Watermarks When Touching the Hot Stove by Eric Verhine

Stephen Crane uses a massive, ominous stove, sprawled out in a tiny room and burning with "god-like violence," as a principal metaphor to communicate his interpretation of the world. Full of nearly restrained energy, the torrid stove is a symbol of the burning, potentially eruptive earth to which humans "cling" and of which they are a part. As a literary naturalist, Crane interpreted reality from a Darwinian perspective, and saw the earth driven by adamant natural laws, violent and powerful laws which are often hostile to humans and their societies, and he conceived of humans as accidents, inhabiting a harsh, irrational, dangerous world. Crane's famous depiction of the world is this: It is "a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb" (Crane 783). With two of his short stories, "The Blue Hotel" and "The Open Boat," Crane explores how humans react when the stove bursts and natural flames blaze furiously; Crane sets two different groups of men into situations in which the laws of nature are against them. The natural laws that govern the weather and the ocean storm against a group of men who are trying, albeit in an exhausted dinghy, to make the coast of Florida in the story "The Open Boat." In "The Blue Hotel," the animalistic laws that determine human behavior birth chaos among a group of strangers. One can readily see both similarities and differences in the reactions of the two groups of men to the world. That, in both stories, both groups of men are shocked and yet charmed by the violence of nature is an essential similarity; that in one story the men work together to save one another and in the other story the men beat and even kill one another is an essential difference. Another important difference exists, however, one which I will present and consider in this paper: In "The Open Boat," the characters honestly face pitiless nature as it is and then reckon with it, but, in "The Blue Hotel," the characters try to conceal the vicious laws of nature and to suppress their knowledge of reality.

In "The Open Boat," Crane writes of the "EXPERIENCE OF FOUR MEN FROM THE SUNK STEAMER COMMODORE" (743). Having escaped the sunken ship, the four men--the cook, the correspondent, the oiler, and the captain--are now in a dinghy sailing obstinately in the midst of a seething ocean for the coast of Florida. From the beginning of the story till the end, one can admire these honest men, who confront such a dangerous environment.

One passage that comes early in the story shows their honest acceptance of reality: "A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats" (744). Passages like this one in which the characters personify nature in a negative way abound in this story. Of course, no wave is "nervously anxious," but this interpretation of reality--as opposed to the interpretation that the characters of "The Blue Hotel" give--is one that actually attempts to point out some truth about dangerous nature; the men, in their human way, are accepting nature as it is. The joyless acceptance of reality via personification is what characterizes the men who sail in the open boat.

The men's candid discussion of the precarious circumstances in which they find themselves also reveals their honesty. The cook shouts at one point, "Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind... If not, where would we be? Wouldn't we have a show?" (745). Perhaps buoyed by the cook's optimism, the oiler and the correspondent agree, but, humorously reminding the men of the gravity of their situation, the captain inquires, "Do you think we've got much of a show now, boys?" (745). At this, the men grow silent and once again concentrate "doggedly." From scenes like this the reader learns not that the men are pessimistic, but that they are realistic, realistic about the situation in which they find themselves.

Furthermore, by relating the thinking of the men, Crane provides the strongest evidence for their honesty concerning nature. "When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he wishes first to throw bricks at the temple," writes Crane, adding that each character has at least once chewed on this unhappy thought (755). To Crane, the literary naturalist, humans are not God's favored creations, which live in a beneficent nature provided for their wellbeing; they are, rather, products of nature itself, a chaotic and violent nature that has no special interest in humankind, as the four seaman do and must realize. In another personification, the correspondent sees nature as "indifferent, flatly indifferent" (757). No longer do these four wise men impute human sympathy or pity to nature; they impute, rather, indifference, lack of concern. The men's personifications of nature are both instructive and ironic. The personifications are instructive because they relate the anthropomorphic lens through which these men and all humans see nature, and everything else. Precisely because of this, the personifications are ironic : Nature, as Crane presents it, resists personification; it is not at all human, and it is unable to "regard" or to "feel" or to be "indifferent." According to Crane, nature stands apart from humans as their maker, uncaring--unable to care--a destructive, generative, dangerous thing. This the men intuitively realize, but the constraints of human language force them to personify.

While one might assume that such a realization leads to despair, precisely the opposite is true in Crane's stories: This realization leads not to despair, but to survival. The men's acknowledgement of the true nature of reality does not make them pessimists; it makes them sharp, keen, aware, calling forth all of those human qualities necessary to survive a calamitous situation. Furthermore, it does something more helpful to human life: It causes humans to recognize their requisite need for one another in the midst of this inhumane nature, thereby killing indifference to the suffering of others. After the correspondent has acknowledged the naturalistic worldview, an old verse comes to his mind: "A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers/ There was a lack of woman's nursing, there was a dearth of woman's tears/ But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrades' hand/ And he said: 'I never more shall see my own, my native land'" (755). Previously, the correspondent's response to the "soldiers plight" has been one of apathy; now, however, having experienced his own plight and having acknowledged the difficult world, the correspondent is "sorry for the soldier of the Legion who lay dying in Algiers" (755). Honest acceptance of nature as it really is does not lead to despair: It leads humans to sympathize with one another, to help one another, and, possibly, to survive.

Dishonesty, however, about reality leads to misfortune; in contrast with the correspondent, the cook, the oiler, and the captain, the characters of "The Blue Hotel" do not honestly face nature: They attempt to conceal it in diverse ways, and disaster ensues. At the start of my discussion of this story, I must mention that the natural laws at work in this story are not those laws that govern the ocean or the winds; they are the laws that govern human behavior. Thus these laws are easily and often unconsciously hidden, but the distinction still remains valid: The characters of "The Blue Hotel," unlike those of "The Open Boat," attempt to cover up reality and the naturalistic world.

Scully throws the first significant blanket over reality in his attempt to persuade the frightened Swede to stay at the Blue Hotel. Recall that, while waiting out a blizzard, Johnnie, the Easterner, the cowboy, and the Swede, the main characters of "The Blue Hotel" along with Scully, decide to play High-Five. Soon, the Swede begins his seemingly ridiculous babble about his eminent murder: "Gentlemen... 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!" (771). Scully comes into the room, and the Swede, now terrified, shouts that he is leaving, rips open the door, and pounds up the stairs. After howling at Johnnie, Scully pursues the Swede and finds him preparing his baggage. Here the concealment begins. Scully says to the Swede, "Man, man... have you gone daffy... And did you sure think they were going to kill you?" (772-773). "I did," responds the Swede (773). To this, Scully gives an odd reply: "Why man, we're goin' to have a line of ilictric street-cars in this town next spring" (773). The Swede repeats this numbly, and Scully continues, "And... there's a new railroad goin' to be built... Not to mention the four churches and the smashin' big brick school house... there's a big factory too" (773). Look, Scully appeals to the Swede, at how advanced we are with our ilictricity and factories and schools and churches. Could those capable of such sophistication, he asks, be capable of murder too? Of course, Scully is incorrectly assuming that, since humans have made progress in technology, education, and even religion, they are now tame and devoid of vicious intent. At least, that is what he is trying to convince the Swede of at the moment. In so doing, Scully is unwittingly and unconsciously covering up a truth about human nature--its possible brutality and cruelty. Do not misunderstand, it is not that Scully knows what will happen (the murder) yet acts as if it will not; rather, it is that he claims that nothing so terrible could possibly happen.

Scully's first fallacy having failed, he takes up the "family man" argument. To the argument from human progress the Swede responds, "Mr. Scully... how much do I owe you?" (773). At this, Scully forces the Swede into his (Scully's) room and shows the Swede pictures of his children: "That's the picter of my little gal that died. Her name was Carrie. And then here's the picter of my oldest boy, Michael. He's a lawyer in Lincoln an' doin well. I gave that boy a grand education" (773). Could a man, he says behind his words to the Swede, a family man like me, ever allow something so dreadful to happen to you? Once again, this is just another attempt to cover the reality about human nature that the Swede insanely sees. When this fails, Scully grabs the alcohol, which never fails to conceal reality.

Why does Scully behave as he does, concealing human nature and reality from the Swede? An immediate obvious answer is that Scully wants simple, animalistic self-preservation--in the way of money, profit. One cannot appeal to Scully's argument and say that he acts as he does because his school and church have taught him to aid those in distress. Crane strives to show that Scully is acting for his own benefit. Scully is the man who "works his seductions upon any" traveler; he also "catches" humans and makes "them prisoners" (768). However, there is a profounder explanation that accounts for the fact that Scully lies about himself and his fellow humans as he does unconsciously, as from compulsion. That compulsion is the "conceit of man" (783). A strong vanity, or hubris, drives all humans and has led to their survival. Crane asserts this late in the story : "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" (783). Vain above all other animals, humans necessarily must, according to Crane, look favorably upon themselves in order to survive. They must imagine themselves as the centers of the universe, as the fulcrum, the hinge. Scully is no different, so he accepts the agreeable assumptions regarding the progress and goodness of humans.

The Easterner too hides reality and something of human behavior when he refuses to tell that Johnnie is cheating at cards. Recall that, in the second game of High-Five, the Swede gets angry with Johnnie because he believes that he has been cheating. The Easterner keeps quiet, and a fight follows. At the end of the story, however, the quiet Easterner confirms the Swede's claim to the cowboy, "Johnnie was cheating. I saw him. I know it. I saw him" (787). Johnnie acts in accord with a competitive, animalistic nature, and the Easterner covers it up. In his speech at the end of the story, the reflective Easterner reveals that their cover-ups and their lies brought the disaster; that is my interpretation of the speech. Everyone selfishly conceals reality, and that deception kills the Swede, not some gambler or his knife. Of himself, the Easterner confesses, "I refused to stand up and be a man. I let the Swede fight it out alone" (787). And Johnnie is a cheat. "And then old Scully himself" adds the Easterner, implicating him in the lying. "We are all in it," including the cowboy, he concludes, all a part of a "human movement" of concealment and cowardice. While this interpretation of the Easterner's final speech neither exhaustively explains it nor accounts for its full meaning, my interpretation that the Easterner is revealing the men's concealment of reality does make sense of a very obscure passage: "Usually there are from a dozen to forty women really involved in every murder, but in this case it seems to be only five men" (787). Since ancient times men have presented women as liars, seducers, deceivers, those who conceal reality. In a metaphorical sense, all women fell in the character of Eve. Taking up this common, false conception of women, the Easterner implies that, like other murders which in some way involve women and their deceptiveness, this necessary "human movement" has been the result of lies and deception about the nature of things.

In the two stories considered above I have asserted an essential difference: that one group faces reality as it is and another group conceals it. Why is this so important to Crane? The answer, as I have already hinted, is that his characters' interpretations of reality, be they true or mendacious, lead to consequences. If the men interpret reality as it is, they are compelled to aid one another and struggle for mutual survival, realizing their dependency on one another. However, if they attempt to sow lies about reality, they reap frightening consequences, like violence and murder. Earlier in the essay I asserted that the characters' joyless acceptance of nature in "The Open Boat" leads the men to help and sympathize with one another. The opposite is true in "The Blue Hotel;" in that story, the characters' lies cause dissention and tragedy. Truthfulness in response to nature is everything. What Paul Johnson once wrote about Ernest Hemingway's characters is also true of Crane's: They "stand or fall by whether they are truthful or not" (Johnson 152).

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