Stephen Crane and Walt Whitman: The Natural and the Language of Social

Stephen stretch out and Walt Whitman The Natural and the manner of speaking of Social Protest Though in his short life Stephen Crane was never a soldier, his novel The Red tag of Courage was commended by Civil War veterans as well as veterans from more late(a) wars not only for its historical accuracy but its ability to take in the psychological evolution of those on the field of battle (Heizberg xvi). Walt Whitman, on the separate hand, served as a field medic during the Civil War. He was exposed perhaps to the most gruesome aspect of the war on a daily basis the primitive medical techniques, the wounded, the diseased, the dying and the dead. Out of his experiences grew a collection of poems, Drum Taps , describing the horrors he had witnessed and that America suffered. As literary artists, a wide chasm of structure and style separates Crane and Whitman. The common heathenish experience, the heritage of the Civil War connects them, throwing a bridge across the darkness, all owing them, unilaterally, to abscond notions of glorious battles and heroic honorable deaths. By examining Cranes Henry Fleming and the wound dressing table from Whitmans poem of the same name, both fundamental literary differences and essential thematic consistencies emerge. In The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming was drawn to enlist by his boyhood dreams. His highly romanticized notion of war was eclectic, borrowing from various classical and medieval sources. Nevertheless, his exalted, almost deified, conception of the life of a soldier at simpleness and in combat began to deflate before the even the ink had dried-out on his enlistment signature. Soon the army ceased to possess any ain characteristics Henry had once envisioned, becoming an unthinking, dispas... ... Eds. brisk York W.W. Norton, 1962. Hartwick, Harry. The Foreground of American Fiction. tonic York American Book Co, 1934, p. 17-44 Rpt in Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. Sculley Bradley, Richar d Beatty, and E. Hudson Long Eds. New York W.W. Norton, 1962. Schroeder, John W. Stephen Crane Embattled, University of Kansas City Review, XVII (Winter 1950), 119 Rpt. in Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. Sculley Bradley, Richard Beatty, and E. Hudson Long Eds. New York W.W. Norton, 1962. Walcutt, C.C. American Literary Naturalism, A Divided Stream. Minneapolis University of manganese Press, 1952, p.66-82 Rpt in Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. Sculley Bradley, Richard Beatty, and E. Hudson Long Eds. New York W.W. Norton, 1962. Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York bantam Books, 1983.