Examples Of Naturalism In The Red Badge Of Courage

The naturalist period is a time in literary history that consists of literature that illustrates how man lives in and out of harmony with the nature around him. Throughout Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, naturalism is not difficult to pick out and analyze. This piece of literature fits into the naturalism period by the way Crane describes the intertwining of nature in the life of Henry Fleming. Fleming’s life is not the only area in which nature plays a large role in. Through this book one is able to easily pick out multiple examples on how this book fits quite nicely into its literary period. By the way Henry Fleming is drawn to war due to his humanly natures, the role of nature in the war, and the contrast between the tranquility
Henry Fleming’s mother believes that the war is going to ruin him. Her reasoning for this is that she needs him more on the farm than he is needed on the battlefield. Henry is not particularly worried by this as much as his mother is. As he makes his way down to his camp, he can already tell that he has entered a very different atmosphere. In the early chapters of The Red Badge of Courage Crane illustrates how Fleming conforms to the ways of the war and starts to fight the enemy. This part of the book shows a true connection between The Red Badge of Courage and the naturalism period. The soldiers and their commanders have adjusted their lifestyles before going to war to correlate to their new way of life. War affects the men that take part in it by the way of having to kill others and to live knowing that one’s day of death could be any day. Because of the way the soldiers have evolved from the nature of the
Henry finds himself in this situation because he thinks he is following the natural law to run away from his problems. Fleeing from the battle scene, he comes upon a fallen soldier and feels an odd sense of vulnerability. As he does this, he realizes how the world does not stop when someone dies or is injured, and by looking at nature one can see how death does not affect the overall function of the world. Crane has a view of nature that it has no correlations to humans. Other writers before him stated that humans are one with nature. Coming off of Crane’s view on nature, he uses it as a tranquil place for Henry Fleming to escape. Also, Crane’s writing helps one understand that one is not one with nature, but that one can still benefit from its attributes.
The Red Badge of Courage fits in well with the naturalist period by the way Stephen Crane uses real life scenarios and how he does not sugar coat bad endings. The nature of both war and the actual environment are portrayed in The Red Badge of Courage. The way the nature of war changes men internally and externally. This is a characteristic of the naturalistic period. The naturalistic period is the literary period in which the way one relates to their surroundings is displayed. Stephen Crane accurately depicts the naturalistic period in this particular