Exploring Religious Elements I Essay, Research Paper

Reading selected poems of Stephen Crane brings to light the unique perspectives this young writer had on religion and moral values. In a quest to more fully understand Crane and his ideas, beginning with a brief biographical sketch is appropriate. Born November 1, 1871, in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane was the fourteenth and youngest child of a Methodist minister. Young Crane grew up quickly with the advent of several transitions in his life including the loss of his father at age nine and three separate family relocations. Absolutely bristling with natural writing talent, Crane attempted university life twice, once at Lafayette and again at Syracuse, only to terminate his studies early on both occasions. After this brief academic tenure, Crane went to work as a journalist with extremely limited success. His acclaimed writing style, while hailed as brilliant in later years, was not ideal for factual newspaper columns. It was during this time of poverty in Crane’s life he developed much of his cynicism and artistic wit while living in the slums of New York. Eventually, Crane’s masterpieces Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and The Red Badge of Courage gained him enough attention to garner a steady job as a feature war reporter for the New York Tribune. Growing up in strict Methodist household, Crane was subject to his parents’ views on religion and faith. Even though he had no formal philosophical education, it was this mix of uncompromising Christian background along with Crane’s experiences of the streets of New York and the war-torn battlefields of Turkey and Mexico that caused him to form his often critical and always cynical attitude towards God and organized religion in general. His interesting views on the subject of religion are spattered amongst his various works, but perhaps the most vibrant and concise examples of Crane’s philosophical existentialism occur in his poetry through various personas. The following paragraphs examine three poems in Crane’s compilations The Black Rider and Other Lines (1905) and War is Kind (1899) with the intention of exploring the man versus god and other religious elements contained within.

In “A God in Wrath,” Crane verbally assaults the reader with reverberating waves of cynicism especially revealing and powerful in a poem of such short length. Crane struggled from an early age with the “masses” approach to organized religion, and his mother’s focused guidance had only the reverse intended effect. Crane believed in grasping the reality in life, and certainly the faith and blind hope necessary for religious values did not appeal to this fast-paced writer. “A God in Wrath” addresses the seemingly ridiculous mindset held by the religious populace that everything God does is wondrous and right while men are all wicked. In the poem, Crane doesn’t even refer to the immortal being as God, rather he describes “a god in wrath.” This can only further point to Crane’s irreverence. The poem tells of an angry god who is furiously beating a man. The man struggles fiercely against the god, but apparently only manages to nip at the heels of the great being. It is unclear what the origin of the struggle is, or more importantly, who began the uproar. This is important because Crane does not attempt to place blame on the man or the god, only to highlight their struggle and evaluate the response people have to it. Even the best of friends has quarrels, and the struggle is not nearly as important as the reaction it garners. Crane writes that “all people came running” to witness the fantastic confrontation, and upon viewing the struggle everyone immediately condemns the man and praises the god. This is the crux of the poem. The people do not ask questions or think as individuals. Instead, they extrapolate from previous knowledge and automatically curse the man as “wicked” and react with awe at the power and good of this “redoubtable” god. This is what Crane is criticizing-the “follow-the-crowd” mindset that deprives people of their individual good sense and ability too make personal decisions. Crane brilliantly demonstrates this criticism to organized religion while perhaps personally exploring his own relationship/struggle with God. Crane never really accepted his family’s strong religious beliefs, and another perspective of the poem sees the author as the “wicked” man struggling against conventional religion. With this line of thought, the people watching the struggle could certainly be his family as they disapprove of the youngest Crane’s nonconformist attitude. One thing is clear; the poem is not favorable to the “people.” Whatever current interpretation desired, the important central message centers on Crane’s sarcastic and unfavorable look at those involved in religion who do not think and experience for themselves.

Another poem, “The Tree in the Garden Rained Flowers” displays large measures of sarcasm and a general attitude of disparity in a thinly disguised fable about the allocation of resources to humans by God. The poem begins with the opening lines describing a “garden” where it rained flowers. In this “garden,” children ran around gathering the flowers in their own personal flower-stashes. Now, according to Crane, in the “garden” there were certain children blessed with more “opportunity and skill;” these children usurped the majority of the flowers from the available supply, leaving only a few scraps for the remaining tots. The metaphors are so clear in the opening of this poem, it almost loses symbolic appeal with the lackluster allusions of children in their father’s garden. The poem’s further lines continue a story that develops as a young “tutor” complains to the father about the seeming injustice taking place with the flower population. The father quickly gives the tutor an answer with a question of his own, asking should not the beautiful and the strong possess more than others? This all-powerful response contains enough wisdom to satisfy the tutor and he immediately defers to the father. This brief synopsis of the poem stated, the reader sees an obviously stated fable. God is the father administering a world full of assets who seemingly have been appropriated unfairly to a few choice individuals. The important facet to this is Crane assumes it is God’s will that the “stronger, bolder, shrewder” individuals posses a majority of the “flowers.” Crane writes a sarcastic poem of defiance that seeks to decry the unfairness of life’s social Darwinism. Again, there is a cynicism displayed at the deference to God and His wisdom with the example of the questioning tutor. The tutor sees a problem, but God’s explanation of his reasoning behind the situation causes the tutor to concede the point to God in light of His almighty wisdom. This last portion of the poem simply drips sarcasm and seems to say, “Oh yes, mighty father, if you say it is right for injustice to exist, then it never was unjust in the first place!” This particular poem further echoes the anti-religion or anti-God sentiment Crane seems to be enveloped in, since his particular school of thought believed deeply in the power of personal experience. God not only receives the benefit of the doubt from all religious humans, but he uses this edge to allow and even justify unfairness. Much akin to a person who has just lost a loved one in a car accident, Crane’s attitude is one lashing out at not only God, but the concept of an systematic universe in general.

With this encompassing man versus universe concept in mind, the poem “A Man Said to the Universe” may serve as an appropriate measure to tie all of Crane’s loose ends into one knot. The poem comes complete with five lines, short and to the point. When a man proclaims his existence to the personified “universe,” the entity replies in essence, “so what?” This embodies the simple philosophies stated elsewhere in the previously examined poems. Crane fills these poems with disparity and cynicism. He stands up among the tall trees of the world and asks, “What good is God to me?!” Crane asks questions and upon never receiving satisfactory answers, he invents them himself. Why do some people have more than others? Why doesn’t God seem to care about me? Why do people believe everything their pastor tells them? In these poems, Crane essentially is seeking the truth, an elusive mix of faith and intelligence that he never finds. Instead, Crane can only lash out at the things he sees standing in the way of good sense. It is unclear whether Crane’s true rage is towards God Himself, but certainly he has no patience for those who blindly worship without question or individual thought. To an extent, Crane was a naturalist; the most important part of his life-philosophies involved personal experience. His two most memorable works are about war and life on the streets. Through his poetry, using sarcasm and wit as allies, Crane demonstrates his distaste for many religious practices and thoughts. The ephemeral attributes of contemporary religious thought were not real enough for Crane and instead of enticing him, religion filled him with questions to which he found no good answers.

Bibliography

Crane, Stephen. The Black Rider and Other Lines. 1905. Published in The American Tradition in Literature, Vol II, 9th edition. Boston, McGraw Hill. 1999

Crane Stephen. War is Kind. 1899. Published in The American Tradition in Literature, Vol II, 9th edition. Boston, McGraw Hill. 1999

Ng, Susanna. Sin & Virtue: Evaluating Stephen Crane. Texas University Press. Retrieved online. December 4, 1999. www.utep.edu

Solomon, Eric. Stephen Crane–From Parody to Realism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Stallman, Robert. Stephen Crane. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1968.