Grass-Root Perspective To Stephen Crane’s Short Fiction

This thesis attempts to approach the grass-root of Stephen Crane by focusing on his "Maggie:A Girl of Streets", "The Open Boat", "The Blue Hotel" and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" from the perspectives of the character portrayal, basic themes, and artistic techniques of these novels.With the development of industry, a large number of population rushes into the city, and poverty became increasingly serious. The economic crisis not only accelerated the unemployment of workers but also caused management difficulties for small shopkeepers. Capital was gradually concentrated in the hands of big producers, leading to the rise of monopoly capitalism. It was with such a social background that Stephen Crane wrote these short novels, that is why his works reveal a strong flavor of grass-root narratives.Crane’s grass-root characters are roughly divided into three categories that can be labeled "the sagacity of managers", "the panic of manual workers", and "the loneliness of the unemployed". On the one hand, they serve as an artistic reproduction of the hard life and mental states of the lower class people; on the other hand, their sharp features greatly enrich the diversity and richness of Crane’s literary characters.Death and cultural conflict are among the obvious themes of Crane’s novels. Since Crane uses the theme of death as his critique of life and reality, so death is no longer something sad and terrible, but a redemption of pain and helplessness. Meanwhile, since the industrial civilization is a means to promote the development of American West, so it brings about changes to people’s world views, philosophies and values that eventually bring together both the modern civilization in the east and the traditional civilization in the west of America.In order to better present the grass-root experiences, Crane uses a variety of artistic strategies. In his short novels, Cranes uses the naturalism to portray his characters and to advance the developments of his plot. His rich and colorful language styles and binary oppositions are highly symbolic of his literary talent.