by ArtiSiN

Created on: April 28, 2009   Last Updated: April 30, 2009

Born in 1871 to a Methodist preacher and social leader, Stephen Crane started his short, but compelling life in the Civil War torn society that was America- or more specifically, Newark, New Jersey. His parents held a belief, commonplace in their era, that valued God, acknowledged free will and saw man's important place in the universe. Despite this upbringing, Crane's future writings would not abide by such outdated ideas. (Ant. of Amer. Lit. vol.2 775) The world Crane lived in was a curious and cynical one. Darwin had recently shaken the Victorian world with his book On the Origin of Species, and with it delivered

a tremendous blow to religious faith.

At the same time, industrialization was forever changing the way Americans would live. Growing up just six years after the end of the Civil War, Crane cultivated a fascination with the military and subsequently, war. Consequently, he attended a military prep school in New York for two and a half years before deciding to go to school at Lafayette College to study mining engineering. Despite the change of heart, Cranes interest in warfare seeped through to help create not only one of the greatest war novels, but greatest
anti-war novels as well.

Published in 1895, The Red Badge of Courage gained Crane instant acclaim from the public and literary worlds alike. "Stephen explained the relatively short period of [The Red Badge of Courage]'s composition by his having unconsciously worked it out "through most of his boyhood.""(Badge of Courage 105) Crane's prose in The Red Badge of Courage made brilliant use of Darwin's teachings in its naturalistic writing; explored the Victorian world's industrialized capitalism through the story's motif of the army; and portrayed realism in the setting of the story. Crane's use of naturalism, dissection of his society, and intensely realistic writing made him not only a brilliant writer, but also a testament to the time period that he hailed.

"The relation of humankind to nature is a frequent and prominent concern in Crane's fiction and poetry throughout his career." (Mod. Crit. Inter. 95) While this may be true, Crane owes his liberal comparison of man and nature to the revelation that Charles Darwin ushered in. Darwin believed that Genesis's portrayal of species as static was untrue, and that species evolve over time. However, for this theory to work, the earth would have to be much older than the six thousand years the bible states. Due to this, Darwin concluded, after reading Charles

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