Naturalism in literature describes the principles of the philosophy of naturalism which views the world with only the natural elements and forces acting on it through literature. The subject of naturalism illustrates the character’s determination, materialistic attachment, and happiness from their personal success in the setting of society and nature.
2. The "brute within" each individual, composed of strong and often warring emotions: passions, such as lust, greed, or the desire for dominance or pleasure; and the fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent universe. The conflict in naturalistic novels is often "man against nature" or "man against himself" as characters struggle to retain a "veneer of civilization" despite external pressures that threaten to release the "brute within."
3. Nature as an indifferent force acting on the lives of human beings. The romantic vision of Wordsworth--that "nature never did betray the heart that loved her"--here becomes Stephen Crane's view in "The Open Boat": "This tower was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual--nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent."
4. The forces of heredity and environment as they affect and afflict individual lives.
5. An indifferent, deterministic universe. Naturalistic texts often describe the futile attempts of human beings to exercise free will, often ironically presented, in this universe that reveals free will as an illusion.
Characters often have a negative connotation repeated throughout the novel which stresses the certainty of death
Detachment from the Story
The author sometimes will introduce characters to the story that are nameless to focus the reader only on the plot and what is happening to the characters and how they are affected.
Determinism is basically the opposite of free will. The fate of the character seems to already be predetermined by what is around him and he has no way of changing it.
At the end of the story, the author usually puts a twist in the plot.