A Walk Through Reality With Stephen Crane Essay - 1839 Words

A Walk Through Reality With Stephen Crane Seeking and expressing the bare truth is often more difficult than writing stories of fiction. This truth can be harsher to the reader than works of fiction; it can make an authors desire to reveal the essence of society through characters the reader relates to risky and unpopular. Stephen Crane wrote of ordinary people who face difficult circumstances that his readers could relate to (Seaman 148). Crane sought to debunk the ideas that were inherent in nineteenth-century literature, which depicted life in a more favorable, but often unrealistic, light. In Cranes works, Dorothy Nyren Curley says, There are no false steps, no excesses, (255). Cranes impoverished†¦show more content†¦Her dreams seem to come true with a man named Pete, who promises her wonderful things. Pete takes her to shows and restaurants, introducing Maggie to the better things in life. Maggie falls desperately in love with Pete and puts all of her faith in him to take her away from her life. However, Pete impregnates her, and he leaves her soon after. Pregnant and alone, Maggie turns to her mother, whom she had run away from, and in turn, her mother rejects her. Desperate and broke, Maggie turns to the streets of Manhattan and prostitution. When her life becomes too much for her to endure, Maggie commits suicide. Crane portrays Maggie as an ordinary, poor, abused woman to depict her as a character his audience can relate to and sympathize with. Her life is marred with one tragedy after another, and her emotional strength is tried too many times for her to endure. A young, dreamy woman, Maggie fantasizes of searching for far away lands where, as G-d says, the little hill sing together in the morning. Under the trees of her dream-gardens there had always walked her lover. (Maggie 19) This broken dream devastates her too much for her to bear. With her dream of being swept away by a young lover to a better life utterly crushed, Maggie turns to the blackened river by the lower East End of Manhattan: At their feet the river appeared a deathly black hue. Some hidden factory set up a yellow glare, that lit for a moment the waters lappingShow MoreRelatedThe Beginning Of Red Badge Of Courage By Stephen Crane1205 Words   |  5 Pagesbeginning of Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Henry Fleming or the â€Å"youthful private† is a farm-boy who has left the farm against his mother’s best wishes to enlist in the Union army. The novella begins after Henry has enlisted and joined with the 304th New York regiment encamped across a river in Virginia from the enemy. The date is May 1863, two years after the Civil War has already begun, and the scene is set for the upcoming Battle of Chancellorsville. 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