The Swede may have been a trouble maker, but he was right about his accusations. He had to grab the gambler at the saloon, because the gambler was already destined to act. They were all part of an 'act' in a play that was already rehearsed and going to be performed like it or not.
The other passage in the story that is very telling is:
One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smitten, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb.
Here, in one sentence is Crane's understanding of the world in which humans live. As the naturalist, he observed and wrote about the world around him from the Darwinian "survival of the fittest" perspective. He perceived the world and everything on it prescribed by these uncaring natural laws, which could be very harmful to humans. And what are humans? Freak accidents of nature, lice, that hang on to the world by being parasites. This is not a very positive view, by any means.
This theme is strengthened by the Crane's use of weather. The men fight in the swirling snow and the Swede walks through this blinding snow to the saloon. Here is nature in its raw form. These men have no more control over their own lives as they do to change the weather. In fact, much of Crane's naturalism theme is created through his use of imagery. The playing with cards, which is random in their shuffling. The blue color of the hotel its setting. The distinction is made between the inside the hotel with a stove and warmth and outside with the storm, which is the conflict between man and his environment. The uncontrollable snow also symbolizes the violence of the human community it encloses in the Blue Hotel. In fact, humans may even be more violent than this snow storm, itself, as Crane writes earlier that...
Stephen Crane: A Great Writer of American Naturalist Fiction and Non-Fiction, and of Local Color Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was an American author of the late 19th century, whose work, in terms of style and sub-genre, was somewhere between American Romanticism and American Naturalism (with some American Realism added). Crane wrote at the end of a century (the 19th), a time when several literary styles and genres are typically blended together until
Stephen Crane's novella, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, was written during America's "Gilded Age" which was the era from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the Century. The name was given to the period by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, who poked fun at the period for its rampant corruption. During this essential time of American development, New Yorker's were categorized into two different
"The Open Boat" may have been based on Crane's real-life experience but it also functions as symbolic "of man's battle against the malevolent, indifferent, and unpredictable forces of nature…This reading is confirmed by the final irony of the death of the oiler, physically the strongest man on the scene and the one most favored to withstand the ordeal" (Rath & Shaw 97). The futility of resisting the power nature with
If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intentions. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all this trouble. The whole affair is absurd...But no, she cannot mean to drown me. She dare not drown me.
The proprietor, Scully, is unable to calm the Swede down, unsuccessfully, and the Swede makes an ominous prediction. "I know I won't get out of here alive," he says. Scully attempts to lay the blame at his son Johnnie's feet, but the Swede will not be swayed. "I will leave this house. I will go away, because I do not wish to be killed. Yes, of course, I am crazy
Red Badge Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage offers remarkable psychological insight into the experience of war. With vivid detail sparing nothing, Crane shows the reader the brutality of war. More importantly Crane shows how one soldier confronts his own mortality and fear. Although Red Badge of Courage takes place during the Civil War and the setting is striking, the novel centers on psychological conflict far more than social or political
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