1. Stephen Crane
God Fashioned the Ship of the World Carefully
Bride Comes to Yellow Sky

2. Precursor to modern literature
One critic claims, “Modern American literature may be said … to have begun with Stephen Crane.”
Encouraged experimentation with subject matter and verse form
Naturalistic themes anticipated the dark pessimism of much modern fiction
Represented the broad religious and literary rebellion characteristic of modern literature.

3. Background Info Born in Newark, NJ in 1871
14th and youngest child of a Methodist minister
Very early questioned and rejected his parents’ beliefs
1888 embarked on a career in journalism
Moved to New York to become a reporter
Most memorable works were written from 1893 – 1897
Died at age 28 from tuberculosis

4. Novels 1893 published first novel: Maggie: Girl of the Streets
Didn’t do very well
Emphasized the role of the environment on a person
Character Maggie lived in a sordid environment, loses her virtue, becomes a prostitute, and commits suicide. Crane attributed her downfall to her environment rather than her own moral weakness.
1895 (age 24) published The Red Badge of Courage
Set during Civil War
Suggested the main characters acts of heroism weren’t from his noble principles and self-sacrificing courage. Said were from war-induced insanity or certain external conditions that activated his natural instincts of survival and pride.
1897 published short story “The Open Boat”
Implies man’s natural instinct is one of helplessness
Man’s survival in the world is merely accidental
These are only some of the works that Crane published

5. Poetry 1895 first book of poetry The Black Riders and Other Lines
Inspired by Emily Dickinson poems
Not well-received because too unconventional
Shows the author’s quarrel with God
Men appear as gnatlike creatures who have no control over their own lives
Evokes a nightmarish world of “menace, violence, and isolation”

6. Characteristics of Crane’s works
Reveal the main tenants of naturalism
Emphasize the shaping role of environment and heredity
Works portray men as victims of fate
Said men are helpless against fate
“It’s not my fault!”

7. “God Fashioned the Ship of the World Carefully”
Begins with what seems to be a Biblical view of God as the Creator and Craftsman of the world
First six lines similar to Puritan Edward Taylor’s description of of creation
Lines six and seven: God ceases to be perfect because he becomes distracted
Let’s creation slip away “forever rudderless”
Course of the world thereafter is without direction
Seems at times to have “serious purpose,” but it is really making “ridiculous voyages,” and “quaint progress.”
God became careless through pride and let the world get away with what it wanted
Suggests once damage had been done, God wasn’t remorseful; he joined the “many of the sky/Who laughed at this thing.”
p. 483

8. Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
Lacks the naturalistic focus of most of Crane’s works
Reveals the closing of the Old West
Wild gun-slinging easing into folklore
Potter’s arrival with his new bride symbolic
Domesticity and civilization
Allegorical taming of the Old West
Potter’s arrival with his new bride forsakes the tradition of the independent, formidable, gun-toting marshal
Scratchy response to him represents the end of the life of the Old West
Read after this slide before moving on to questions on next slide.

9. Why did Potter regard himself as “a traitor to the feelings of Yellow Sky?
Individual who marries must change their lifestyle
Bachelor sheriff who married will impose his new values on the town
Controls are bound to tighten
Life will not be the same in Yellow Sky if others follow his example
What is symbolic of the the railroad intersecting the Rio Grande at Yellow Sky? Of the opposite directions, east and west, from which the trains arrive?
Railroad links the settled East to the uncivilized West
Railroad has often symbolized the advance of industrial civilization
Railroad intersecting of the Rio Grande suggests the meeting of civilization with raw nature