realism and naturalism final report

8/3/2019 Realism and Naturalism Final Report

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Modern American Literature

Realism and Naturalism

Research Paper

Group Members

Shazil Ahmad

Abstract

Realism is a literary technique centralized on the faithful representation of reality, the

immediate specific action and its verifiable outcome whereas naturalism focus on the

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application of principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings,

fathoming the factual or superficial to find the scientific law behind its actions. The two

stories written by Sherwood Anderson are a presentation of a compare and contrast

stance between realism and naturalism. John Holden is main character of the story The

Return in which the author adopts a realistic approach whereas in the Death in the woods

a naturalistic is set forth through the character of the women Grimes. The Return is a

manifestation of truth likeness and verisimilitude in which reality is itemized regardless

of its effect on the plot. It holds veracity as celebrated and revered importance .The Death

in the Woods initiates with a distress propagates in an agonizing tone and terminates at

the climax of misery.

REALISM AND NATURALISM

John Holden in The Return depicts that realism is a literary technique centralized on the

immediate specific action and its verifiable outcome whereas Grimes in Death in the



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woods illustrates that naturalism focuses on fathoming the factual or superficial to find

the scientific law behind its actions.

The issue of interpretation is given an acute, dramatic importance in literature. They

show how incisive a force is the interpretive lens, when what for centuries was taken as

eternal masterpiece can in a day become insidious fiction. At the blink of an interpretive

eye, ordinary becomes distinctive and distinctive becomes ordinary. The two interpretive

approaches in literature that gained immense importance are those of realism and

naturalism. The literalists in America were equally influenced by the changes in modes of

literal interpretation as the rest of the world. These alterations also encroached on the

previously adopted style of surrealism and romanticism and were actively replaced by

more realistic approaches that are realism and naturalism, in many work and

compositions of those people.

There arises confusion while differentiating between realism and naturalism, and some

troupes of populace tend to regard both as the same. But there exists an implicit

distinction between the two. According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, "Where

romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or

superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention

to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the

verifiable consequence". (Harmon, H., and Holman. W, 1980, Realism and Naturalism).

With middle-class at its spotlight and centre of attention realism is an enormously

tremendous technique. Realists believe in truth, accuracy and precision of the substance

being presented, rather than a stylized or embellished version as in romanticism etc. They

aspired to present the society as it is. They represent the reality faithfully what they call

the truthful representation of reality. They are believers of loyal transmission of arts and

literature in its purest form. Originality is the absolute and the superlative cardinal of

their work. They discourage any fantasy or imagination. The realists describe the



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happening of the present without any linkage to the past or present, dissuade

anachronistic and promote contemporary.

Naturalism replaces supernatural thinking with natural thinking and entails the

explanation of natural events without the use of supernatural causes. It is a product or

more simply put development of realism. Most easily understood, the realism which

espouses and advocates a deterministic viewpoint and a pessimistic thinking with its

center of attention the lower class is naturalism. Although they used the techniques of

accumulating detail pioneered by the realists, the naturalists thus had a specific object in

mind when they chose the segment of reality that they wished to convey. It requires that

hypotheses be explained and tested only by reference to natural causes and events.

Explanations of observable effects are considered to be practical and useful only when

they hypothesize natural causes i.e., specific mechanisms, not indeterminate miracles.

Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. Sherwood

Andersons two stories The Return and Death in the Woods are two pieces of writing

which reflect realism and naturalism respectively. Anderson used the two literary

techniques in his stories, depicting and stipulating different settings and circumstances as

par the two modes.

Amy Kaplan has called realism a "strategy for imagining and managing the threats of

social change" (Kaplan, A., 1987, Social Construction of American Realism ix). The

story The Return truly fulfills the meaning. Realism is a gambit which states reality and

at the same time being considerate about the alterations brought about by the society.

The focus of realism is middle class. It has traditionally served the interests and

aspirations of an insurgent middle class. The class is of prime importance in realistic

approach. It encompasses the middle class populace and their predilections. Sherwood

Anderson in his story The Return tells about a person John Holden. The story starts by

with the description of his vehicle, an expensive roadster. He was a successful architect

that indicates the man is well-off and earned a handsome living.



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The writers vocabulary choices and styles of expression are neither poetic nor

imaginative during realism. The tone of the literary work might be satiric in which human

folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit. It may also be comic or matter-of-fact.

As in case of the character John Holden, the tone taken on is satiric about the way in

which John Holden led his life. He always was an uninteresting man following principles

and people in his life wanted him to show a glint of some enthusiasm.

The character is of gigantic importance. It is indeed more essential than the action and

plot. Frequently it happens that complex ethical values are subject. John Holden was a

man of non-elastic ethics. When he went to sit on the front porch with Lilian before her

fathers house late, he thought that a daughter cavorting about half the night wasnt wise.

He abstained from doing anything because he cared about her respect. Then he went

away with a startled Lilian left behind. On his return, the lady in the hotel showed interest

but he remained unresponsive.

Realism, as the name suggests is a method fond of reality. It mentions every minor detail

encircling reality closely and in comprehensive detail. The Return brings up many small

features that would have been absent if it was some other mode of writing. The

specifications like certain great buildings, two or three skyscrapers, several huge

industrial plants, any number of handsome and expensive residences mentioned as the

products of his architect brain is an example. Later while recounting the experience of

getting drunk with his friends Joe and Herman, things are listed in a wide-ranging detail.

Emphasis on verisimilitude is an important feature, even if it has to be achieved at the

expense of a well-made plot. The appearance or semblance of truth attained at the cost of

a well-designed plot can be seen in The Return. The reality is supersaturated.

The events that take place in The Return are highly probable and believable. The going

back of a man to his hometown, sitting with a girl outside her porch, going to a ball

match with her, getting married to a woman someone is not really happy with, death of a

wife etc all are highly likely and conceivable. This is a predominant feature of realism

that it episodes and events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the



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sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances. Nothing is of such

sort that intrigues or enthralls the reader. Throughout there is a straight-laced reality

discussed. The fascinating and alluring elements of other modes of techniques are absent

in the realistic technique.

Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive. They are of

explicable relation to the nature, to each other, to their social class and to their own past.

John Holdens relation to all the above factors can be said to be highly understandable.

His association is highly explainable. Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly

important. The story proceeds towards defining the motive as it moves on. As it goes on

the objective becomes clear.

InBlack and White Strangers, Kenneth Warren suggests that a basic difference between

realism and sentimentalism is that in realism, "the redemption of the individual lay within

the social world," but in sentimental fiction, "the redemption of the social world lay with

the individual".(Warren.K,2000,In black and White Strangers). John Holden at the end of

The Return becomes a changed person. John got past his old habits. He decides to

become a change man. He wants to unleash the energy and enthusiasm that he never did.

He gets loose his principles. In the end he hits the road at a fast speed with Maud in his

mind. The conversion takes place within the social world.

The characters in a naturalistic piece of writing are often ill-educated. Grimes in her

youth worked on the Germans farmer. This along with the abusive attitude of German

and his wife is a substantial proof that she was not educated. Furthermore her husband

used to steal horses which somehow indicate that he wasnt literate. In the whole story

there was no mention of Grimess son attaining any education.

Sherwood Anderson populates his story Death in the Woods from the lower class which

is a predominant feature of naturalism. All naturalists focus on lower classes as it is done



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in this writing. The main character Grimes lived in a farm near a small town. Her father-

in-law owned a handsome sum of money which he wasted the reason being debauched

habits and the rest was blown by her husband Jake. On the whole they were an extremely

poor lot.

The world for the main characters in naturalism is that of the commonplace and unheroic

in which life would seem to be chiefly the dull round of daily existence. Life for Grimes

was anything but felicity. She was a bound girl who didnt know where her parents were,

spent her childhood and early youth at the Germans place abused by him and maltreated

by his wife. She spent those days of life feeding them; tiresomeness and tediousness were

the only elements of her life. Then after she ran away with Jake, she had to feed him and

their son. She also fed the stocks. All her life she kept feeding people and animals. Her

daily routine was to manage food only the people were different at different spans of life.

Throughout her life she never knew what enthusiasm or excitement was.

.The characters face numerous constraints in exercising their freewill. They dont have

liberal expressions in their lives. All their activities are restrained and limited as in Death

in the Woods. Grimes was a poor woman with no will of her own in her whole life. She

had managed that way when she was a young girl at the Germans and ever since she was

married to Jake. It didnt bother her much; she was used to it. Her starting years were

governed by admonishments and later by his husbands beatings. Even her son and his

woman gave him orders.

There can be numerous themes in a naturalistic approach. It may be a craving for

dominance and pleasure; a struggle to survive in an amoral and unscrupulous universe or

to endure an indifferent apathetic surrounding. Grimes was trying to adapt and to survive

throughout her life. She fought a battle of survival since she was born. She worked

rigorously at the Germans to stay unhurt from the couple and still at her husbands place

for the same reason. The survival in an amoral and indifferent universe is an appropriate

theme for this story in which the woman is spending a life with no affability being

offered. The setting of the story stipulates every odd against subsistence.



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The force of environment affecting and afflicting the life of the woman is maintained

throughout the context. Her childhood saw no relation blood or non-blood, neither had

she talked to anyone nor did anyone recognize her importance. She was never considered

important anytime anywhere by anyone. As a matter of fact, she was totally dejected by

the environs. Therefore naturalism dramatizes the loss of individuality at a physiological

as well as psychological level which exactly took place in the story of Grimes. She had

accepted her fate as of misery and forlornness. Sigmund Freud held a viewpoint in his

theory of unconscious sublimation that unresolved unconscious conflicts cause fixation in

one of the psychosexual stages of an individual. Freudian approach says that these

conflicts need to be resolved because if they arent, than they occupy a place in your

unconscious memory which tend to affect your future predilections and dispositions.

Grimes lived with an already accepted fate, one of dejection. The ruthlessness of his

circumstances dwelled in her mind for ever. She literally lost her individuality due to

repression.

Naturalist way of writing often terminates with a tragic setting leading to callous pitiless

demise. The naturalist as he approaches the end writes something adventurous or heroic,

and human attributes that involve ultimate passion and bodily strength. After that the

escapade culminates in desperate moments and violent death. Death In The Woods has

Grimes who went out of her home in severe cold because she had to buy dog-meat, pork

etc. Her age couldnt stand the harshness of weather and the tedious clearing on her way

home. She exerted all the strength to cross but couldnt go past it. She sought refuge

under a tree and sat there. She kept on sitting there dreaming about her unpleasant life.

The dogs kept running around her in a circle as if performing a death ritual. She died

there weak and fragile her clothes worn-out her life deserted. In whole her life she kept

feeding everyone, and at the end when she was dead the food was taken away from her

by the dogs, an ultimate pity. She was white with snow which in Christianity symbolizes

peace that might indicate her setting free from this ruthless world.



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The Return is a manifestation of truthlikeness and verisimilitude in which reality is

itemized regardless of its effect on the plot. It holds veracity as celebrated and revered

importance .The Death in the Woods initiates with a distress, propagates in an agonizing

tone and terminates at the climax of misery. It certainly fulfills the meaning of a

naturalistic saga, of which an uneducated lower class of heart-rending life is of absolute

importance. Grimes is a reflection of such character. The compare and contrast of the

above two stories provide with a thorough understanding of the two modes of literary

interpretation that is realism and naturalism.

REFERENCES



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1. Campbell, Donna M. "Realism in American Literature, 1860-1890."Literary

Movements. Dept. of English, Washington State University.

2. Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the

Connection (2000), Barbara Forrest, Retrieved 2007-05-20.

3. Kaplan,A.,1987, Social Construction of American Realism ix.


realism and naturalism final report

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