Charles Darwin And His Theory Of Evolution - 1248 Words

By the end of the nineteenth century, American literature began to shift away from romanticism, which had been the primary style seen among American novelists up to and for some time after the Civil War. With the departure from romanticism came the journey into the realm of realism. If Romanticism can be described as searching past the obvious in search of the ideal, then Realism is diving into the obvious to explore the ugliness, misery, and hopefully the truth of the world. In general, Literary Realism attempts to depict life as it is, with joys and sorrows, ups and downs. However, American Realism tends to focus more on the darker side of life, for not only had the nation just undergone a Civil War, but this was also the time of Charles†¦show more content†¦Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and James’ Daisy Miller: A Study, some of their respective most popular works, are perfect examples of their own forms of realism. Demonstrating that Realist wor ks tend to be more focused on the characters and environment than on development of the plot, constantly throughout Huck Finn are instances of Twain taking up numerous paragraphs with Huck s detailed description of the nature and river around him. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore (Twain, pg. 129). These descriptions have nothing to do with the plot but are a digression from it. However, the river s description enhances the portrayal of the region, which further enhances the experience of reading the novel. Though you cannot see the river, you can sense and feel its size through Huck s words. Digression from the plot is a realist technique of better representing the culture and environment of the characters being portrayed. But what particularly made his portrayal of life on the banks of the Mississippi stand out as a piece of realist literatur e was Twain’s implementation of the natural idiom used by those native to the frontier as well as a mixture of dialects. As Twain