Naturalism In The Open Boat And To Build A Fire

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Authors’ Steven Crane and Jack London are known for their stories using naturalism, the struggle between man and nature. Naturalism is like realism, but it explores the forces of nature, heredity, and the environment on human beings, who are faced with the forces of nature. Both “The Open Boat” and “To Build a Fire” demonstrate how inferior and small humans’ really are to nature. Humans cannot control nature or determine its outcome. In both stories nature is the antagonist constantly challenging the humans’ ability to survive. I chose the topic over naturalistic elements because I enjoyed reading these stories. Both stories have a strong since of naturalism in it and both authors’ are known for naturalistic features existing in their writings. In this paper I will give you more of an insight to what naturalism is and what naturalistic elements are present in the two stories listed above. Naturalism was a literary movement that took place from 1880s to around the 1940s. This movement used detailed realism to propose that social conditions, genetics, and the environment had unavoidable force in shaping human character. According to Zhang, “Naturalism was first proposed and formulated by French novelist Emile Zola, and it was introduced to America by American novelist Frank Norris.”(Zhang par.1) The term naturalism defines a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Naturalism writers often used the regularly ignored lower to middle classes backgrounds for characters in their stories. Naturalistic authors believe that the laws behind the forces that govern human lives might be studied and understood through the objective study of human beings. Natur... ... middle of paper ... ...ezing, cold weather. The two types of conflict in “The Open Boat” and “To Build a Fire” are: man vs. self and man v. nature which are common in naturalism literature. London uses naturalism to show how harsh and indifferent nature really is and how no matter what, nature will always be there. He furthermore presented the basic idea of Darwinism and the survival of the fittest, ultimately if you are not the strongest you will not survive. London showed us that we only can depend on ourselves to survive in this world or in the Yukon of Alaska. "To Build a Fire" illustrates that the closer to death the character comes, the plot declines. As the story advances, the man's ambitions go from making it to camp, to staying warm, to just simply surviving. When reading, you can sense the lack of effort on the man's part, only brings him closer to a freezing, unavoidable death.

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