Stephen Crane
Stephen CraneStephen Crane was an American writer who wrote novels, short stories, poems, and plenty of journals. Crane’s technique of writing was based on realism, a technique that is able to explore within the character’s mind. His work has been said to mark the beginning of modern American Naturalism.
Stephen Crane was born on November 1, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey. (Sufrin pg.9) His father, Jonathan Crane, had decided he was going to name his child after his ancestor, Stephen Crane, who had signed the Declaration of Independence. Ironically enough, this man by the name of Stephen Crane had not signed the Declaration of Independence because he had left Philadelphia one week prior to it being signed. (Sufrin pg.10) Stephen Crane was the fourteenth child born to the Cranes’ whose family history was very important to the nation’s history. This family was among the first colonists of Massachusetts Bay. They helped found New Haven, Connecticut, New Wark, Elizabethtown, and Montclair.
Stephen’s father, Jonathan Crane, liked to write books on Methodist Doctrines and codes of conducts. He disliked dancing, smoking, card playing, drinking, singing, popular songs, and reading popular novels. His mother, Mary Helen Peck, came from a Methodist preaching family. She liked reform movements and religious articles. Crane’s parents left his upbringing in the hands of his older sister Agnes, who encouraged him to read and write. (Bloom pg.58) Since the family was very religious, they often moved from town to town. This did not allow Stephen to attend school. He received his education from his older brothers and sisters. In 1874 the family lived Bloomington, New Jersey. Two years later they moved to Paterson, New Jersey. When his father became a pastor of Cross Street Church, they moved again to Port Jervis, New York. Because Stephen was so attached to his family, he didn’t start formal school till the age of eight. During this time his father suffered a sudden and unexpected heart attack; he suffered his attack on February 16, 1880. Stephen had an experience at his father’s funeral that would stay in his mind for twenty years. His family remained in Port Jervis, and Crane continued going to school there. By the time he was a teenager he left the formal school. He attended a quasi-military academy where he gained some sense of a material life.
In 1890 Crane briefly attended Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Shortly after he transferred to Syracuse University, where he was in residence for a little over a semester. The sport of baseball began interesting him more than his education did. He played with the Syracuse University baseball team as a catcher and shortstop. He wrote articles for the New York Tribune about college and city affairs. It was then that he wrote his first version of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. At this time he became involved with Helen Trent, a woman who was already engaged. Nothing happened between the couple, and he was forced to forget about her. In Asbury Park, New Jersey he met another woman, Lily Brandon Munroe. She was an unhappy married woman who liked Stephen, but was advised by her family not to elope with him. So now he had been interested in two women and both relationships had failed. In 1894 Crane completed George’s Mother. A short version of The Red Badge of Courage was published in newspapers in 1984. A year later he once again became attracted to a girl. This time it was a girl from Ohio. Her name was Nellie Crouse and he idealized her but once again he was rejected again. During this year he composed The Third Violet, a romance about an aspiring young artist and his passion for a New York girl. Crane covered the Spanish-American War from April to November 1898 for the New York World and New York Journal. As he did this he produced some of the best news reporting ever written by an American war correspondent. After this he produced several other works. Then he developed tubercular infection supposedly complicated by malaria. He was infected with malaria while he was in Cuba. He was taken to a sanitarium in Badenweiler, Germany. This is where he passed the way on June 5, 1900. (Discovering Authors) He was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in Hillside, New Jersey. There were plenty of obituaries printed in leading newspapers and magazines.
Stephen Crane rebelled plenty towards his father, and most of which his father disliked Crane developed a way of liking whatever it was. His father did not like to read popular novels, and this is one of the most influential dislikes his father had. This was very ironic since his son wrote very interesting and popular novels. One reason he went into writing was the fact that he knew his father had a dislike for that kind of stuff. He knew that this was one way he could rebel towards his father. Even though his father had been dead for sometime, this influenced him to be the writer that he was. A lot of reader’s and critics of his work say that the bible exerted a lifelong influence on his writing. Crane saw many things in a religious aspect.
Stephen Crane’s work is important because he has written a lot of literary works where he has showed many real life events, taken them and made them into a story. The Red Badge of Courage establishes Stephen Crane as a writer formally and solidly with the great tradition established and fostered by Homer, Virgil, Milton, and others. (Bloom pg. 117) While including many of the trappings and conventions and much machinery of formal epic, The Red Badge also shares with epic a more essential quality: the tradition of epic competition. (Bloom pg.117) He wrote about wars, like the Civil War, but he did not write non-fiction; he wrote fiction. He used his imagination and what he knew about the topic he was writing about and made it sound like it was an event that happened in real life. In fact he had taken a real event and used different people and places, which you could associate it to the real event.
Critics compared Crane to Homer, Virgil, and Milton on the way The Red Badge of Courage was written. Critics say that the novel is an epic like that of Homer. Lots of critics say that Crane never did encounter a war, never saw a battlefield, or fight in the civil war. (Pizer 48-49) While this isn’t for sure, The Red Badge of Courage is made up on the account of a war. (Worldbook 1996) Its success is due to what Crane knew about the battlefield, but even more about what he knew about the human heart. In this story he tells the readers about a soldier. We look into this soldier’s mind and see his experiences. The hero is first scared about the whole situation, but at the end he turns out to be a hero and is looked upon as brave. Some critics say that Crane was a good realism writer who took you into the mind of the characters and was able to take events and write a story about the particular event. Writers say that his novel The Red Badge of Courage is as excellent as his other works. In all his works he used the same style of writing, which is realism.
For his works and his amazing style of writing, Stephen Crane is said to be the founding father of American Naturalism by using the realism style of writing. Stephen Crane surely paved the way for other great authors that came after him. For these reasons Stephen Crane and his works will never be forgotten.