In The Red Badge of Courage  (1895) Stephen Crane explores the nature of courage and heroism through the eyes of Henry Fleming, a youth full of romantic dreams of war. Henry is rudely disillusioned when he enlists in the Union Army and discovers what real war is about on the battlefields of the American Civil War.

Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (1952) tells the tragic yet triumphant story of an old fisherman's relentless battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba. The ordeal pushes the old man to the limits of human endurance in his determination to triumph over nature.

Jack London's "To Build a Fire" (1902) is another naturalistic story of human struggle against nature. In this tale, a man's life depends on his ability to build a fire in...