Garlins Under the Lions Paw The Crushing of All Hope
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"Under the Lion's Paw" typifies the literature of its period. During the years from 1880 through 1910, there was a gradual shift away from the Romantic and Transcendental decades which focused on a mystical connection to nature. Events in a United States that were growing increasingly technical shifted attention instead to a more everyday, more common, harsher view of life of how man interacts with nature. "Under the Lion's Paw" as well as other and similar stories of its type often included variations of Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism.
The characters of this story are all lower class working types, which is the defining trait of Realism. The Councils, the Haskins, even the evil Mr. Butler are all types that were well known to the agrarian readers of that time. No one in the story is of noble birth, an omission that is not surprising since the literature of that decade deliberately dealt only with blue-collar individuals. The events of their lives are played out against a geographical background of a rugged nature: in this case, the uncertain life of trying to grow crops on a farm. The farmland and the dialect of the characters emphasize the story's Regionalist aspect...