Abstract
Stephen Crane was known as a pioneer in American naturalistic literature. His masterpieces include “ Maggie-A Girl of the Streets ”, “ The Red Badge of Courage ” and “ The Open Boat ”. The Short story , “ sea boat ” , is Crane’s mature works among them. It tells that four people who met the maritime accident take a leaf boat in the ocean, struggling and fighting for survive. I think that the spirit of People struggling to fate in face of the nature and The spirit of mutual cooperation between people that the book shows Clearly reflects the positive side of naturalism and the idea that changing the individual and the environment to achieve a better social form through the mastery of natural law, which Zola Advocates in his book. Naturalism in literature arose in Europe in the nineteenth Century, and its most prominent representative is the French writer Zola. Zola and others hold that people in society are determined by environment and heredity and not govermed by social laws. This Crane’s book is unique in the writings of naturalistic literature, which are generally labeled as pessimistic. This paper analyzes the naturalistic characteristics of this novel from the four aspects of nature and people, hope and disappointment, human and personal growth. In the “sea boat” , the environment is indifferent, but the four people on the boat help each other to warm each other, though they are suffering from time to time but have not given up, and got self-help. The optimistic strain of American naturalism in“The Open Boat”broke through the pessimistic stereotype of literary naturalism.
Key words The Open Boat; Stephen Crane；Naturalism; Nature; Human
Contents
Abstract II
Introduction 1
1 The author and the novel 1
2 The meaning of naturalism and brief introduction to American Naturalism 2
2.1 Emile Zola and naturalism 3
2.2 Disillusion of the illusion of“American Dream” 4
3 The Naturalism In “The Open Boat” 5
3.1 Nature and human 5
3.1.1 Man and man…………………………………………………………………………………………..………………………5
3.1.1 Personal growth…………………………………………………………………………………………..………….………5
3.2 Hope and disappointment 7
4 Conclusion 8
Reference 9
