Under the Lion’s Paw
Hamlin Garland
Identifying Irony
• Complete the worksheet before reading the
story in class
Under The Lion’s Paw
• Historical Background Information handout –
complete for homework prior to reading the story
in class
NATURALISM
• 1900 - 1914
While many modern works contain
naturalistic elements, naturalism refers
specifically to a literary movement that
took place in America, England, and
France during the late 1800s and early
1900s, which produced a unique type of
“realistic” fiction.
Naturalism is essentially realism with an
additional facet: Determinism
Determinism
Characters as Marionettes
• Naturalists view individuals as being at
the mercy of biological and
socioeconomic forces, whereas realists
hold that humans have some degree of
free will that they can exercise to affect
their situations
– Things happen to people, as if
they were marionettes whose
movements are entirely
determined by forces beyond
their control.
Forces Beyond the Character’s Control
• Characters are dominated by external or
internal forces:
– Environmental
• A storm, or a character lost at sea
– Social conditions
• A character born into poverty
• Chance (fate)
– A character’s child is suddenly
stricken with typhoid fever
• Internal Passions
– Lust, greed, or desire for dominance or pleasure
overcome rational behavior
“Survival of the Fittest”
Heavily influenced by emergent
scientific theories of the time:
–Darwin’s theory of evolution
• It’s corollary, “survival of the fittest”
• Fight for survival brings out the "brute
within" each individual
• conflict is often "man against
nature" or "man against himself"
The Indifferent and Omnipotent
Power of Nature
• Nature/Fate is an indifferent force
acting upon the lives of human
beings
– Works often describe the futile
attempts of human beings to exercise
free will in a universe that ironically
reveals that free will is an illusion
– Violence and tragedy are often the
result
Subject Matter
•Generally deals with raw and unpleasant
experiences which reduce characters to
"degrading" behavior as they struggle to
survive
–Characters are mostly from the lowermiddle or lower classes
•Generally poor, uneducated, and
unsophisticated
•“drama of the people working itself
out in blood and [filth]” (Norris)
•The characters are generally commonplace
and the unheroic
–life is usually the dull struggle of daily existence.
–But, the naturalist reveals qualities in their characters
that are usually associated with the heroic or adventurous
•Often, acts of violence and passion lead to
desperate moments and violent death
–Life at its lowest levels is not so simple as it seems to be
•Panoramic, “slice-of-life" drama
–often a "chronicle of despair"
Naturalism: A Scientific Study
• Attempts to apply the scientific principles of objectivity and
detachment to its study of human beings
– The characters are but higher-order animals “fully
subject to the forces of heredity and the environment”
• These “human beasts” studied impartially, without moralizing
about their natures
• The story is told in third person
• The narrator is detached, objective, and unsympathetic
– The narrator does not comment on the morality or the
fairness of the situations in which characters find
themselves
• The reader, however, is meant to empathize with
the characters
Maintaining Dignity in Adversity
•Man is conditioned and controlled by
environment, social conditions, heredity, chance
(or fate), or instinct
–But, they have compensating humanistic values which
affirm their individuality and life
•Their struggle for life becomes heroic and they
maintain human dignity despite degrading
circumstances
•Man is faced with overwhelming and
oppressive material forces that control their lives
–But, they maintain their self-worth
From "The Open Boat“ by
Stephen Crane:
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.
Naturalistic Poem:
A man said to the
universe:
"Sir, I exist!“
"However," replied
the universe,
"The fact has not
created in me
A sense of
obligation."
Hamlin Garland
1860 - 1940
His Life
• Garland was born to very poor farmers in the
American Midwest
• He moved to Boston, determined to never be a
farmer
• He married and had
several children and
grandchildren
• In Boston, Garland met several famous
American authors
• He worked as a teacher, lecturer, and author
• Garland focused on the legal difficulties of the
American farmer, and their
lack of protection from
immoral landowners
• Garland lived most of
his married life in
California
• Garland often lectured about tax reform,
sometimes without being paid
• He felt that people were unable
to fulfill their true potential
because of economic
inequalities
His Work
• Garland was known for his use of dialect
• His characters often face trials that are
depressing and unfair, although highly realistic
Veritism
• Garland coined the term, “veritism,” which
means writing in the most honest way possible,
no matter how depressing or discouraging
• In order to pay his bills, Garland
also wrote commercially acceptable
stories that “depicted heroic
characters in
melodramatic
situations”
• Most of the things Garland addressed are part of
a life that has disappeared from the American
scene
Literary Terms
Irony – A contrast or discrepancy between what is
stated and what is really meant, or between what is
expected to happen and what actually does happen
 Dramatic Irony — a reader or an audience perceives something
that a character in the story or play does not know
 Structural (situational) Irony — the writer shows a discrepancy
between the expected result of some action or situation and its
actual result
 Verbal Irony — a discrepancy between what is said and what is
really meant; sarcasm
• Denotation – The explicit meaning of a word, as
listed in a dictionary
• Connotation – The suggested meaning of a
word or phrase
• Dialect - a particular kind of speech used by
members of one specific group because of its
geographical location or class
Lesson Focus
• Determine how an author’s personal experience
affects their work and determines their point of
view, particularly an author whose cultural
background is vastly different from the student’s
• Understand the three types of irony and identify
them in a text
• Identify words with both connotative and
denotative meaning
• Identify elements of foreshadowing in a text
• Translate dialect into modern language as
necessary to understand a text