Sample Notes

Below are some excerpts of notes I took on Stephen Crane's short story "The Blue Hotel" while I was in graduate school. Note that I have included factual information, such as the date it was published and details of the plot, as well as ideas about themes and literary techniques.

"The Blue Hotel"

Publication

• The story appeared in an 1899 collection called The Monster and Other Stories.

Summary

• Scully, owner of the Palace Hotel in Nebraska, persuades a Swede, a cowboy, and an Easterner to stay at his hotel.
• The Swede and three locals play cards.
• The Swede acts as if he is paranoid, eventually accusing the hotel owner's son, Johnnie, of trying to kill him.
• The Swede goes upstairs to pack his bags, but Scully talks him into staying.
• The men begin playing cards again, but the Swede accuses Johnnie of cheating, and the two go outside in the swirling snow to fight.
• The Swede wins the fight, gets drunk, and enters another saloon, where he pesters a gambler.
• The gambler stabs the Swede.
• One of original players explains to another that he noticed that Johnnie was cheating and failed to speak up; he takes partial responsibility for the Swede's death and explains that all of the men had a role in the tragedy.

Issues and themes

Naturalism

Control by chemicals and our own bodies

• Alcohol makes Swede brash and leads him to start a fight with the gambler.
• Fragility of human body: "It shot forward, and a human body, this citadel of virtue, wisdom, power, was pierced as easily as if it had been a melon" (191).

Control by inner nature

• The Swede's pride causes him to start the fight with Johnnie; he says: "Maybe you think I can't fight! Maybe you think I can't! I'll show you, you skin, you card-sharp" (180).
• The Easterner's cowardice leads to fight: ". . . Johnnie was cheating. I saw him. I know it. I saw him. And I refused to stand up and be a man" (193).

Technique

• Darkness and cold outside frame these events in the saloon: "He might have been in a deserted village. 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" (188).
• Realistic details: When the saloon door opens, the wind hurls some of the playing cards against the wall.

Updated August 17, 1999 | University of North Carolina at Pembroke
© Mark Canada, 1999 | canada@sassette.uncp.edu

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