Establish Verisimilitude, Essay Example

Realistic writing can be defined as “the faithful exposition of reality” or “establish verisimilitude,” in the realism of a literary technique, which was practiced by many schools of writing. Though strictly speaking, realism is all about opting for a particular technique, it also implies a particular kind of subject matter that was prevalent in the mid 19^th Century. 

American dream was envisioned with the Gold Rush, and the success in this new world came to be known as the “American Dream.” America was perceived as a nation with new beginnings, great wealth could reward hard work and good luck. The eminent authors of the period Twain, Harte, Red Cloud, and Hopkins are some of the great novelists, who gave the realization of this American Dream. All of them in their humor and satire advocated the real symposium of the fundamental characteristics of the American dream.

Twain, Harte, Red Cloud and Hopkins were great novelists and voracious social critics. They have left a profound impression in the imagination of Americans, creating the realism of the fundamental characteristics of the hallucination of American dream. All of them have been categorical in exposing the best and the worst of the American society at a time when the country was going through industrialization. The American authors prior to Twain had penetrated focused their writings on the heroic deeds of great men. But Harte, Twain, Hopkins and Red Cloud thought a new story needed telling for a nation reborn after the civil war, emerging out of the terrible war. They used colloquial language and humor in their writings to elucidate the American West as a place of innocence and promise and to strengthen the sense of national pride, as well as criticize social issues, such as slavery and racism.

While Harte labored with and mastered the accepted Eastern formal literary style and tended to adhere to a stern Calvinistic form of moral code, Mark Twain exposed the more realistic crudeness of the language and mortality of the West. While Hopkins adapting to focus more on facts about the stories entailed on the middle of the continent, than to indulge in literature playing homage to Europe, Cambridge and the Oriental culture.

References

Hopkins, Vivian C. “The Work of Art.” Spires of Form: A Study of Emerson’s Aesthetic Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951. 105-146. 

Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. “Black, White & Huckleberry Finn: Re-imagining the American Dream.” African American Review 35.1 (2001): 153.