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

Stephen Crane and Walt Whitman The Natural and the Language of kindly Protest Though in his short life Stephen Crane was never a soldier, his novel The Red Badge of Courage was commended by civilian War veterans as well as veterans from more recent wars non only for its historical accuracy but its ability to capture the mental evolution of those on the field of battle (Heizberg xvi). Walt Whitman, on the other hand, served as a field medic during the Civil War. He was exposed perhaps to the most gruesome aspect of the war on a workaday basis the primitive medical techniques, the wounded, the diseased, the dying and the dead. Out of his experiences grew a accruement of metrical compositions, 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 cultural experience, the heritage of the Civil War connects them, throwing a bridge across the darkness, allowin g them, unilaterally, to dispel notions of superb battles and heroic honorable deaths. By examining Cranes enthalpy Fleming and the wound dresser 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 super romanticized notion of war was eclectic, borrowing from various classical and medieval sources. Nevertheless, his exalted, well-nigh deified, conception of the life of a soldier at rest and in combat began to deflate before the even the ink had dried on his enlistment signature. Soon the army ceased to possess any personal characteristics Henry had once envisioned, becoming an unthinking, dispas... ... Eds. New York W.W. Norton, 1962. Hartwick, Harry. The Foreground of American Fiction. New York American Book Co, 1934, p. 17-44 Rpt in Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. Sculley Bradley, Richard Beatty, and E. Hudson foresightful Eds. New York W.W. Norton, 1962. Schroeder, tush 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 Minnesota 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.