2130_american lit module 1 _steven crane

Stephen Crane

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company

Stephen Crane


• Born in 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, to a Methodist minster father and a reform-minded mother

• Moved around frequently as a young boy and did poorly in school

• By age 20 he began a career as a journalist

• Published his first book—Maggie, A Girl of the Streets—at his own expense when he was 23

Crane’s Early Life


Maggie, A Girl of the Streets


“The circle of little boys instantly parted. They drew away and waited in ecstatic awe for that which was about to happen. The two little boys fighting in the modes of four thousand years ago, did not hear the warning.”



“ ‘Ah, dat’s annuder story,’ interrupted the brother. . . . ‘Maggie was diff’ent—see—she was diff’ent.’ He was trying to formulate a theory that he had always unconsciously held, that all sisters, excepting his own, could advisedly be ruined.”



“She went into the blackness of the final block. The shutters of the tall buildings were closed like grim lips. The structures seemed to have eyes that looked over her, beyond her, at other things . . . At their feet the river appeared a deathly black hue. Some hidden factory sent up a yellow glare that lit for a moment the waters lapping oilily against timbers.”



“The Open Boat”


“[I]f I am going to be drowned, why in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous . . . The whole affair is absurd.”

“The Open Boat”


“When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples.”

“The Open Boat”


A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers;There was a lack of woman’s nursing, there was

a dearth of woman’s tears;But a comrade stood beside him, and he took

that comrade’s handAnd he said: “I shall never see my own, my

native land”—Caroline Norton, “Bingen on the

Rhine”

“The Open Boat”

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Stephen Crane

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2130_american lit module 1 _steven crane

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