- Reaction against Romanticism; told it like it was
- Focus on lives of ordinary people; rejected heroic and adventurous
- Anti materialism; rejected "new class sysem"
- View of nature as powerful and indifferent force beyond man's control
- Like Realism, but a darker view of the world
- Universe is unpredictable.
- Fate is determined by chance.
- Free will is an illusion.
- Character's lives shaped by forces they cannot understand or control.
*Dominant themes: survival, fate, violence, nature as indifferent force
Civil War: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglas
The Fronteir: Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Jack London
Local Colorists: Bret Harte, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather
