Is this critique evident in both stories? If so, is it more thorough in one story than in the other? As ever, argue, evince, quote, analyze, explain.
In The Portable American Realism Reader (Penguin 1977) James Nagel writes about “the dominant theme in Naturalism of pessimistic Determinism, the notion that characters are the victims of Promethean [gargantuan, let’s say] forces of heredity, society, and a hostile nature, powers outside the control of the protagonists…” (xxviii). Nagel goes on to say that “Naturalistic […]