unless there was money on the table. Then he’d beat the
other dog easily. Then Wheeler tells us about Smiley’s frog, Dan’l Webster, and how
Smiley trained that frog for three months to jump faster and higher than any other
frog you ever met.
Act III
One day, Smiley bets a stranger that his frog Dan’l can beat any other frog. The man
agrees to the bet, muttering that there doesn’t seem like anything special about
Smiley’s frog. While Smiley is out catching another frog, the stranger fills Dan’l
with quail shot. Smiley loses the competition. He doesn’t realize he’s been cheated
until the man has left and he picks Dan’l up. Wheeler is interrupted telling his story
and walks away. When he returns, the narrator has had enough of the storytelling and
escapes.
5 Characters analysis
5.1 About Simon Wheeler
Though Simon Wheeler is bald and lazy, and seems simple, he may be cleverer than
he looks. He’s certainly very aggressive in getting the narrator to listen to him. He
uses tactics that sound like military maneuvers, such as "blockading" the narrator
with a chair so that he can’t leave. But then there’s the question of why he’s so
desperate to have someone listen to him. Mining towns tended to be populated by a
lot of single men with too much time on their hands. (Answer to question 1 on p72)
It has to get pretty lonely out there at the mining camp. One way of passing the
time is to tell stories. Maybe he just wants to talk and doesn’t have any shame
about it. Whatever the reason is, he throws the narrator completely off guard. And
he also talks real funny and ungrammatical-like.
5.2 About The Narrator
16
The narrator is an educated man from the East who is traveling west. Along the way,
he does a friend a favor by going to Angel’s mining camp to ask about the Rev.
Leonidas W. Smiley. Instead of finding the information he is looking for, he is forced
to endure Wheeler's long-winded tall tale about Jim Smiley, a man who loved
gambling and who always won, at least until the day he was cheated. (Answer to
question2 on p72)Though the narrator is good-natured about it, he escapes as
soon as he can, thinking to himself that there wasn’t much point listening to
such a tedious story that has nothing to do with the Rev. Smiley. In fact, at the
beginning of the story we learn that the narrator is suspicious of his friend. He thinks
maybe his friend was playing a trick on him so that he would have to listen to
Wheeler’s endless stories. This, of course, raises some questions about our dear
narrator’s judgment. If he doesn’t trust his friend, why are they friends? Is it just a
good-natured trick, like a prank? Also, the narrator doesn’t seem to have a lot of
patience or good manners – when Wheeler starts on his last story, the narrator
gets frustrated and rushes out, rather than finding a way to exit politely.
6 Symbols, Imagery, Allegory
Andrew Jackson and Dan’l Webster
The names for the dog and the "educated" frog hint at some possible political
undertones. The dog, which didn’t look like much but was feisty when it came to
fighting, was named for Andrew Jackson, a westerner and the seventh president of
the United States. He was a man of the people and believed in democracy for all.
Daniel Webster was an attorney who became one of the leading American statesmen,
serving as a senator and Secretary of State. He ran unsuccessfully for president three
times and was known for being a very good narrator. In this short story, a common
frog with no name beats the educated frog (Dan’l Webster). The moral of the tale
could be that the uneducated, common frog was only able to beat the educated
frog through cheating. Alternatively, given Webster’s politics, it might be possible
read more deeply into this and suggest that the tale is subversively arguing for
equality for all Americans.
7 Setting
Angel’s Camp, California, mid-19th century
Angel's Camp is a gold mining community in the mid-19th century that the narrator
claims to have visited to find Simon Wheeler. Like any mining town in the West, it
was populated primarily by men, many of them looking for their fortune. As
something of a frontier town, it would probably seem to be full of loud, uncouth, and
uneducated people compared to the more genteel East.
8 Narrator Point of View
First Person
Through a frame narrative, the narrator (clearly an educated man from the East)
presents the story of Jim Smiley, told in Simon Wheeler’s uneducated dialect. This is
the main device that Twain uses to present the contrast between East and West:
educated vs. uneducated, refined vs. coarse.
9 Tone
Disparaging, disbelieving
17
Though the content suggests the opposite of the tone, the attitude of the narrator
toward the subject matter is one of disbelief that his time has been wasted in such a
way. He’s annoyed that he has had to listen to such a stupid tale (about Dan'l
Webster) from a man who seems to take it so seriously. His effort to reproduce
Wheeler’s ungrammatical dialect feels slightly mocking. (answer to question 3 on
p72)
10 Writing Style:
Clever and Colloquial
This story is told with a frame narrative. The narrator uses educated diction, and
explains how absurd Simon Wheeler is. Simon Wheeler narrates the inside story, and
he uses an uneducated vernacular to tell his tall tales about Smiley and Dan'l
Webster.
Step four: Assignment
1. Review after the class.
2. Define the term: local colorism, classic plot analysis and three act plot
analysis
3. What are the features of Mark Twain’s writings?
4. Tell the differences among Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain in
writing themes and in writing technique
5. Simply give the story the classic plot analysis
6. Answer the three questions from the Selected Readings on p 72.
18
教案
Lecture III. American Naturalism
Crane·Norris·Dreiser·Robinson
教 学 1) Grasping the historical context of American naturalism
目 的 2) Grasping the artistic features of American naturalism
与 要 3) Having a general idea of the representatives and their works
求
教学
1) Understanding of the term Naturalism and its features
重点
2) Stephen Crane’s writing features
与难
3) Appreciation and analysis of his The Open Boat
点
教 学 1) Lectures: providing essential background knowledge
方法
2) Seminars: discussing on the given topics
教 学 1) Traditional teaching
手段
2) Multi-media equipment
学 时 Four Periods
分配
教
学
过
程
Step one: Leading in
Step two: American naturalism
I. Historical context
1. With the technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution, the prestige of
science and the experimental method had reached an all-time high. The differences
between the rich and the poor widened.
2. The Spanish-American War
When Cuban revolutionaries began a war for independence against Spain in 1895,
the United States lent financial and moral support to the uprising.
3. Social Darwinism
Every field of thought in the late nineteenth-century was impacted by the theories of
Charles Darwin. Most Social Darwinists adapted the idea, “survival of the fittest” of
natural selection to existing racial theories, using this hereditary or evolutionary
reasoning to explain the condition of the different races in their own time. Life
became a struggle for survival.
4. In literary scene
19
4.1 Realism became more controversial when some practitioners began to shock
their readers with “objective” depictions of sexuality, brutality, vulgarity, and
unredeemed injustice.
4.2 Influenced by French novelist Emile Zola, the leading Naturalist, some American
authors sought to integrate deterministic philosophies into their literature. The
Naturalists were intensely concerned with the question of whether human beings
could exercise control over their fate or whether their fate was determined by their
environment. Influenced by deterministic philosophies such as those of Darwin or
Marx, the Naturalists analyzed the “natural” forces or “scientific” laws that affected
the “struggle for life.” One of the most successful Naturalists, Stephen Crane, said
that we live in “a world full of fists” in which the survivors are not necessarily the
most “fit” but only the most fortunate. In the 1890s, Realism took on a newly
philosophical character in the writings of the Naturalists
II. Naturalism
1 A literary term Naturalism was a late nineteenth century movement in theater,
film, art and literature that seeks to portray common values of the ordinary
individual, as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which
subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment.
Naturalism was an outgrowth of Realism. Naturalism describes a type of literature
that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study
of human beings. Unlike realism, which focuses on literary technique, naturalism
implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in
Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be studied through their
relationships to their surroundings.
2 Features of naturalism
2.1 Characters
Frequently but not invariably ill-educated or lower-class characters whose lives are
governed by the forces of heredity, instinct, and passion. Their attempts at exercising
free will or choice are hamstrung by forces beyond their control; social Darwinism
and other theories help to explain their fates to the reader. See June Howard's Form
and History for information on the spectator in naturalism.
2.2 Setting Frequently an urban setting, but usually a setting that would symbolize
the universe and nature. Since the main conflict is man versus nature, the setting is
dominant in the story to the point that any action taken by the characters is usually
futile.
2.3 Techniques and plots: The naturalistic story offers a "slice of life." The plot is
usually chronologically arranged and often a chronicle of despair as the character
struggles against forces he can't control. The symbols usually represent the world,
the universe and man's place and problems within nature.
3 Themes
3.1 Walcutt identifies survival, determinism, violence, and taboo as key themes.
3.2 The "brute within" each individual, composed of strong and often warring
emotions: passions, such as lust, greed, or the desire for dominance or pleasure;
and the fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent universe. The conflict in
20
naturalistic novels is often "man against nature" or "man against himself" as
characters struggle to retain a "veneer of civilization" despite external pressures that
threaten to release the "brute within."
3.3 Nature as an indifferent force acting on the lives of human beings. The
romantic vision of Wordsworth--that "nature never did betray the heart that loved
her"--here becomes Stephen Crane's view in "The Open Boat": "This tower was a
giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to
the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual--nature
in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor
beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent."
3.4 The forces of heredity and environment as they affect--and
afflict--individual lives.
3.5 An indifferent, deterministic universe. Naturalistic texts often describe the
futile attempts of human beings to exercise free will, often ironically presented, in
this universe that reveals free will as an illusion.
4 Practitioners
Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, and Stephen Crane
Step three: Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
I. His life (p143)
II. His major works (p143)
III. Features of his works
1 Poems brief, quotable, with the unrhymed, unorthodox conciseness, and
impressionistic imagery recognized as one of the two precursors of imagist poetry,
the other being Emily Dickinson.
2 Novels
2.1 Man is insignificant
2.2 Nature is ambivalent (it doesn't care about man's problems)
2.3 The psychological stress of the average person in times of extreme stress
IV. Appreciation and analysis of The Open Boat
1 Introduction
Published in 1897, The Open Boat is based on an actual incident from Stephen
Crane’s life in January of that year. While traveling to Cuba to work as a newspaper
correspondent during the Cuban insurrection against Spain, Crane was stranded at
sea for thirty hours after his ship, the Commodore, sank off the coast of Florida.
Crane and three other men were forced to navigate their way to shore in a small boat.
One of the men, an oiler named Billy Higgins, drowned while trying to swim to
shore. Crane wrote the story “The Open Boat” soon afterward. The story tells of the
travails of four men shipwrecked at sea who must make their way to shore in a
dinghy. Crane’s grippingly realistic depiction of their life-threatening ordeal captures
the sensations and emotions of struggle for survival against the forces of nature.
Because of the work’s philosophical speculations, it is often classified as a work of
Naturalism, a literary offshoot of the Realist movement. “The Open Boat” has
proved an enduring classic that speaks to the timeless experience of suffering a close
21
call with death.
2 Plot Summary
“The Open Boat” begins with a description of men aboard a small boat on a rough
sea. Details begin to emerge. They are four survivors of a shipwreck: the cook
bailing water out of the bottom of the boat, the oiler Billie rowing with one oar, the
unnamed correspondent rowing with another row, and the captain lying injured in
the bottom of the boat. Each man stares intently at the waves which threaten to
swamp the boat. The correspondent engages in rather pointless discussion with the
cook about the likelihood of being seen by rescuers or of finding a house of refuge
on shore. They debate the points until the oiler has twice repeated that they are “not
there yet.”
This section features further character development and superb descriptive passages
depicting the tiny boat’s course across the rough waves. The captain briefly
expresses doubt about their chances of survival, but then reassures the men that
“we’ll get ashore all right.” The captain is the first to spot a barely visible lighthouse
and they know they are approaching shore.
Unwilling to risk running the boat ashore in the rough surf, the men wait to be
spotted by the lighthouse rescue crew.
The lighthouse appears deserted. The men discuss rowing toward land and
swimming through the surf once the boat inevitably capsizes in the rougher water
closer to shore. They know that they will only grow weaker with the passage of time.
They exchange “addresses and admonitions” in case they do not all live through the
ordeal. When the oiler takes the boat toward shore, it quickly become apparent that
the rougher waves will capsize their vessel when they are still much too far out to
swim. They return to deeper but safer offshore water. A current takes them away
from the lighthouse, and they row toward “little dots which seemed to indicate a city
on the shore.” The correspondent and the oiler now take turns rowing so that each
can spend some time at rest.
Someone is seen on the shore waving to them. The men soon realize that the people
on shore are tourists who think they are fishermen or pleasure boaters. No help is
coming.
The four men spend a cold night rowing steadily toward distant lights. While the
correspondent is rowing alone, a large shark cruises in the vicinity of the boat. The
predator is never named, but is described in terms of its shape, size, speed, and the
sound of the dorsal fin slicing through the water. This eerie scene is powerfully
depicted.
Thoughts of drowning plague the crew. They agonize privately over the injustice of
their situation: “If I am going to be drowned . . . why . . . was I allowed to come thus
far?” The repeated phrase is never attributed; The correspondent silently recalls —
incorrectly — a poem he learned as a schoolboy and never before truly understood,
about a soldier who dies lamenting that he will never again see his native land.
At dawn, the men decide that their only chance is to row toward the distant shore
again and swim when the boat capsizes. The narrative stays primarily with the
correspondent’s inner thoughts during this passage. He reflects that nature —
22
previously personified as malicious, desiring his death — is in fact perfectly
indifferent to his fate. On the captain’s order, the oiler rows the boat directly toward
shore.
Waves crash into the boat as it enters the breakers. The cook briefly bails out water,
and then the men abandon the foundering craft. The oiler swims strongly and
steadily toward the shore. The cook, in his lifejacket and clutching an oar, bobs
along until the captain calls to him to turn over on his back; in that position he rows
himself as if his large, buoyant body were a canoe. The correspondent clings to a
piece of a lifejacket and paddles slowly, thinking of the vast distance he has yet to
cross. The injured captain clings to the stern of the overturned boat, which is pushed
toward the beach by the strong surf. A wave tosses the correspondent over the boat
and into waist-deep water, but he is too weak to even stand up. Suddenly, a man
appears on shore, stripping off his clothes and running into the water. The rescuer
drags the cook to safety and then approaches the captain, who waves him away to
help the correspondent first. Billie, the oiler, is face-down in the shallow water, dead.
The three living men are fed and tended. That night they listen to the sound of the
waves against the shore “and they felt that they could then be interpreters.”
3 Characters
3.1 Captain
The injured captain is unable to help row the lifeboat. Having lost his ship, the
captain is more forlorn and dejected than the other characters, but he feels that it is
his duty to guide the men to safety. He makes the decisions for the crew, and he
provides words of encouragement to the men rowing. At one point, the captain
seems the least optimistic about the possibility of survival. However, he only once
allows himself to express such pessimism, and he quickly reverses himself, speaking
as if he is “soothing his children,” saying that “we’ll get ashore all right.” in the end
he survives by clinging to the overturned boat as it is washed into shallow water by
the surf. Even then, he waves away a rescuer and points to the correspondent,
indicating that he should be helped ashore first.
3.2 Cook
The cook is described as fat and untidily dressed. He does not help row, but he does
work steadily bailing seawater out of the boat. He is the most talkative of the four
men, and remains unshakably certain that they will be rescued. When they finally
sight shore, and a building, he keeps commenting on how strange it is that the
“crew” of what he imagines is a life-saving station has not spotted them and sent out
a rescue boat yet. He repeats this long after it becomes apparent that the building is
vacant and no one has seen them. He is the only one of the four men in the boat who
wears a life jacket. Underscoring the randomness of the natural disaster that has
befallen the four very different men, the unfit cook is one of the three who survives,
while the oiler, a strong and capable seaman, drowns in the surf just off shore.
3.3 Correspondent
The character of the correspondent is autobiographical in nature. Crane was himself
shipwrecked off the Florida coast while working as a war correspondent. The
correspondent is the only character in the story to whose thoughts the reader is given
23
direct access. As the story progresses, the absurdity of the situation impresses itself
deeply on the correspondent’s mind. He recognizes that he might drown despite all
of his efforts to survive, which causes him to consider the disheartening possibility
that nature is indifferent to his fate. His melancholy leads him to imagine his own
death as like that of a French soldier in a poem who dies, unmourned, far from his
homeland. In the end, the correspondent survives, largely due to sheer luck: a large
wave that carries him into shallow water near land.
3.4 Oiler (Billie)
The oiler, Billie, is the only character in the story whose name is given. He is also
the only character in the open boat who does not survive the ordeal. He is the most
physically able of the four characters and seems the most determined to survive. The
strongest rower, the oiler also makes the strongest effort to swim ashore when the
boat capsizes in the surf. Yet his efforts come to nothing — he drowns in the shallow
water just off shore while the other characters are saved by what appears to be
random chance.
4 Themes
4.1 Individual Vs. Nature
During the late nineteenth century, Americans had come to expect that they could
control and conquer their environment. With the technological breakthroughs of the
Industrial Revolution, humankind appeared to have demonstrated its ability to both
understand and to dominate the forces of nature. In “The Open Boat,” Crane
questions these self-confident assumptions by describing the precarious situation of
four shipwrecked men as they are tossed about on the sea. The men seem to
recognize that they are helpless in the face of nature. Their lives could be lost at
any moment by the most common of natural phenomena: a wave, a current, the
wind, a shark, or even simple starvation and exposure. The men are at the
mercy of mere chance. This realization profoundly affects the correspondent, who
is angered that he might be drowned despite all of his efforts to save himself. In a
passage that drips with irony, Crane writes of the correspondent: “He thought: ‘Am I
going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be possible? Can it be possible?’ Perhaps
an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.”
This passage suggests the absurdity of an individual’s sense of self-importance
against the mindless power of nature.( answer to question 2 on p121)
4.2 Perspective (question 1 p121)
One of the main themes of the story concerns the limitations of any one
perspective, or point of view. Crane’s famous first sentence of the story presents
this theme immediately: “None of them knew the color of the sky.” The men in the
boat are so focused on the danger presented to them by the waves that they are
oblivious to all else. The story continually emphasizes the limitations of a single
perspective. When the shipwrecked men are first spotted from the shore, they are
mistaken for fishermen. The people on shore do not perceive their distress and only
wave cheerfully to the men. Crane writes of the men in the boat that if they were
viewed “from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtless have been weirdly
picturesque.” This serene perspective contrasts markedly with the frightening and
24
violent reality the men in the boat are experiencing. Crane’s point seems to be that
humans can never fully comprehend the true quality of reality, but only their
own limited view of it. Throughout the story, the situation of the men in the boat
seems to them “absurd,” “preposterous,” and without any underlying reason or
meaning. Yet once the three survivors are safely on shore at the end of the story, they
believe that they can look back and “interpret” the import or meaning of what has
happened to them. (answer to question 3 on p121) The last line of the story has the
men looking out upon the sea once again deluded into believing they can make sense
of it. With the death of the oiler and the rescue of the others, the bond between the
men is broken and each is left to believe that his experience and particular reason for
survival has some larger meaning. Their brief moment of human brotherhood and
understanding ends with their rescue. The reader is left to wonder whether anything
can ever be truly understood, or if all understanding is simply an agreed-upon,
limited perspective that provides the illusion of unity to the chaos of lived events.
4.3 Death
The drama of the story comes from the men’s realization that they are likely to
drown. Having to confront the probability of their own imminent death, each of the
characters accepts what Crane calls a “new ignorance of the grave-edge.” It is
interesting that Crane refers to this understanding as “ignorance” rather than
“knowledge.” Being at the mercy of fate has demonstrated to them how wrong
their previous beliefs about their own importance had been (question 2). The
correspondent, in particular, is troubled by the senselessness of his predicament, and
he thinks about a poem in which a French soldier dies, unceremoniously, far from his
home and family. Facing senseless death, the universe suddenly seems deprived of
the meaning he had previously attached to it. Thus, he is overtaken by a new
“ignorance” about life, rather than a new “knowledge.” Crane seems to endorse the
idea that nature is random and senseless by having the oiler drown in the surf. Of all
the men, the oiler seemed the most likely to survive, being the most physically fit.
His death implies that the others’ survival was merely the result of good fortune.
Once the survivors are safe from danger, however, death’s senselessness is quickly
forgotten.
4.4 Free Will
Crane was regarded as a leading member of the Realist or Naturalist movement in
his time. One of the main concerns of the Naturalists involved the dilemma of
whether human beings could exercise control over their fate or whether their fate
was predetermined by their environment. To state it differently, they asked whether
humans possess a free will or were powerless to shape external events. Drawing
upon deterministic philosophies such as those of Charles Darwin, Auguste Comte, or
Karl Marx, the Naturalists analyzed the various natural forces that affected the
“struggle for life.” These concerns are evident in “The Open Boat.” Although the
four men are clearly making the best effort to get to shore, it is never certain until the
end whether they will drown. Their fate seems to rest mostly in the hands of forces
beyond their control. A prime example of this comes when the correspondent gets
caught in a current while trying to swim to the shore. He is trapped by an invisible
25
force — an underwater current — which he can neither understand nor escape. For
unknown reasons, the current suddenly frees him and he is washed ashore by a giant
wave. It seems clear that Crane attributes the correspondent’s survival more to
uncontrollable forces than to his own efforts.
5 Style
5.1 Point of View
The literary technique most remarked upon by critics of “The Open Boat” is Crane’s
unusual use of a shifting point of view. The story is told alternatively from the
perspective of each of the crew members, as well as from the vantage point of
an objective observer.
Often, it is not clear whose viewpoint is predominant at a given time. There are
passages of dialogue, too, in which the different speakers are never identified. In
these ways, the reader is given the sense that all of the crew members share similar
feelings about their predicament. There is also the suggestion that their reactions are
archetypal and universal; that is, that anyone would respond the same way to what
they are going through. The correspondent is the only character whose inner
thoughts are clearly identified — perhaps because he, being a writer, has the ability
to articulate their experience best.
Some critics have viewed Crane’s shifting perspectives as a flaw, because it hinders
independent character development. But, arguably, the story does not need its
characters to develop as much as to experience the same fear and anger. Crane
captures the sights, sounds, and emotions of a near-death experience so powerful that
is denies the characters the ability to comprehend. For each of the characters the
possibility of death seems unjust and senseless. Only in the end can they begin to
“interpret” their experience, yet the reader is not privy to their conclusions. Thus, the
shifting point of view appears to emphasize the failure of interpretation by all of the
characters, rather than the knowledge that each has gained.
5.2 Naturalism
5.3 Setting
Since “The Open Boat” is the fictional treatment of a real-life experience that befell
Crane off the coast of Florida, the setting of the story would seem determined by the
actual event. However, there is good reason to question what the setting conveys
about the themes and symbolic meanings of the story. Even though such an event
actually happened, it was still Crane’s choice as an artist to write about it. For Crane,
the event must have held some deep meaning that was inseparable from the setting,
or else he might have transformed it into a fictional account of a near-death
experience in some other context. The experience of being in an open boat, adrift on
the rough sea, seems to have communicated to Crane a sense of helplessness in the
face of nature’s indifference.
Symbolically, nature is perfectly represented by the sea, the wind, the cold, and
even the shark that periodically swims near the boat. These elements pose a great
danger to the men, who have little they can do to protect themselves beyond rowing
toward the shore and hoping for assistance. The nearly helpless men in the boat
can be seen as a metaphor for all people before the forces of nature. Their power
26
to act on their own behalf is small indeed when compared against the natural forces
that allow them to exist, yet could strike them down at any moment.
Step four: Assignment.
1. Read The Open Boat from the selected readings
2. Define the term naturalism
3. List the representatives of American naturalism
4. Tell the theme features of naturalism.
5. Give answers to the three questions on page 121 from the selected reaings.
27