Maggie: A Girl In The Streets

Naturalism is a genre of literature found in the 19th century. Naturalism displays how the roles of family, social conditions, and environment all play a part in how you grow and development as a human. In many naturalist works, life is depicted as the struggle and only the strong survives. Majority of the characters described are living in poor industrialized communities. “ She received daily a small sum in pennies. It was contributed, for the most part, by persons who did not make their homes in that vicinity”.(Crane 8). Maggie: A Girl in the Streets is a story about a young girl growing up in a slum city in New York City. She was born to parents who were abusive alcoholics. She had a brother who took his anger out on her, and help belittle

(Crane 1). Characters are portrayed as victims of the certain circumstances and environments. Naturalism works display how a person’s fate is dictated by factors they can not control. For instance, when Crane says “ In the streets infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of the vehicles”. (Crane 4). When Crane says this he is already implying that their lives are doomed and poverty stricken. It just goes to show how everyone is stuck in the constant cycle of poverty and violence, and the ones that survive do so solely by adapting to their environment instead of resisting and trying to change. This is also an example of how the children grow up to become victims of their environments. From then prism they are born, they are only introduced to violence, and poverty which is all they will know as they get older. When the story first begins “ On the ground, children from Devil’s Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury”(Crane 2), shows how violence is a part of everyday life for people in this community. You cannot escape certain boundaries placed upon you since