Importance of Setting in Stephen Crane's The Blue Hotel
In 'The Blue Hotel,' Stephen Crane uses various provocative techniques to ensure that the setting adds to the richness of the story. 'The Blue Hotel' is set in a cold Nebraska town at the Palace Hotel in the late 1800's, but there is more to setting than just when and where a story takes place. In a written work, it is the author's job to vividly depict events in order to keep the reader?s attention and to create colorful mental images of places, objects, or situations. The story is superbly enhanced through Crane?s use of setting to develop mood, to create irony, and to make nature foreshadow or imitate human actions.
From the beginning, Crane creates an atmosphere of violence, eeriness, and uneasiness. He writes, ?The Palace Hotel, then, was always screaming and howling in a way that made the dazzling winter landscape of Nebraska seem only a grey swampish hush.? When Scully, the proprietor of the hotel, greets the Cowboy, the Easterner, and the Swede, the latter is seen as ?shaky and quick-eyed.? He is a suspicious character that acts quite out of place. The first people that the entourage encounters are playing cards. It is Johnnie, who is the son of Scully, and an old farmer with grey and sandy whiskers. The farmer spits tobacco juice into a sawdust box to show his contempt and anger towards Johnnie. Johnnie agitates the farmer to such an extent that the farmer leaves the hotel silently explosive. At this point, a new game of High Five begins. The Cowboy immediately bothers the others with his incessant banging of the cards. The Swede is silent until the game absorbs the other players. He breaks this concentration when he says, ?I suppose there ...
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Setting is one of the most important facets of a story. It encompasses more than what simply meets the eye. An elementary look into the setting of ?The Blue Hotel? reveals a place and possibly a time for a story to take place. However, a deeper, more critical look exhibits how Crane uses a highly descriptive setting to explain the story rather than relying on character?s thoughts and dialogue. Crane?s profound use of setting enables the reader to easily follow the storyline and, therefore, maximizes the experience of reading his short story. It is little bits and pieces of detail that the reader gradually becomes aware of that make ?The Blue Hotel? a grand work of literature.
Works Cited:
Crane, Stephen. "The Blue Hotel." Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Fourth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. 1626-1645.
The most significant aspect touched upon in the both essays is isolation, but they differ in how each character deals with the issue. The isolation of the main character In Bartleby is revealed in his refusal to fulfill the routine work. Bartleby’s stated response to his employer’s request to do work was usually, “I prefer not to” (Melville, p302) Time and time again, Bartleby uttered those words without repercussion. His employer seemed unable to do anything. “But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner, touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him”. (Melville, p 303) Bartleby chose at every turn to seclude himself from society and life in general. Throughout the essay, we see first, Bartleby's unwavering preoccupation with his employment, followed by his decision ...
A pattern emerges in the four stories, where society’s wariness of the outsider, whether warranted or unwarranted, triggers the rise and fall of the newcomer. The differences that each outsider possesses due to his or her own culture and upbringing, though varying from character to character, mark the source of the clash between the outsider and the community which he or she tries to enter. In “The Blue Hotel,” the Swede separates himself from the group both physically and verbally. His aloofness forces the other characters, who have already familiarized themselves with the small hotel in Nebraska, to suspect that he is dangerous. Their suspicions are indeed warranted, as demonstrated during the first card game of High-Five between Johnnie and the farmer. “The cowboy and the Easterner [watch] the game with interest, while the Swede remain[s] near the window, aloof” (39), displaying immediately that he has no intention of conforming to this society’s rules. After physically withdrawing from the others, the Swede does so verbally shortly after, stating that “th...
...nterpretation of the story would be distinct with each setting. For example if he was to choose to write this story with a lower class, African-American social setting the interpretation the audience would acquire would much different. It could be to represent the enslavement era or the civil rights movement. Thus, setting is extremely crucial to the ultimate interpretation of the story.
In addition, the description of people and their actions are very typical and not anomalous. Children play happily, women gossip, and men casually talk about farming. Everyone is coming together for what seems to be enjoyable, festive, even celebratory occasion. However, the pleasant description of the setting creates a façade within the story.
"A Pair of Tickets" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge" are good examples of how setting explores place, heritage, and ethnic identity to give us a better understanding of the characters. In "A Pair of Tickets" Jing-Mei Woo discovers for herself what makes her Chinese and the setting played an important role in helping us understand how she came to this discovery. The setting in "Everything That Rises Must Converge" gave us a good understanding of why the characters acted as they did to the situations presented. The setting in both of these stories greatly contributed to the understanding the characters better and in general the whole story.
This claim says that the law does not have much to do with suffering and that the law was never and will never be set to make us suffer.
Swaying trees in the distance, blue skies and birds chirping, all of these are examples of setting. Setting can create the mood and tone of characters in a story. In the story Hills Like White Elephants, the story starts out with our two characters, Jig and the American, also referred to as the man, on a train overlooking mountains. “The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry” (Hemingway). In the case of this short story, the hills provided Jig something to take her mind off of the grueling conversation she was having with the Man. As said by a critic, “the story itself is comprised almost entirely of dialogue. Although there is a situation, there is no plot” (Henningfield). This characteristic makes the story harder to identify. As the couple reached the station they sat down on a bench and continued to talk. “The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station, looking at fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro” (Hemingway). The location of setting plays a big role in how the characters wi...
The first problem of the common core started in the beginning. When common core was introduced to schools, some administrators did not have time to think through the pros and cons. This resulted in administrators not considering the best methods and budget distributing for their schools’ benefits. Workers and classrooms were then changed to meet the requirements needed for the common core to take place. Librarians are examples of this because they are losing their jobs due to salary cut backs, having to transfer their jobs to become a teacher to help teach the common core, and some libraries are even being completely shut down for the use of testing areas. The reason for these ev...
Perhaps it was fated that Bartleby must die in the manner he did. After all, the narrator consulted the eminent pre-destination theologians Priestley and Edwards, and admits to believing that Bartleby’s presence “had been all predestinated from eternity” and that “it was not for a mere mortal like [the narrator] to fathom” (167). Accepting the idea that Bartleby is a microcosm of the macrocosm, this would imply that change is inevitable.
The Common Core State Standards have made tremendous gains for the world of education. Students nationwide are learning the same standards and skill sets. Nationwide standards are clearly necessary, so one state isn’t far more advanced or lagging behind other states. Not only has the Common Core provided national standards, it has created rigorous standards that encourage critical thinking, and prepare students for college curriculum and careers pursued after their schooling. Before Common Core, teachers could teach anything they wanted without purpose and support. CCSS have required teachers to b...
The setting of a story is the physical and social context in which the action of a story occurs.(Meyer 1635) The setting can also set the mood of the story, which will help readers to get a better idea pf what is happening. The major elements of the setting are the time, place, and social environment that frame the characters. (Meyer 1635) "Trifles by Susan Glaspell portrays a gloomy, dark, and lonely setting. Glaspell uses symbolic objects to help the audience get a better understanding for the characters. The three symbolizes used are a birdcage, a bird, and rope.
● The problem is that well acting schools have spent countless hours adapting the curriculum to align with common core, and sometimes moving backwards.
After reading Sonny’s Blues and Cathedral by James Baldwin and Raymond Carver respectively, it is easy to distinguish similarities and differences when comparing them to the other stories previously read. We discussed in class the structures, settings, forms and themes of these stories, in which we often found imprisonment was a recurring topic. On the contrary, the two stories assigned for Thursday differ from the others in some aspects like the narrator, style and some themes.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
Setting - Identify the physical (when/where) settings of the book. How do these settings affect the moods or emotions of the characters?