Short Stories

1. Walt Whitman illustrates his transition from the Romantic attitude to the Realistic one in his poem "Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun". As the poem begins, Whitman seems to be asking for an idealized or perfect natural, rural life. His "splendid silent sun" is not capable of causing destruction (Whitman 1). His "juicy autumnal fruit" is without spoil (2). His "fields" self tending, and the "serene-moving animals" require no care or maintenance. The wife and kids or the "rural domestic life" is "perfect" (8-9). These glories of "solitude" and "Nature" are his "primal sanities" (10-11). Conversely, anyone who has spent much time on a farm, been married, or had children, can without doubt see that this is an extreme romanticized view of life. Whitman begins to turn away from this romantic view of life in perfection to one more realistic in lines 12-19. He seeks "faces and streets" and "comrades and lovers by the thousand!" found in the new industrialized city (24-25). He requests to observe "soldiers" marching Broadway and laborers on the "wharves" (28-31). The life of the "theatre, bar-room, huge hotel" appeals to him (33). The reality of "People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions" truly are the object of his desire (36). Several contradictory points of view make this poem an illustration of how Whitman's attitudes are changed from romanticism to realism.

2. Emily Dickinson's views of life, death, and immortality are clearly demonstrated in poem #712. Usual to her style, she uses metaphor as well as personification to describe Death as a kindly gentleman who accompanies an individual throughout his life. Here, Death "kindly stopped" to pick this person up in his "Carriage" that held also "Immortality" (Dickinson 2, 3, 4). The Carriage is symbolic for the journey made through life, death, and immortality. The fact that he "slowly drove" symbolizes the days of "haste" were past (5). The speaker's life seems to pass before him, with the "Children", the "Fields of Gazing Grain", and "Setting Sun" representing his time of youth, adulthood and elderly years (9, 11, 12). In verse five the carriage pauses before "A swelling of the ground" that is a metaphor for the grave (14). Although time passing is "centuries" that "feels shorter that the day", the speaker mentions "Eternity" or the beginning of immortality (17, 18, 20). To her, Death is present alongside one throughout life and becomes only another stage in the journey. Accepting of this fact of life being as the placid chauffer, she expresses no fear in fully accepting her own mortality.

3. While Bret Harte writes in the tradition of Local Color, Mark Twain illustrates some characteristics of that strain but rises above it to a true realistic approach. The main point that differentiates Harte's style from Twain's is that Twain goes beyond the superficial and penetrates problems of universal concern. In "Tennessee's Partner" Harte tells the story of an unnamed, illiterate character. Despite the fact that the partner runs off with his wife, cheats at cards, and is a thief, the character remains loyal. His loyalty includes an attempt to bribe the court to release Tennessee. Although Tennessee's partner agrees "His ways ain't allers my ways" it is doubtful any would find the behavior of Tennessee's Partner to be realistic (Harte 260). What kind of man would actually forgive the loss of a wife, risk his life by bribing a court, and then care enough to bury the scoundrel without assistance. These are romanticized and sentimentalized elements of Harte's story. In Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" he stresses a keen sense of the spoken word as he has all of the characters speaking in realistic vernacular and dialect. Twains makes it easy to understand the character of Huck, his background, his honesty, his observations, and his report on the world around him. The fact that Widow Douglas "would sivilize" the boy is relevant because his lack of education is a profound obstacle to the illiterate boy (Twain 47). Learning a life that is "regular and decent" is considered "rough living" for a boy who rather his life as a street wise vagabond (47). Huck's fight against the civilized nature of this kind woman leads the boy to run away to avoid becoming like her kind. Twain's ploy is to aim satire that boy must become civilized if he is to be accepted as a person. Tennessee's Partner was just a caricature, not needing to be improved. However, Twain penetrates Huck to examine issues of universal concern. Thus, we refer to Harte as a Local Colorist, but to Twain as a Realist and