Realism

"Realism is the attempt to depict life as it actually exists, not as the author wants it to be in the present or the future, or imagines it was in the past" (Werlock). This statement is exactly what the genre of Realism is. Realism is a different style than romanticism. Romanticism is kind of making everything seem more beautiful and lovely than it actually is. Realism is when nothing is cut out and it is exactly what happens. It does not try to make the story seem better or more beautiful. The American Dream is a large part of realism. Werlock says that realism and naturalism are very close in their genre. But realism is like a photograph and naturalism is like a painting. The photographer can not choose what things can be in the picture. A painter can choose whatever he wants to include within the painting he is creating. I would believe the American Dream at the end of the civil war to the late nineteenth century would have been farming on your own land, making your own living, making yourself your own man.

Such stories as Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" are a good example of this common American Dream. Another thing that the novel "Tom Sawyer shows is the hero of many realism stories, which would be the common working man. Tom Sawyer is just an average kid who wants to do nothing but have his own tales and stories, so he makes them and he ends up being a hero for it. Tom does not have any super powers and he is just a normal kid in a normal family. Realists looked at society as a place for potential growth. The world was full of potential and it was up to the people on it to make it as good as it can be. There was land for farming, land for cities, land for mining. The realists were a very optimistic group of people. "The change developed gradually in the 19th century; often, works such as Rebecca Harding Davis's "Life in the Iron-Mills" or local color fiction of Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, and others have elements of both.

By 1900 authors such as Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, and Henry James had experimented with new Points of View, setting, and symbolism to provide their own view of the rapidly changing times in which they lived and wrote" (Werlock). This change was brought about by the new science world. At this time in history, they had just discovered electricity and they were making drastic changes to their world; especially in the world of science. These new discoveries led to a more rational way of thinking.

Quinn, Edward. "realism and naturalism in American literature." A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Jan 27, 2011.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Jan 25, 2011.