28 pages • 56 minutes read
Stephen CraneThe Blue Hotel
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1898A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Isolation and Its Impact on the Human Psyche
Isolation and loneliness are recurring themes in Crane’s works. In The Red Badge of Courage, for example, Henry Fleming feels alone on the battlefield despite being surrounded by fellow soldiers. In “The Blue Hotel,” Crane pushes this theme even further—his characters are not alone despite being around other people but partially because they are around other people. The Swede’s foreignness, for instance, preoccupies the other men at the hotel, who discuss his likely origins. Perhaps sensing this, the Swede views the others as a “gang” despite their different origins—the cowboy apparently hails from the West, Scully is an Irishman, Johnnie is Scully’s son but seems American-born, etc. In the face of this group, each different but more similar to each other than they are to him, the Swede feels his difference.
This sense of separateness leads to the Swede’s fear, which is the first step in the conflict that ends in his murder. Likewise, it is rejection from the group at the saloon that leads to the final act of violence. Angry that the businessmen, district attorney, gambler, and bartender all refuse a drink from him, the Swede exclaims, “It seems I can’t get anybody to drink with me in this town. Seems so, don’t it?” (389). This is not entirely true; Scully drinks with him earlier in the story. However, this fact does little to influence the Swede’s perception of his isolation, or the anger it increasingly gives rise to: “‘Say,’ snarled the Swede, ‘don’t you try to shut me up. I won’t have it. I’m a gentleman, and I want people to drink with me. And I want ‘em to drink with me now” (389). By casting himself as a “gentleman,” the Swede asserts himself as someone who is worthy of inclusion and should not be ignored, making him all the more incensed when his demands are not met.
Crane thus depicts isolation from a group as even lonelier than total isolation. The Swede does not notice his own aloneness when he’s out in the blizzard but feels rejected when kept emotionally separate from the few other humans he encounters. The relative smallness of the group also matters. Fort Romper may not be the remote outpost the Swede imagines, but it is an isolated community when compared to cities back East (the direction from which the Swede is traveling). In this environment, the Swede is less likely to encounter anyone with whom he feels kinship, which exacerbates his loneliness.
The Meaninglessness of the Universe
Though “The Blue Hotel” also demonstrates the influence of Expressionism, Naturalism is the literary movement with which Crane is most frequently associated. Naturalism, a subgenre of Realism, developed in the late 19th century and applied a “scientific” lens to human psychology, behavior, and society, examining the various impersonal forces (heredity, environment, etc.) that shape individual lives. It offered a grim view of human existence, simultaneously denying metaphysical purpose (e.g., a deity invested in human life) and individual agency (e.g., the possibility of creating one’s own meaning): Naturalism tends to frame humans merely as victims of a world that does not (and by definition could not) care about them.
This depiction often manifests as an uneven struggle between humanity and nature, where the latter is not only vastly more powerful but also indifferent to the conflict. “The Blue Hotel” alludes to this in its depiction of the blizzard, which stresses the insignificance of humanity in the face of often brutal natural forces: “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-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb” (387). However, this description is not wholly bleak; Crane identifies an element of “glamour” and “wonder” in humanity’s tenacious existence in such a hostile universe. The following sentences build on this, suggesting that there is something admirable in humans’ belief that they can do battle with the natural world: “The conceit of man was explained by this storm to be the very engine of life. One was a coxcomb not to die in it” (387). Though Crane is clear that humans are likely to lose the fight, the parallel he draws between humanity and the blizzard suggests a brief elevation of humans to something like nature’s level. Dying in such a way would be ennobling, the final sentence implies.
This, though, is what the Swede does: The next sentence reads, “However, the Swede found a saloon” (387). The Swede dies shortly afterward in a random, confused skirmish that lacks any grandeur or meaning and does not even follow logically from the story’s preceding events. The story thus plays with the Naturalist trope of the universe’s meaninglessness, first evoking it, then seeming to challenge it, and finally underscoring it. It is not merely natural laws that lack purpose or significance in “The Blue Hotel,” but also the course of any particular human life, which lacks the overarching structure that even a work of naturalist literature would give it.
Social Responsibility and Culpability
The story’s meandering chain of cause and effect and the overblown and unreasonable reactions of characters make the question of social responsibility, as the Easterner lays it out, difficult to parse within the tale’s own terms. Fundamentally, the Easterner’s claim is clear: “Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have collaborated in the murder of this Swede” (392). To him, it matters that Johnnie cheated and that he himself did not defend the Swede in his accusations despite witnessing the offense. He also suggests the cowboy is at fault for “simply puffing around the place and wanting to fight” (392).
However, the story itself does not necessarily endorse the Easterner’s conclusions. The Swede did not die in the altercation with Johnnie, and the gambler did not know anything of the Easterner’s silence or the cowboy’s eagerness for violence. Moreover, the Easterner does not tally the Swede’s own belligerence in his count of culpable men, even though the cowboy holds the Swede uniquely responsible for his own fate: “‘Might not have been killed?’ exclaimed the cowboy. ‘Everythin’ square? Why, when he said that Johnnie was cheatin’ and acted like such a jackass? And then in the saloon he fairly walked up to git hurt?’” (392). Even more to the point, chance circumstances arguably play a greater role in sealing the Swede’s fate than the actions of any (or all) characters. When the cowboy remarks that the bartender might simply have knocked the Swede out and thus averted the later violence, the Easterner responds, “a thousand things might have happened” (392). The Easterner says this “tartly,” clearly thinking of his own actions (and those of the other men), but it is equally true of impersonal events. If a blizzard had not been raging, for example, the Swede might not have sought out the tavern’s warmth.
The story thus refuses to offer a neat outcome, rather inviting readers to experience the story through their own lens. Even though the Easterner’s theory seems reasonable—he augments it with his evidence about Johnnie’s actions—it is not necessarily the answer. Given that the Easterner is the most level-headed observer of the group, his inability to definitively or meaningfully assign blame perhaps suggests the entire project is futile, as do other discordant details such as the moral gambler’s lapse into violence and the cowboy’s stubborn ignorance of his own capacity for cause and effect.
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