How would you write an essay on the rise of realism looking at the works of Stephen Crane?

Well, Stephen Crane is an author who is recognised as
capturing the elements of Realism in his fiction, so you have picked a good author to
focus on! If I were you, I would start by looking at the various aspects of Realism and
then exploring how they are reflected in the various works of Stephen Crane. Obviously,
his major novel is The Red Badge of Courage, which is widely
regarded as a Realist classic, but at the same time I have recently enjoyed a number of
his short stories that contain the same kind of themes, so you will probably want to
look at a range of his literature and draw upon quotes from a variety of sources to
prove your points.

Consider the following aspects of
Realism: a rejection of the Romantic hero, a detailed focus on ordinary characters and
realistic events, an emphasis on characters from working class backgrounds, and the use
of dialect to reflect class structure.

Starting off with
the first point, The Red Badge of Courage can be seen as a
discussion of heroism and what it is to be a hero, as the protagonist starts off with a
very Romantic notion of heroism and comes to reject this. All of Crane's fiction focuses
on realistic events, and you can talk about the way that he accurately reflects the
horror of war through the description of battle and injuries sutained by soldiers. The
last two points can be covered by looking at "The Mystery of Heroism" by Stephen Crane,
which features the sharply delineated structure of army ranks, and the dialect of the
protagonist, who is a Private from the working class.