I Exist

One hundred years after the United States became in independent nation, it was growing fast and had become a pretty influential nation. During that period, the people of United States felt confidence in their nation and its development. The artistic era of the time was Romanticism. It was a pretty ideal form of art with adventure stories and romantic heroes. However, after almost one hundred years of war, a conflict between the north and the south broke out. This resulted in the American Civil War that started in 1861. The Civil War was like a shove back to reality. People again experienced the horrific era of war. After the war, a new form of art emerged: surrealism. The ideas of surrealism were evident in Stephan Crane’s poem, War is Kind. It portrayed man as overconfident over their existence. In the poem, the man proudly told he universe that he exists, but the universe just replied that the fact does create any sense of obligation over this existence. The existence of mankind on the tiny planet, Earth, in the solar system is just a small part of the universe. This poem is telling the reader that we have been too confidence in ourselves, but now we have to realize the fact that our existence doesn’t make that much of a difference.