Corey read a poem about inequality between the rich and the poor. The poem included a description of a child, dressed in rags, w
ho sleeps on the street and goes to sleep hungry each night. The poem also describes an overweight dog that wears a wool sweater on cold mornings. The child sees the dog each morning when servants walk it to the market to buy fresh bread and vegetables for their employer’s household. When the child begs food from the dog’s owners, she is merely ignored. Corey notices that the poet does not judge the unequal treatment of the dog and the child. This poem’s objectivity, or lack of critical judgment, represents a value specific to which literary movement? A. Classicism B. Romanticism C. Naturalism D. Modernism
When we look at the prompt, we can see that even though the
poem Corey read was about inequality, the content within the poem seems to be
only descriptions—descriptions of the poor girl, the dog, and their
interaction. There is no mention of bias,
and it is stated that Corey noticed a lack of judgement on the author’s behalf
toward things. The poem is interpreted
by Corey as pure observation. With that
in mind, it can be said that the poem displays characteristics of naturalism,
which is a literary movement that focuses strictly on what can be seen, nothing
more. Thus, the proper response is “C.
Naturalism.”
