Those Most Nearly Touched: Social Criticism in American Literature

One of the most influential critics of the social problems in American history was Civil Rights spokesperson W.E.B. DuBois, who believed that "Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched--criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led--this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society." One of the leading vehicles of such criticism since the beginning of the United States of America was literature. Like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, American literature molded its history by changing social perspectives with authors’ voices. Stowe’s character changed popular American society’s views on the morality of permanent servitude, and other writers have introduced new views into mainstream thought by providing social criticism of their generations through characters’ perspectives. Three such writers were Stephen Crane, Flannery O’Connor, and Hunter S. Thompson. Crane’s criticism of the nature of war, O’Connor’s criticism of gender, racism and religion, and Thompson’s criticism of the deterioration of American values were all voices of American generations and essential elements of the evolution of modern American society.

Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage was a novel that exploited an underlying irony of the nature of the American Civil War and war itself, as it was the “first non-romantic novel of the Civil War to attain widespread popularity.” Rather than depicting soldiers fighting for some noble and important cause, like literature of the American Revolution, Crane painted what seemed to be “loosely cohering incidents” that demystified and reshaped his generation’s views on warfare. War was not dignified; it was “hard stuff. Men ran away howling. Bodies were strewn and torn. War, went the cliché, was hell.” Crane created characters and scenes that highlighted the problems of his America’s popular opinion of war for “those whose interests are most nearly touched.” In Crane’s novel, those people were the innocent young soldiers who were thrown into “hell” and bestowed with responsibilities and expectations of highly immoral standards. He showed his generation and generations of Americans to come the horrors and the true nature of war. By exposing the fears and inner thoughts of Henry Fleming in his new environments, Crane introduced America to the harsh reality that “the blue and the gray honestly don’t ever seem too entirely certain why they’re fighting each other.” These were merely young men killing each other without really understanding the reason.