The Red Badge of Courage

In a sense, naturalism is a lot like realism.  they both share many of the same characteristics, but have a few differences between the two.  For one, realism focuses mainly on the individual and that person's struggles throughout his or her time.  Naturalism's problems that people face are from an outside driven "thing" or "things" (Docarmo).  These outside "things" for example are war, natural disaster, and a few other things but it goes with this story very well.  In this The Red Badge of Courage, the outside problem is the war and the effect that it is having on this man.  He says that he is beginning to feel the wrath of the war (Crane 493).  He now feels all the stress that is now coming into his life due to the presence of war.  The part that I am having a hard time with is the fact that he wants to put an end to it.  All of the sudden he feels this rage that goes into his body and he is so angry (Crane 493).  I guess that it is most likely how some people feel about war, they get upset about it and they want it to end.  I just do not see that as a characteristic of the naturalism writing style.  Granted there are more than I know, but what I have seen I do not see anything like the hatred that I saw in this man.  I almost got the feeling that he was going to kill himself, when it says the thing about his rifle.  He can only use it for one life at a time (Crane 493).

Henry David Thoreau is definitely classified as a naturalist.  He had a story about nature and nature is apart of naturalism.  The part that I got from it was that Thoreau wanted to learn from nature (Thoreau).  He wanted to seek out nature.  He will not be influenced by it, but he will learn from it.  They both share their same views when it comes to nature.

Crane, Stephen. “from A Red Badge of Courage.” Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 492-493. Print.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Thoreau's Walden - an Annotated Edition." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 21 Feb. 2012

Docarmo, Stephen N. "Realism and Naturalism." Dr. Stephen N. Docarmo. Bucks County Community College. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://faculty.bucks.edu/docarmos/RealismNaturalism.html>.