Ye Ji Park / 111053 / 11b3
Mr. Richard Menard
American Literature
April 29 2012
Reflective Essay: A Dark Brown Dog
Ernest Hemingway once
said, "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had
really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all
that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad,
the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the
weather was." Books reflect the reality – what “they had really happened” –
and make that reality even “truer”, by including the author’s lens of how
he/she views the world. When critics divide literature genre, thus, the
criterion of classification is what happened when the literature work was
written, and what paradigm the writers—in other words, intellectuals—possessed
toward these contemporary events.
Naturalism is not an
exception. It is a literary movement emerged and flourished from 1880s to
1940s. Two main historical events of this era—Industrial Revolution and the
onset of World War—greatly contributed in forming people’s viewpoint of how
they face the world. Industrial Revolution let people think that nature can,
and should be, manipulated by mankind. As time passed by, however, naturalists started
to express questionnaires about this belief; they argued that the nature was
not “subordinate”, but “indifferent” to human. Jack London elaborated this
claim in his short story, To Build a Fire,
by using the dog as the symbol of nature. When the man died, frozen in the
snow, the dog just left him to find another firebuilder, showing that the dog
never possessed submissiveness, or affection, or any kind of emotion to the
human – that is, the dog was indifferent.
The outbreak of World War,
on the other hand, suggested the cruelty and inhumanness that human nature
essentially possesses. Beforehand, humans proud themselves as “social animals”,
believing they care about each other and act benevolently. During the war, however,
they had no breadth of mind to be altruistic; their priority became survival of
individual, even if that demands
selfish acts harming friends. This is well described in Erich Maria Remarque’s
novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.
The soldiers do not feel any guilt in stealing fine boots from a friend at his
last gasp. They justify themselves by saying that “all sense of other
considerations”, such as morality or respect to passing friend, are “artificial”;
the only thing important for them is not abstract ideology, but facts that “good
boots are scarce”.
These two ideas – nature’s
indifference and human cruelty – are reflected in most of the naturalistic
pieces, including A Dark Brown Dog (Stephen
Crane). Crane discusses the second topic much more directly and predominantly.
It is easily inferable that the family in the story are impoverished; the
family’s residence (they live in “dark tenement”), and the father’s drinking
habit (child “dived under the table, where experiences
had taught him was a rather safe place” as he saw “the father … drunk”), proves
their poverty. This low social/economic status is very important; if, for
instance, they are from wealthy, noble family, they would be much more “civilized”
and “socialized”. Such exposure to society makes them to suppress their desire
to act cruelly and selfishly, and to get along with others in much more ordered
and amiable attitude. Impoverished people, however, forms fewer connections
with neighbors and thus needs less effort to restrain their violent nature. Hence,
their brutes are expressed more often, just like the family’s frequent use of
violence upon the dog in the story. The climax part, where the father “knocked
the dog down with a heavy coffee pot”, “kicked out with a ponderous foot” and “flung
[the dog] … through the window”, clearly shows the naturalists’ claim – specifically,
that men will tend to show off their brute instincts, if given opportunity such
as poverty allows them to be free from society’s restrictions.
The first theme, nature’s
indifference, is much more implicitly discussed in the story. Rather than
explicitly explaining that the animal—symbol of nature—is unconcerned about the
man character, as Jack London did, Crane is interpreting the nature’s
indifference that nature treats human just the same as animals, insects, etc. Humans
usually tend to differentiate themselves from animals that they can control
their emotions, while animals cannot; thus, animals are often described to be
much more brute and savage than humans. However, as argued beforehand, Crane
believed that when given proper situation, humans can be just as feral and
ferocious – by regarding humans in the same light as animals, Crane’s work is
classified as piece of naturalism.
*** Writer’s Comments ***
Reading A Dark Brown Dog and thinking why it is
classified as naturalism work, I could easily find one major characteristics of
naturalism – human’s dark nature. However, I had problem searching for
evidences to the claim that nature is indifferent to humans. The solution I
presented at last – that nature treats humans no more special than animals – is
quite weak. This made me think that this piece is maybe realist work about
violence. Still critics’ words that realism mainly deals with middle-class,
whereas naturalism deals with low class, made me hesitate to classify as
realism.
Jiyoon Rhee, in her
comment, advised me that “(literary genre) was coined by future generation, not
the writers back then. Therefore, the term only explains a general and common
theme of the era, and each story does not have to fit in perfectly to the term.” (Original Comment is HERE)I agree with her statement, but I’m still curious – so is A Dark Brown Dog a naturalism work that just doesn’t perfectly fit
to that category, or is there any part that could be an evidence of naturalism
that I just passed by? Hmm… something to
think about.
