An Existential Research On Stephen Crane's Life And Works

This thesis theoretically starts from the gap between the American naturalist Stephen Crane and those orthodox naturalists like Amile Zola: freedom and responsibility, which are exactly the largest bifurcations between naturalism and existentialism. We believe that Crane is by no means a pious disciple of naturalism. After further exploring the life and works of Crane, we find that he amazingly shares a lot with Jean-Paul Sartre. Based on this point, we decide to make an existential research on Stephen Crane's life and works from an aspect different from naturalism.Before we carry on the analysis of Crane's life and works, this thesis at first provides a simple introduction of Sartre's personal life, philosophical thoughts and literary works, with a hope to get a basic understanding of Sartre's existentialism on the whole. It mainly emphasizes on several key theoretical notions like freedom, responsibility, situation, bad faith, otherness and so on, to facilitate the later concrete explorations. The analysis of Crane's life mainly bases on the rebellions of his personal life and the uniqueness of his relationship between his life and works, thus to show us his understanding and cherishment of freedom and responsibility. As for the exploration of his works, it generally takes two steps. Firstly, it researches these key existential notions mentioned above in the four stories where existentialism is evident. They are The Red Badge of Courage, The Blue Hotel, The Open Boat, and The Monster. Secondly, it will analyze Maggie: A Girl of the Streets as a special case, which is the one with the most inconspicuous existential ideas in Crane's works. Combining with feminism, this thesis believes that it is due to the pity and favor of the author toward the heroine that the topics of freedom and responsibility in the work become inconspicuous. Afterwards, it explores another existential theme: bad faith. Maggie shows the universality of existentialism in Crane's works.Through these analyses of Crane's life and works, this research not only makes us obtain a deeper and more thorough understanding of Stephen Crane from another aspect, but also helps us to know more about ourselves and about others.