Stephen Crane and

Henry David Thoreau Essay

Bridget Griffith
Green
11/27/17
CAP English 9
 Stephen Crane in ​Maggie: A Girl of The Streets ​and Henry David Thoreau in ​Walden

would agree on the benefits of philanthropy, but criticize philanthropists as only wanting to help

themselves. Their views would contrast, however, on material possessions and self reliance.

Maggie: A Girl of The Streets ​is a fictional story about the slums of New York in the late 1800s.

The book follows a young girl, Maggie, and her brother, Jimmie.​ ​They grow up in an poor,

abusive household where their parents are constantly fighting. It starts with Pete, Jimmie’s

friend, saving Jimmie from being beaten up on the streets. Maggie starts to date Pete and they go

to dances and the theater. Jimmie and his mother then kick Maggie out of the tenement because

in their minds she has been ruined. Pete leaves Maggie for a beautiful, graceful woman named

Nellie. Maggie has nowhere to go. She tries to go home but is kicked out again. She tries to talk

to Pete, but he will not have anything to do with her. Having nowhere left to go, she turns to

prostitution and ends up being killed. After her death, Maggie’s mother finally decides to forgive

her. In the end, Pete continues with his life unscathed by his relationship with Maggie. ​Walden ​is

a personal account of Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond. Walden Pond is about a mile away from

the closest town and on the farm of Thoreau’s friend. He leaves Concord, Massachusetts and

stays by himself on the pond for two years and two months. In this time, he writes the majority

of ​Walden.​ It discusses Thoreau’s motives for living a secluded life and the discoveries he makes

during his stay at Walden Pond.

Stephen Crane and Henry David Thoreau have similar views on philanthropists and

philanthropy. Both believe that philanthropist are selfish but in most respects that philanthropy

has a positive impact. In ​Maggie: A Girl of The Streets, ​the preacher, who is considered a

philanthropist, is portrayed as selfish because, “he told his hearers just where he calculated they

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stood with the Lord … They were waiting for soup-tickets.”(46). In this quote, the reader sees

the preacher making people wait to eat until they hear his sermon. No one listens to him, but he

still makes them wait before they can get their soup and bread. Crane also describes the old

woman who helps Jimmie as, “a gnarled and leathery personage who could don, at will, an

expression of great virtue”(43). The woman, unlike the preacher, is not much of a philanthropist.

She drinks and steals but she still helps Jimmie by giving him a place to stay when his parents

are fighting. While mocking the philanthropist, Crane still shows the benefits of philanthropy.

This is similar to Thoreau’s philosophy on philanthropy and philanthropists. In ​Walden, ​Thoreau

states, “The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff

griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy”(63). Thoreau is directly criticizing

philanthropists by saying that they only engage in philanthropy to better themselves or to

complain about their own lives. By saying this, Thoreau is calling philanthropist frauds because

in the end they are selfish and do not care about the people they are helping. While Thoreau

believes philanthropists are inherently evil, he also says that he “would not subtract anything

from the praise that is due to philanthropy”(63). Like Crane, Thoreau says or implies that

philanthropists only want to help themselves, but that the overall impact of philanthropy is

beneficial.

While Crane and Thoreau have similar views on philanthropy and philanthropists, they

have contrasting views on material possessions. Crane believes that material possessions can be

meaningful and important. The little boy, Tommie, who dies, has “his small waxen hand

clutching a flower that the girl, Maggie, had stolen from an Italian”(46). Maggie steals the flower

because it is important to her and she wants the baby to have something beautiful on him when

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he is buried. Crane’s belief is also shown with the flowered cretonne. Maggie “spent some of her

week’s pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin”(53). The flowered cretonne is

important to Maggie because she wants to impress Pete when he comes over to her apartment.

While to Pete the flowered cretonne is not important, to Maggie it has significant value because

she works hard to get it. Thoreau would think that this is a foolish move and that Maggie wastes

her money. He believes that people should live with as little as they can and that material

possessions are almost always worthless. He calls luxuries, “not only dispensable, but positive

hindrances to the elevation of mankind” (15-16). In this quote Thoreau is not only saying most

possessions are useless, but harmful as well. He even goes as far to say the, “misfortune it is to

have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired

than got rid of ”(8). Thoreau is saying that everything that is inherited is a burden. While Crane

would claim that material possessions are important and can have significant meaning to

someone, Thoreau would say that they are useless and burdensome.

Crane and Thoreau would also have different views on self reliance. Crane’s belief is that

not everyone needs to be self reliant because some people need assistance. In the beginning of

the book, Jimmie gets into a fight and, “Tears made furrows on his dirt-stained cheeks. His thin

legs had begun to tremble and turn weak, causing his small body to reel,” but Pete breaks up the

fight (37). Jimmie is in an awful situation, without much hope of winning and Pete saves him. If

Pete does not helped Jimmie than, Jimmie might end up much worse. Crane talks about a man

who crosses Maggie’s path once she has become a prostitute. The man is middle class and does

not say word to Maggie, but he has a lasting on her life because,“he did not risk it to save a soul.

For how was he to know that there was a soul before him that needed saving?”(87). Crane is

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saying that Maggie needs help and that she can’t get out of her situation without it. In this

situation, Thoreau would claim that if Maggie is self-reliant she could survive living on her own.

According to him, “For the student or those who desire to be benefitted by it, even to lay the

foundation themselves”(43). Thoreau is saying that it is more helpful to learn something through

experience rather than through someone teaching it. Thoreau praises this form of self reliance

because if one learns by themselves, they [sing.] are relying on only his or herself. In ​Walden,

Thoreau also talks about how his elders, “have told [him] nothing and probably cannot tell [him]

anything of purpose”(12). This quote is saying not only that people should be self reliant, but that

most other people can’t help or teach someone else. Crane would disagree with this by saying

that Maggie needs help.

Stephen Crane and Henry David Thoreau have comparable views on philanthropy and

philanthropists, though they would differ on their view of material possessions and self reliance.

Both believe that the impact of philanthropy is beneficial, but that philanthropists only want to

help themselves. Crane believes material possessions can hold significant value beyond their

monetary worth and can be expressions of someone’s emotions, while Thoreau thinks that

material possessions are useless and a burden. Crane also believes that not everyone can be self

reliant and that some people need to be helped, but Thoreau thinks that everyone should be self

reliant. The authors agree on philanthropists and philanthropy, but disagree on material

possessions and self reliance.

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 Works Cited

Crane, Stephen. ​Maggie: A Girl of the Streets​. Bedford/St. Martins, 1999.

Thoreau, Henry David. ​Walden​. New York City, Barnes and Noble Books, 2003.