Darkness Moves Forward

Stephen Crane wrote several works in the literary style naturalism, a movement that emerged in France in the middle of the nineteenth century and worked its way to America. Naturalistic works portray humans as helpless victims of natural and outside forces. These forces consistently affect characters in some negative way, such as in Crane's "A Man Adrift on a Slim Spar". We are provided with the image of a helpless man bobbing back and fourth on a splinter of wood in a vast ocean, hopeless. Naturalism is closely allied to realism, whereas naturalistic fiction and poetry tend to have a dreary and pessimistic tone.


Crane was considered to be one of the greatest naturalistic writers. Some consider him as the father of naturalism in the Americas and credit him with the genres success. While some of Cranes work cannot be described as strictly naturalistic in style, some of his most famous works stick true to the basic elements. "Crane's artistry lies in his ability to convey a personal vision based on his own 'quality of personal honesty.' In doing so, he pioneered the way for a modern form of fiction which superceded the genteel Realism of the late nineteenth-century American literature." (Poupard)

Works Cited

Baym, Nina, Robert S. Levine, and Arnold Krupat. "Stephen Crane." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. Vol. C. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2007. 954-56. Print.

Crane, Stephen, and Robert Wooster Stallman. An Omnibus. New-York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952. Print.

Poupard, Dennis, ed. Twentieth-century Literary Criticism Vol. 17: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Novelists, Poets, Playwrights, Short Story Writers, and Other Creative Writers Who Died between 1900 and 1960, from the First Published Critical Appraisals. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1984. Print.