As mentioned, naturalism in literature is the notion that social conditions, heredity, and environment unalterably impact and shape human character. Both Buck and Louisa are limited and forged by the social conditions that surround them, their heredity and environment.
Buck's transformation from a semi-slothful house pet to a high-octane sled dog is prompted not by his own free-will - Buck never really decides to become the leader of the pack - but by his subjugation. When Buck is taken in by his new owners and they force him to pull a sled, he has very little recourse. In fact, it comes down to a simple choice for him: Adapt or Die. Instinctively Buck chooses the former and what results is an atavistic regression toward primordial behaviors that help him to survive and ultimately succeed in his new environment.
London describes this process of losing one's domesticity beautifully in the novel. It reads,
"This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence (59).
The shackles of decency have been shed. And a new modus-operandi has been adopted, one that favors theft over charity, fear over love, cunning over caring, etc. all so that Buck may survive under the brutal law of club and fang. It is often said that adversity reveals character, but perhaps our philosophers had it wrong, perhaps its better said: adversity forms character.
With
You may be more hospitable to a Christian-Marxian possibility. The reason that this is the way that things stand in Marxian discussions of such issues, and that there is little argument for naturalism in Marxianism, is that Marxians, like George Santayana, who, politically speaking, was very conservative, just take it as obvious that physicalism and atheism are true (Nielsen, 1971). I think this is so too, but I realize that
" shall come back as soon as I can; I shall find you here." One more time, she gives into her biological role. During Adele's labor pains, Edna recalls her own childbirth, an event that offered very different kinds of memories of an awakening than she has now. "Edna began to feel uneasy. She was seized with a vague dread. Her own like experiences seemed far away, unreal, and only half
Idealism refers to the people who claim to be idealists in the popular sense are often convinced that the world is beautiful, everybody is good and you can adopt high ideas and adhere to them. It is also a theory that asserts that reality is ideas, though, mind or selves rather than material forces. There may be a single or absolute Mind or a plurality of minds. It also stresses
Her means of survival becomes how she responds to the violence and abuse she encounters on a daily basis. Maggie's choices are made as the result of something that happens to her. She never makes a decision without being forced to make it either by some act of violence or other negative experience. While she attempts to turn her life around with Pete, we see that she can only get
John Rawls / Mencius John Rawls's A Theory of Justice is concerned with distributive rather than retributive justice: there is precious little discussion of crime and punishment in Rawls's magnum opus, but plenty of discussion about equality and fairness. Rawls seems to be embarked on a Kantian ethical project of establishing universal principles, but his chief concern is to establish his principles without requiring, as Kant does, an appeal to God
Grape Depression John Steinbeck's Naturalism and Direct Historical Representation: The Great Depression and the Grapes of Wrath Literature cannot help but be reflective of the period in which it is written. Even novels that are set somewhere outside the time and place that author occupies will necessarily include some degree of commentary on the issues, beliefs, and values of the author's own world. This is, in part, what makes an understanding of
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