Naturalism in selected short stories by Stephen Crane AND Jack London

Abstract

This dissertation, entitled “Naturalism in Selected Short Stories by Stephen Crane and Jack London” resituates debates that dominated the intellectual and social life of the Gilded Age in contemporary society. This work argues that naturalist authors like Stephen Crane and Jack London portray a scientific worldview in which the hostile relationship between the environment and man, heredity and man, and the absence of God and man are exposed. These naturalist tendencies impinge on the characters in the selected short stories. Besides, this work shows how the selected short stories by both authors outline crises such as climate change, class, labour, poverty, gender, and instincts that have victimized humanity across time and space. The analyses in this work are based on the theory of New Historicism. The theory allows the researchers to look at how the naturalist ideology has transcended time and space and affected social and intellectual life universally. The study was based on the hypothesis that the tendencies of naturalism, such as environment, heredity, and the absence of God, are responsible for the problems that characters face in the selected short stories: “The Open Boat,” “An Experiment in Misery,” “The Men in the Storm” by Stephen Crane, and “The Law of Life,” “To Build A Fire,” and “The White Silence” by Jack London. A close reading of these short stories found that Crane and London’s characters live lives with a persistent sense of foreboding and loss due to their hostile environmental condition and heredity factors. Under these circumstances, the characters may rely on divine providence, but there is no God within their environment to help them. When the characters recognize that the deity is absent, they intensify the struggle for their survival. However, not all the characters always survive at the end of the story. From the findings, it can be deduced that the scientific worldview may push man to become innovative and find solutions for the problems that they face in the universe. Based on the findings of this study we recommend that man should combine scientific principles and divine principles in the face of adversities.