A Dark Brown Dog

Stephen Crane was an American poet and novelist known for his work within the movements of Realism and, in particular, Naturalism. Realism emerged in part as a reaction to Romanticism. While Romanticism tended to depict dramatized events and showcase the author’s imagination, realism focused on everyday settings and life, seeking to represent familiar characters with authenticity. Realists asserted that “truth telling” was the highest form of written art. Naturalism, a movement closely linked with realism, embraced a sense of determinism that set it apart. Naturalists tend to adopt a detached air in their writing. Their tone is often impersonal, almost scientific, suggesting the sense that the universe is indifferent to the fate of the characters. Crane was among the pioneers of Naturalism, which spanned from the 1880s to the 1930s, often exploring the influence of a person’s physical, social, economic, and cultural environment on the development of their personhood.

Though the story “A Dark Brown Dog” is allegorical, it is, on the surface, a mundane story of a child and a stray dog. There is nothing fantastical, supernatural, or particularly unique about the characters and their struggles. This story’s effort to represent daily life without sentimentality grounds the story in realism. In addition, viewed through the lens of Naturalism, which includes the belief that environmental and hereditary factors can influence human character, the child’s abuse toward the dog is arguably a directly learned behavior from the child’s father. The violence can be contextualized by the family’s environment, and therefore by the family culture itself. The controlled, matter-of-fact tone of the story is also reflective of naturalists’ detached perspective of the inevitable chaos and tragedy of daily life.