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Steven Crane Steven Crane: How his excellent setting and character description along with the physical, emotional, and intellectual responses of people under extreme pressure and the betrayal and guilt he shows for his characters helps the reader to better understand his works. Steven Crane is not one of the most liked authors in the world. He tends to become to engulfed in the scenery around the action that is taking place rather than the action itself. Readers do not always follow and sometimes become lost in the scenery instead of the action. Details are very important for the readers because if the reader can not see the same thing that the writer sees then the reader might lose interest in the story. Crane does not mean for this to happen.
He is only trying to help the reader better understand what is going on. In the story "The Blue Hotel, " and in his poem " Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War is Kind, " Crane uses his excellent setting and character description along with the physical, emotional, and intellectual responses of people under extreme pressure and the betrayal and guilt he shows between the characters to help the reader better understand the story or poem. Crane shows these characteristics in almost everything he writes. In "The Blue Hotel, " Crane does an excellent job of describing the setting to you in every way possible. For example in the beginning of the story "The Blue Hotel, " he says that "the hotel was painted a light blue, a shade that is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare its position against any background. " He does this type of depiction on every single thing he describes. Then in paragraph three he says "A little Irishman wore a heavy fur cap squeezed tightly down on his head.
It caused his two red ears to stick out stiffly, as if they were made of tin. " All of that for a guy he just passed along the street on the way to the hotel. In the end Crane even goes into an in depth description of the bitter cold snow outside. Why does he see that to be so important? Everybody knows that snow is cold. He strongly believes in very good details that is for sure.
The setting is one of the most important elements of a literary work. If the setting does not catch your attention as a reader then you are unable to get into the story. "The locality has symbolic importance and could have been sketched without firsthand experience. " This means that you would not ever have had to have been where the story takes place to understand what it looks like because of his excellent description of the setting. Crane also does a good job of establishing his characters through one of his major themes. The physical, emotional, and intellectual responses of people under extreme pressure.
Crane shows this in his characters to help the reader better understand what the character is going through. One example of this is when the Swede accuses Johnny of cheating in a card game. This offends Johnny and his emotional and physical reaction is to challenge the Swede to a fight. "Each Crane short story is designed upon a single ironic incident, a crucial paradox, or an irony of opposition. Crane stories consist of that moment when the characters confront the inescapable impasse of their situation, they are caught and boxed in by fate, and then nothing happens. " That is what happens with the Swede after he whips Johnny in the fight. The Swede feels as if he is no longer wanted at the hotel since Johnny's father is the owner of the hotel. The Swede becomes boxed in an inescapable situation.
Crane tends to show this in most all of his works. Crane must have found himself in these situation many times himself. If not he thought that this was a good way to captivate the readers attention. He did believe that the readers attention was a necessity in successful literary writing.
It is believed that the fight in the story "came from a fight Crane witnessed on his travel across the west. " He tried to break the fight up that he witnessed instead of encouraging it as everyone in the story does. Crane also shows his naturally used theme of betrayal and guilt through the Swede. He does this after the Swede leaves the hotel. "The Swede goes into a bar and asks some gentlemen to drink with him to celebrate his victory over Johnny. " When they refuse he become angry as if he is being betrayed by these men because they will not let him buy them a drink. "The Swede then threatens one of the gentlemen and the man retaliates and ends up killing the Swede. " Without this betrayed feeling the Swede would have probably lived. This, the blue hotel, " could have been one of Crane's best works if it were not for the puzzling ending, in which the Easterner offers a moral that baffles not only the Cowboy, but the reader as well. "He (the Easterner) does this by telling the Cowboy he seen Johnny cheating but never spoke up. " If the Easterner would have spoken up sooner the whole story would have changed drastically.
In the poem "Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War is Kind, " Crane also shows this characteristic of betrayal. In the poem there is a wife, daughter, and a mother who feel as if they have been betrayed by their husband, father, and son for leaving them to fight for their country in war. The author tries to comfort them by telling them that everything will be all right, "for war is kind. " Crane also uses his descriptive setting to help the reader see what it looks like in war. For example in line eleven he says " a field where a thousand corpses lie. " In lines eight and nineteen he says " these men were born to drill and die. " You can just see the men running around everywhere. Screaming and hollering while their friends are dying all around them. There is nothing they can do but pray they will make it out alive.
Steven Crane is a very good writer and loves scenery. Although he does become to involved in the scenery sometimes. For that reason some readers tend to draw away from his work. Steven Crane does a good job establishing his common themes as well as the scenery in both "The Blue Hotel" and "Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War is Kind. " Crane, Steven. " Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War is Kind. " Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Editor. Edgar V.
Roberts. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998. 1039. Crane, Steven. " The Blue Hotel. " Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Editor. Edgar V.
Roberts. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998. 110 - 128. Narveson, Robert. (1969) Reprinted in Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism. Editor. Vottelec, Thomas. Detroit: Gale Research, 1991.
Seven: 109 Stallman, Robert Wooster. (1952) Reprinted in Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism. Editor. Vottelec, Thomas. Detroit: Gale Research, 1991.
Seven: 127
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