The Blue Hotel

“I suppose there have been a good many men killed in this room.”

The Swede’s bizarre supposition introduces the first conflict of the story. Prior to this, the men were playing cards—not quite peacefully, but with only minor conflict due to competitiveness and gloating. Once the Swede suggests that murders have happened in the hotel, the rest of the group unites against his strange behavior (though Scully at first attempts to make peace). This line marks a shift from a relatively straightforward narrative (hearkening to Crane’s frequent Naturalism) to the highly emotional absurdism of Expressionism.

“I suppose I am going to be killed before I can leave this house! I suppose I am going to be killed before I can leave this house!”

This is an example of the repetition (especially in dialogue) that Crane uses throughout “The Blue Hotel” to emphasize his characters’ conviction regarding the unusual things they say. The insistence highlights the absurdity of his characters’ reactions to their circumstances, which in turn destabilizes the reader, who is dragged along with these sudden swerves. In this case, the Swede’s words reflect Isolation and Its Impact on the Human Psyche, as he increasingly believes that the other men are conspiring against him.

“‘Oh, I know,’ burst out the Swede. ‘I know what will happen. Yes, I’m crazy—yes. Yes, of course, I’m crazy—yes. But I know one thing—’ There was a sort of sweat of misery and terror upon his face. ‘I know I won’t get out of here alive.’”

This juxtaposition of “of course, I’m crazy” and “But I know one thing” characterizes much of the logic of “The Blue Hotel,” though rarely as explicitly as here. A character make an assertion, other characters point out its irrationality, and the first remains utterly convinced of his initial claim.

“He resembled a murderer.”

This is one of Crane’s intentional misdirects. By this point in the story, it seems very possible that the high emotion between the guests will lead to violence, and this sentence seems to foreshadow that Scully will be the perpetrator, when in fact the gambler will kill the Swede. The passage unfolds from the Swede’s point of view, however, highlighting his paranoia regarding the hotel proprietor and the other guests.

“Oh, I don’t know, but it seems to me this man has been reading dime novels, and he thinks he’s right out in the middle of it—the shootin’ and stabbin’ and all.”

The American West and its associated mythologies are recurring themes in American literature. While the West was often romanticized, whether as a place of great opportunity or of great danger, the Easterner here mocks the Swede for thinking of it too dramatically. Of course, this is merely the Easterner’s effort to apply logic to the Swede’s illogical outburst; there’s no evidence that his guess regarding the Swede’s reading habits is correct.

“Such scenes often prove that there can be little of dramatic import in environment. Any room can present a tragic front; any room can be comic. This little den was now hideous as a torture-chamber.”

Crane emphasizes that this is a story, a crafted narrative. In referencing how genre can affect atmosphere, Crane highlights that, while the apparent randomness of the story’s events imitates The Meaninglessness of the Universe, this is merely an illusion. There is no mistaking “The Blue Hotel” as a reporting of facts; the imitation of reality (with all the imperfections that come with imitation) is the point.

“Of course the board had been overturned, and now the whole company of cards was scattered over the floor, where the boots of the men trampled the fat and painted kings and queens as they gazed with their silly eyes at the war that was waging above them.”

The metaphor likening the fight to war highlights the ridiculousness of allowing violence to break out over a mere card game. The kings and queens (who might be leaders in a war) have “silly eyes”—another contrast that points out why violence is an overblown reaction in this scenario.

“During this pause, the Easterner’s mind, like a film, took lasting impressions of the three men—the iron-nerved master of the ceremony; the Swede, pale, motionless, terrible; and Johnnie, serene yet ferocious, brutish yet heroic. The entire prelude had in it a tragedy greater than the tragedy of action, and this aspect was accentuated by the long, mellow cry of the blizzard, as it sped the tumbling and wailing flakes into the black abyss of the south.”

Crane again points out that this scene is not reality but an invention—similar to a “film.” Film was extremely new in 1898, so the word more likely refers to photography. The reference poses the characters in a manufactured image, cast as types different from those they had previously embodied. This shows both the shortcomings of two-dimensional archetypes, which can never tell a whole story, and the problem with trying to make meaning of a single moment. This in turn suggests a problem of representation with the entire mode of the short story, which only tells a small portion of a narrative.

“We picture the world as thick with conquering and elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of the tempest pealing, it was hard to imagine a peopled earth. 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. 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. However, the Swede found a saloon.”

Crane’s movement into the first-person plural (away from third person) implicates his audience in the worldview he describes; in saying “we picture the world,” he is also telling his audience that they “picture the world as thick with conquering and elate humanity.” He shifts back to “one” when inviting a more poetical view of the world in light of the storm, in which humanity is “a marvel.” Next, Crane contrasts long, evocative sentences describing the conflict between man’s existence and the storm (man versus nature) with the two brief sentences at the end. If it takes a “coxcomb” not to die in the storm, but the Swede finds a saloon, the Swede must be the fool in question; the implication is that the Swede is too foolish to die in a comparatively “glamorous” struggle against nature.

“But a scrutiny of the group would not have enabled an observer to pick the gambler from the men of more reputable pursuits. He was, in fact, a man so delicate in manner, when among people of fair class, and so judicious in his choice of victims, that in the strictly masculine part of the town’s life he had come to be explicitly trusted and admired.”

Crane again offers a subverted archetype as well as some false foreshadowing. The gambler is, contrary to type, a good man with a positive reputation in the town. Yet, despite being named “judicious in his choice of victims,” he proves just as susceptible to unreasonable action as the rest of the characters in the story.

“There was a great tumult, and then was seen a long blade in the hand of the gambler. It shot forward, and a human body, this citadel of virtue, wisdom, power, was pierced as easily as if it had been a melon.”

The climax of the story, the murder of the Swede, is narratively understated and hidden in the passive voice. The long blade “was seen” and “shot forward”; the gambler, though the murderer, is not the subject in the sentence. Crane also employs irony in calling the body a “citadel of virtue, wisdom, [and] power” given that the Swede does not seem to possess any of these assets.

“Now let me tell you one thing. Let me tell you something. Listen! Johnnie was cheating!”

This twist comes in the last section of the story, after the gambler has received an extremely light sentence for the murder of the Swede. While the generally outlandish behavior of the Swede encourages the reader to believe he was incorrect in accusing Johnnie, the Easterner reveals not only that Johnnie cheated, but that the Easterner knew it all along. This revelation does not necessarily change the absurdity of the Swede’s emotional reaction (his anger is overblown for a game that, as both the Easterner and the cowboy emphasize, was not being played for money), though it does suggest that Johnnie’s offense at being accused was unwarranted. However, the revelation comes too late to affect the plot in any way.

“Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have collaborated in the murder of this Swede.”

The Easterner here lays out a theory of Social Responsibility and Culpability that comes as close to a clear thesis as this story possesses. No individual is responsible for an action caused by the many, however indirectly. When the Easterner counts five culpable men, he does not include the Swede himself in this tally.