RBC: Naturalistic, Impressionistic Or Realsitic?

Stephen Crane (1871-1900), a great American novelist, poet and short-story writer at the end of the 19th century, is one of the forerunners and exponents of American Literary Naturalism and Impressionism. His masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage (RBC), produced in the literary period when American Realism was developing rapidly and Naturalism and Impressionism just appeared in America, is influenced more or less by all these literary thoughts.RBC, at its publication in a book form in 1895, immediately shocked the literary world in both America and Britain across the Atlantic Ocean. The early critics mainly praised it for its rich imagination, realistic view of war, original language, new devices and vivid imageries. Later critics, through more serious research into the work from different aspects, especially into its style, have perceived the three combining major literary thoughts: naturalism, impressionism and realism in the work. Thus, different views on the style of RBC are formed: most of the critics hold that the novel is a piece of naturalistic work; some take it as impressionistic for its rich color metaphors and imageries; and others regard it as realistic.The present author intends to evaluate the different views on RBC. Based on the three literary writing principles and the text, a detailed, comprehensive and systematic analysis is carried out in the thesis with the view to find a definite and reasonable description of the style for RBC.The thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter one studies the reasons why RBC is taken as a piece of naturalistic work and why it is not reasonable to label it this way. The author presents a text-based analysis in light of naturalistic writing principles. Three aspects are discussed: the situation of the character; the scene of nature, the inner drives of the hero. From the text-based analysis in light of naturalistic writing principles, the author finds that the novel can not be identified as naturalistic because it misses the key to naturalistic writing-deterministic and pessimistic.Chapter two discusses the impressionistic elements in the novel. The functions ofthe key elements are dealt with-the color metaphors and imageries. The present author believes that the two elements are important in bring about the picture of Henry Fleming's situation-faced with the conflicts between his environment and his inner drives. However, these elements do not take up enough proportion to identify RBC as a piece of impressionistic writing.Chapter three is an evaluation of the realistic elements in RBC. Through the analysis of the character's process into maturity in the war and the comparison and contrast between the war in the novel and the society at the end of the 19th century, the present author thinks that Stephen Crane chose the war background as the a mirror of the society after his failure in using the contemporary background in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. This is also common for some realists.After the detailed researches into the text with the view to evaluate the three different views on RBC, the present author concludes the thesis with the suggestion that RBC mainly follows the realistic writing principles and therefore is a piece of realistic writing in spite of the rich naturalistic and impressionistic elements helping to bring out the theme.