A Walk Through Reality With Stephen Crane Essay -- Biography Biographi

A Walk Through Reality With Stephen Crane      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Seeking and expressing the bare truth is often more difficult than writing stories of fiction.   This truth can be harsher to the reader than works of fiction;   it can make an author's desire to reveal the essence of society through characters the reader relates to risky and unpopular.   Stephen Crane wrote of ordinary people who face difficult circumstances that his readers could relate to (Seaman 148).   Crane sought to debunk the ideas that were inherent in nineteenth-century literature,   which depicted life in a more favorable, but often unrealistic, light.   In Crane's works, Dorothy Nyren Curley says, "There are no false steps, no excesses," (255).   Crane's impoverished background helped him understand the cruelty of life.   Crane's childhood was marred by tragedy.   He was the youngest of fourteen children, but the four children born before Crane died within a year of their birth.   When Crane was seven, his father died; when he was twelve, his sister ,who had nurtured his budding literary interest, died as well, and two years later an older brother was crushed to death by two freight cars.   These misfortunes shaped Crane's insight into human nature; his works emphasized ordinary people facing the evils of war and poverty and other obstacles Crane saw and endured himself. Despite his sister's death, Crane clung onto his literary interest, and at the age of twenty one, he wrote Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.   It is a story of a young woman, Maggie Johnson, who "blossom(s) in a mud puddle" (Maggie 16).   Maggie grows up in the tenements of Manhattan, enduring abusive and alcoholic parents and the filth of povert y.   With no education or money, Maggie takes a job in a cuff ... ...5/3/99). Crane, Stephen. Maggie: Girl of the Streets. New York: Bantam, 1984. _____. Red Badge of Courage.   New York: Bantam, 1983. _____. The Open Boat. New York: Bantam, 1984. Curley, Dorothy Nyren. American Writers A Collection Of Literary Biographies, New York: Ungar, 1960. McClurg, Alexander.   "Red Badge of Courage Critical Reception: Early Reviews" www.xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CRANE/ . (5/7/99). Seaman, David.   "Stephen Crane."   www.extext.lib.virginia.edu/conditions.html (5/7/99). Ungar, Leonard. Modern American Literature, New York: Scribner's, 1974. Vanouse, Donald. "Stephen Crane (1871-1900)." www.etext.lib.virginia.edu/conditions.html. (5/7/99). Wyatt, Edith.   "Stephen Crane." The New Republic, v.4 no.45, 1915. Rpt. On electronic version "Stephen Crane". www.etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/br (5/7/99).