The humanism of Stephen Crane - author

Patrick K. Dooley

Stephen Crane is loud now," was the way Louis J. Budd, Duke University professor and longtime editor of American Literature, put it some years ago. Recently, Crane has gotten even louder: 1995 was celebrated by Crane enthusiasts as the one hundredth anniversary of his classic, The Red Badge of Courage.

The previous year, a detailed treasure house of data, The Crane Log: A Documentary Life of Stephen Crane, 1872-1900, was published by G. K. Hall-Macmillan. The authors, Stanley Wertheim and Paul Sorrentino, had Barker (1988) edited a two volume set of The Correspondence of Stephen Crane for Columbia University Press. In the six years between these two important contributions to Crane studies, much else has happened: Virginia Tech University hosted a major conference, "Stephen Crane: A Revaluation," in September 1989; the Stephen Crane Society revived the Stephen Crane Newsletter, now renamed Stephen Crane Studies; and more than a half dozen monographs on Crane's life and works have appeared, including my own, Stephen Crane: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Scholarship (G. K. Hall, 1992) and The Pluralistic Philosophy of Stephen Crane (Illinois University Press, 1993). The former is already out of date, given the half-dozen books and more than 100 articles which have appeared on Crane in the last two years, while the latter analyzed the metaphysical and epistemological commitments that led Crane to a view of human action and an ethic of social solidarity which are explicitly humanistic.

In 1895, at the age of 23, Stephen Crane's runaway best seller, The Red Badge of Courage, made him an international literary celebrity. Five years later, he was dead. It was, from his Asbury Park, New Jersey, shore dispatches for the news bureau run by his brother Townley to his death bed dictation of The O'Ruddy, a writing career which spanned a mere 12 years (including works published posthumously). Even so, as a journalist, war correspondent, poet, novelist, and short story writer extraordinaire, Stephen Crane produced a substantial body of literature that espouses a bold and robust humanism.

Crane's maternal godfather, Jesse T. Peck, was a noted Methodist bishop and the president of Syracuse University, where Crane attended one of his two semesters of college (the other being at Lafayette College). At both schools, Crane spent most of his time playing baseball and cutting classes to conduct his own direct study of humanity. Commenting on his Syracuse semester, Crane confessed to fellow New York City reporter John Northern Hilkard:

I did little work at school but confined my abilities,

such as they were, to the diamond. Not that I disliked

books, but the cut and dried curriculum of the college

did not appeal to me. Humanity was a much more

interesting study. When I ought to have been at

recitations I was studying faces on the streets, and

when I ought to have been studying my next day's

lessons I was watching the trains roll in and out of the

Central Station.

Both of Crane's parents were ministers. He was the fourteenth and last child of Jonathan Townley Crane and Mary Helen Peck Crane. His reaction to being a preacher's child included cultivating the vices of card playing, dancing, drinking, and smoking--all of which his father had condemned in a series of popular pamphlets. Crane shunned organized religion but did not reject so much as humanistically redefine God and religious experience.

Crane shared with his contemporaries, American philosophers William James and C. S. Peirce, and later John Dewey, the belief that experience--not "Truth," "Reality," or "the Good"--is the starting point for and the culmination of philosophical reflection. For these pragmatic humanists, we confront realities instead of Reality; and because experiences, in part, constitute realities, the worlds of spectators and participants are not just different, they are often incompatible. Given Crane's suspicions about the existence of "Truth" and "Reality" and his insistence upon the legitimate standing of multiple perspectives, his metaphysics forces readers to question the existence of a comprehensive scheme or even a widest possible context, just as his epistemology casts doubt on ultimate answers and final assessments.

Since experiencers are fundamental to Crane, as moral agents we have ethical obligations toward humans as well as other experiencers. As a result, Crane's moral reflections range from the pre-ethical (duties toward animals) to the properly ethical (conduct toward humans in ordinary situations) to the optional and supererogatory (heroic actions above and beyond ethical obligation).

Crane was unwilling to undermine the integrity of lived experience or to diminish the significance of human effort vis a vis philosophical absolutes or theological dogmas. Still, especially in his poetry, Crane scrutinized religious experience, eventually settling on a belief in a finite God who, as coworker and ally, can further our projects but cannot guarantee their success. Crane's commitment to the importance of human projects and his acknowledgement of both the efficacy and the limitations of our efforts form the core of his philosophical outlook.

Crane's so called Bowery works, Maggie (1893) and George's Mother (1896), along with numerous newspaper pieces and other early sketches, lean toward an environmental determinism which threatens to invalidate human agency. However a journalistic trip to the West and Mexico in 1885 and the defining experience of his life--his open boat ordeal in 1897--confirmed for Crane the value of human effort and the importance of human solidarity in an indifferent universe.

Although Crane clearly believed in human freedom before his western trip, the West significantly altered his view of human agency and his opinion about individual initiative. Previously, his Sullivan County tales and New York City news paper sketches portrayed confused and ineffectual actions. After his western trip, competence and optimism surfaced in his writings. Both East versus West and city versus nature are involved in the evolution of Crane's view of human action. Why the East and the city enervate while the West and nature energize is a complex matter to Crane. For example, out West Crane discovered a demanding world, an environment in some ways harsher than the Bowery. Why should a winter storm make the population of an eastern city passive and reclusive while a blizzard summons the ingenuity and combative instincts of Nebraska farmers? Crane suggests that the constructed world is fraught with whim and caprice, whereas events in the natural world have sufficient, regularity and enough loose play so that human actions can make a difference.

Crane's evolving view of human actions was triggered by the open, unpopulated natural areas he visited in Nebraska, Texas, and Old Mexico. There he discovered that human beings are not given extra consideration or extended special dispensation. Individuals of the human or any other species are neither helped nor handicapped; nature is neutral and unbiased toward results.

Secondly and significantly, Crane's western stories and his Mexican sketches explain that, even though individual tragedies might be inconsequential against the backdrop of an in different nature, human courage and human efforts remain in dispensable. Out West, Crane was impressed with the value of courage and the worth of trying whether or not effort produced success. Indeed, "Nebraska's Bitter Fight for Life," "The Five White Mice," and "A Man and Some Others" focus on struggles in which steadfastness, courage, and initiative are crucial to outcomes.

Crane's western experiences prepared the way for the mature philosophy of human action expressed in his greatest short story, "The Open Boat" As we will see, "The Open Boat" reafffirms the value of the resourceful human efforts characteristic of Crane's western tales and, in addition, offers the possibility of real success and genuine comradeship born of joint effort.

Crane's January 6, 1897, newspaper dispatch, "Stephen Crane's Own Story," set out the facts which he retold six months later in a Scribners' Magazine story, "The Open Boat," subtitled "A tale intended to be after the fact. Being the experience of four men from the sunk steamer Commodore" The four men are the cook, the oiler, the correspondent, and the injured captain. Crane was dispatched by the Bacheller newspaper syndicate to slip into Cuba to report on the Cuban revolution in late December 1896. On New Year's Eve, the Commodore, loaded with munitions and Cuban insurgents and with Crane on board as a sailor, struck a sandbar when leaving the port of Jacksonville. Damaged while being towed off the sandbar, the ship took on water and two days later sank at sea. All of the lifeboats were launched, leaving Crane and three others with a small dingey. His story retells some 30 hours of exposure, rowing, and suffering before the small dingey capsized on the breakers, forcing the four to swim a half mile to shore at Daytona Beach.

As in Crane's western stories, the setting for "The Open Boat" is natural--the ocean. However, in place of solitary or unorchestrated efforts, the four men struggle in unison. They find that their shared trial produces human solidarity as each of them encounters an efficacious social self:

They were a captain, an oiler, a cook and a correspondent,

and they were friends, friends in a more curiously

iron bound degree than may be common. The hurt

captain, lying against the watergar in the bow, spoke

always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never

command a more ready and swiftly obedient crew than

the motley three of the dingey. It was more than a mere

recognition of what was best for the common safety.

There was surely in it a quality that was personal and

heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of

the boat there was this comradeship that the correspondent,

for instance, who had been taught to be cynical

of men, knew even at the time was the best experience

of his life.

In their ordeal, solidarity instead of rancor and mistrust flourish because the survival test put to them is neither impossible nor routine. It is a stern but fair trial of wits and determination.

The existential disinterest of nature is apparent only after painful struggle. Initially, the correspondent finds the dingey to be overmatched by waves which were "most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall" He soon discovers that any particular wave mastered was not "the final outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water"; it is only a wave and soon there will be another. "A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats" The four are silent in the struggle; neither optimism nor hopelessness is expressed.

They see a lighthouse, then the land, then the beach, and they conclude that they will be safe in an hour. It has turned out to be an easy contest, so they celebrate. Three dry matches and four good cigars are produced, and "the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat . . . puffed at the big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a drink of water"

But no one sees them; they are not rescued. The slowly setting sun brings anger but not despair. They are bitter because no one recognizes their plight or appreciates their efforts:

As for the reflections of the men, there was a great deal

of rage in them. Perchance they might be formulated

thus: "If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be

drowned--if 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. If this old ninny

woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be

deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is

an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has

decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the

beginning and save all this trouble?"

Finally, a man at the beach waves to them. He is then joined by a crowd from the resort hotel, all of whom wave merrily to the four "fishermen" in their tiny boat. The resorters do not recognize the men's plight and, with nightfall, both the lighthouse and the shore disappear.

Through the long, painful night, the four men spell each other at rowing. Crane uses the seriousness of the task to underline the precariousness of human existence. Their small boat has two fragile oars, each of which "seemed often ready to snap" They cannot let the boat drift so they have to row continually. Crane skillfully exploits the hazards of taking turns at the oars:

The very ticklish part of the business was when the

time came for the reclining one in the stern to take his

turn at the oars. By the very last star of truth, it is

easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to

change seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern

slid his hand along the thwart and moved with care, as

if he were of Sevres. Then the man in the rowing seat

slid his hand along the other thwart. It was all done with

the most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past

each other, the whole party kept watchful eyes on the

coming wave, and the captain cried: "Look out now!

Steady there!"

They row and row and row. During the night, a great shark circles their boat. Finally at dawn, still alive and still forced to struggle, the correspondent realizes humanity's situation in nature. Shipwrecks are merely natural events, "apropos of nothing"; they are less than "the breaking of a pencil's point" The correspondent learns that nature places no special significance (or insignificance) upon individual lives. "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" In the early morning light, the wind tower reappears:

This tower was a giant, standing with its back to the

plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the

correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the

struggles of the individual--nature in the wind, and

nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to

him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But

she was indifferent, flatly indifferent.

The four decide to risk a run through the breakers onto the beach. A half-mile from shore, the dingey capsizes, and they must swim. Later, after a wave tosses the correspondent over the upturned boat, he finds himself in waist deep water. A man on shore drags the cook, the captain, and the correspondent to safety. Billie the oiler drowns.

The stern ordeal over, the three survivors understand the serene indifference of nature. That night, on the beach, as they meditate upon nature's abiding message amid the perpetual sea wind and the ceaseless waves, "they felt that they could then be interpreters." Through their confrontation with the indifferent universe, the survivors appreciate both the limits and the possibilities of human effort and human community.

A consummate ironist, Crane was neither a pessimist nor an optimist; he was, rather, a meliorist who believed that improvement was possible. But though Crane believed in progress, some of his best writing captured the self-defeating perversity--and more often the apathy--through which humans cause death ("The Upturned Face"), alienation ("The Blue Hotel"), loneliness ("A Duel Between an Alarm Clock and a Suicidal Purpose"), greed ("In the Depths of a Coal Mine"), racism ("The Monster"), and imperialism ("Death and the Child"). Crane's poignant, powerful depiction of the risks and demands as well as the rewards and satisfactions that can be won in a world which is neither menacingly hostile nor benevolently supportive but merely indifferent captures the project of serious and sober, realistic and effective humans of good will.

Crane's writings frequently praise the competence of such everyday "heroes" For instance, in "War Memories," written just six months before his death, he attempted a profile of Admiral William Thomas Sampson, who was, for Crane, the most interesting personality in the war in Cuba. "The quiet old man . . . a sailor and admiral" seemed at first bored with the war and indifferent to details. But once the action started, "hidden in his indifferent, even apathetic, manner, there was the alert, sure, fine mind of the best sea captain that America has produced since--since Farragut? I don't know. I think--since Hull." Unimpressed with the common sailor's eager devotion and reverence of him, Admiral Sampson thought not of glory but "considered the management of ships" Crane's summary strikes, as it so often does, precisely the right note: Sampson's record was "just plain, pure, unsauced accomplishment."

Other everyday heroes also received Crane's attention. In an early piece, "In the Depths of a Coal Mine," he salutes the elevator operator:

Far above us in the engine room, the engineer sat with

his hand on a lever and his eye on the little model of

the shaft wherein a miniature elevator was making the

ascent even as our elevator was making it.... My mind

was occupied with a mental picture of this faraway

engineer, who sat in his high chair by his levers, a

statue of responsibility and fidelity, cool brained, clear-eyed,

steady of hand.

In "Nebraska's Bitter Fight for Life," Crane cites L. P. Ludden, secretary and general manager of the relief commision who "works early and late and always.... But he is the most unpopular man in the State of Nebraska. He is honest, conscientious and loyal; he is hard working and has great executive ability"

Crane's most effusive praise of ordinary competence is reserved for the railroad engineer in "The Scotch Express" The engineer's skills, indispensable though they may be, are generally overlooked: "One often finds this apparent disregard for the man who . . . occupies a position which for the exercise of temperance, of courage, of honesty, has no equal at the altitude of prime ministers" The engineer's matter of fact attitude and the deceptive ordinariness of his tasks intrigued Crane:

He was simply a quiet, middle aged man, bearded and

with little wrinkles of habitual geniality and kindliness....

This driver's face displayed nothing but ... cool

sanity . . . the engine driver is the finest type of man

that is grown. He is the pick of the earth. He is not paid

too much . . . but for outright performance carried on

constantly, coolly, and without elation by a temperate,

honest, clear minded man he is the further point.

In a word, Stephen Crane clearly expressed the humanist agenda, and I enthusiastically recommend his works. Beyond the wonderful bonus of experiencing the sparkle, surprise, and candle power of his astonishing style, general readers will find a well spring of inspiration and humanists, especially, a rich resource of writings which dramatically capture the human situation.

Patrick K. Dooley is a professor of philosophy at St. Bonaventure University and editor of the Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. He is the author of The Pluralistic Philosophy of Stephen Crane and Pragmatism As Humanism: The Philosophy of William James.

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