Stephen Crane is a master at creating famous realistic scenes of combat and death. Crane was a mediocre writer, who created some of the greatest novels of all time. Although he lived a short life, he made sure to do something with it. Stephen was a courageous, anti-war writer. He used a lot of irony and descriptive pieces in his stories which were influenced by poverty. Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1891. Crane was the youngest in a family of fourteen. He was among the first writers to rebel against the noble tradition, with its false romanticism and its repression. Crane and some of his contemporaries were learning to distrust what society had taught and accepted. “Let something become a tradition and it will become half a lie” (Sufrin 5). His desire to write was inspired by his family. In nearly three years of poverty, Crane had written four impressive and highly original books: "Maggie," "The Black Riders," "The Red Badge of Courage" and "George's Mother." Stephen Crane started out as a comic book writer. One of his techniques, which informs everything about his best short stories and novels, was parody. Crane's poetry, for the most part, was devoted to the metaphysical problems raised by man's relationship with his god. His fiction, on the other hand, portrayed man struggling to survive in society. The dominant tone in Crane's fiction was funny, ironic, serious, and knowing. Crane began his high school education in 1888 at Hudson River Institute and Claverack College, a military school that cultivated his interest in "The Red Badge of Courage." By the end of the first semester Cranes had taken only four of his seven classes, and two of them were terrible. The other three were not rated because he never attended the... middle of the paper... show. I seem to sense, beneath the gaiety and nonsense, a terrible hatred of mass opinion, a fervent faith in the individual's right to life” (Garland 56). “One of America's most influential writers, Stephen Crane, produced works that have been credited with laying the foundations of modern American naturalism. His Civil War novel, “The Red Badge of Courage,” realistically depicts the psychological complexities of battlefield emotions and has become a classic of American literature” (“Stephen Crane”…).“At the End of Stephen's Life Crane, literally on his deathbed, returned to pure parody” (Soloman 12). Crane lived his life in poverty but this did not stop him from writing. He was a courageous man and his life was all about writing. Such an approach to Stephen Crane's fiction might make him seem like a negative artist, a critic rather than a creator.