To use the classic metaphor, people are pawns in the game of life. This comparison is motivated by a sense of humanity’s insignificance in the universal perspective. The metaphor also holds weight because of the sense of control in such a description. There is influence in a game, and while a game may be trivial in importance, the players at least have the ability to affect its outcome. Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel” tells the story of five men whose actions are significant only within the scope of the front room of a small Nebraska hotel—five men who try to be the masters of their fates. They play a game of cards which reflects their hands in the game of life. In “The Blue Hotel,” that card game between characters is central to the plot of the story. The game, however, holds significant meaning beyond being a simple narrative device. Crane uses the game to describe key themes and to characterize its players. Each individual character is established through his conduct in and around the game, and the pairings of the game allow Crane to create parallels between characters.
In the beginning of “The Blue Hotel,” Crane introduces the five major characters and quickly throws four of them into a card game. Over the course of the game’s first half, each character is established through his involvement in the game. The cowboy is one of the first to be described. Crane characterizes the cowboy as a “board-whacker,” with whom a game “is sure to become intense” (622). Both his strong opinions and his boisterous attitude define his personality. His interactions with characters throughout the story are often dramatic ones—for example, he tells Scully that he will start another fight with the Swede after the dispute is already settled (633). Crane carefully creates the cowboy’s speech and actions to display his behavior as cocky and puerile. The cowboy is established right away through his involvement in the card game, especially the “board-whacking,” as a character who is rambunctious.
Perhaps the most similar character to the cowboy is Johnnie, Scully’s son. Crane characterizes Johnnie during the first card game as taking immense pleasure from the cowboy’s antics at the table, which establishes Johnnie’s own rowdiness (622). As a character, Johnnie causes many of the story’s problems; he begins the first card game and he cheats in the second. He is impulsive in his actions—he is the first to accuse the Swede of being crazy, which he does after a few moments of argument about the Swede’s outburst (623). It seems as though his words are what drives the Swede to leave the room after the first card game. When Johnnie acts, he is impulsive and thoughtless about the effect of his actions on others. Using the card games, Crane depicts Johnnie as a raucous youth with no real loyalties.
Johnnie’s main role in the story is in his confrontation with the Swede, whose behavior is similar to Johnnie’s in many ways. The Swede watches Johnnie play a card game against an old farmer from the opposite side of the room, “aloof, but with a countenance that showed signs of an inexplicable excitement” (621). Before his involvement in the game begins in earnest, Crane establishes that the Swede shares Johnnie’s characterization as excitable and rambunctious. An important difference between Johnnie and the Swede, however, is Crane’s note that the Swede remains withdrawn from the game during this scene. While Johnnie is in his own home, the Swede is in a strange and unfamiliar land in a different country. The Swede is made to feel out of place by his surroundings, and Crane’s choice to name him with a foreign title as his only identification demonstrates the importance of the Swede’s outsider identity. The Swede possesses another important characteristic in his actions that end both card games. His outbursts, sudden and forceful, cause a change of scene and of attitude for most of the characters. Through these characterizations, Crane depicts the Swede as a tumultuous and alien person.
The Easterner, another character whose name makes them foreign to the setting, is characterized through his involvement in the card games as well. In the first game, he is quiet and miserable, his only speech or action being a rejection of the Swede’s appeal for an ally in the first argument offered “after prolonger and cautious reflection” (622). Crane establishes the Easterner’s careful thoughtfulness in this early scene. This is the first indication of the Easterner’s special position in the story as a voice of reason who is separate from the more impulsive characters. The Easterner’s silence is also key, as it is the quality which he condemns himself for in the final moments of the story: having known that Johnnie was cheating in the final game, he did not say or do anything to help the Swede. In his final conversation with the cowboy, the Easterner decries himself for his “refus[al] to stand up and be a man” by speaking up on behalf of the truth (638). This moment is powerfully characterized and foreshadowed by Crane’s earlier depiction of the Easterner as quiet and reserved.
The card game characterizes every main character in the story, including Crane’s portrayal of the character who does not even play. Scully’s role during these games is noteworthy; he is the only main character not to take direct part in either card game, but he is certainly not separate from them. His involvement in the games begins before all the characters have a chance to join in; when he first enters the hotel, he “destroy[s] the game of cards” by ordering Johnnie to assist the hotel’s new guests “[w]ith a loud flourish of words” (620). In another display of Scully’s manipulative tendencies, Scully scurries the Swede away after his interruption of the first game to calm him with whisky. Each of these attempts to change the way people act defines Scully as a manipulative character. While remaining a non-participant, Scully continues to affect the second game as well. Scully leaves the hotel in an attempt to capture more guests and “a gust of polar wind whirl[s] into the room as he open[s] the door” (628). This disturbs the players and sets them on edge, but it also scatters the cards. Even without his direct involvement in the game, he exercises considerable influence over those who play it. Scully’s characterization as a controlling man is present in all of his actions, and extends over the game of cards despite his distance from it.
The card games characterize each main character, but the pairings involved in the game create meaning as well. During the first game, teams are divided when the cowboy offers to be Johnnie’s partner, leaving the Swede and the Easterner to play together (621). This division is made before anyone is characterized, but the teams are meaningful in multiple senses. Johnnie and the cowboy are rambunctious and inconsiderate—they both enjoy the cowboy’s board-whacking because of the pain it causes their opponents. Both characters are at home in this setting: Johnnie in his own home, and the cowboy in the region of the country he lives in. Opposite them are the Swede and the Easterner, who by name alone are obviously not at home in the setting. Removed from their respective elements, they are both uncomfortable. They do not enjoy the cowboy’s board-whacking at all: Crane describes them as “miserable whenever the cowboy thundered down his aces and kings” (622). Upon the Swede’s outburst, these pairs are reinforced—Johnnie and the cowboy play off each other’s indignity toward the Swede while the Swede looks to the Easterner for an ally (622). These pairings create a sense of magnifying the characters’ traits. Johnnie and the cowboy seem particularly raucous where the Swede and the Easterner seem increasingly out-of-place. By the end of the first card game scene, Crane’s pairings have stressed each characterization and established the sense of conflict in the story.
The pairings do even more to show the substance of the characters as they move into the dramatic second card game. Though the teams are still the same, the Swede takes on a new attitude. Previously fearful, he becomes the instigator of the second game. Not only does he threateningly convince each player to re-enter the game, but he has “adopted the fashion of board-whacking” (628). The impulsiveness of his character is accentuated by marking his behavior as identical to his opposing team’s antics. It also marks the Swede’s departure from any pretense of alliance with the Easterner. At this point, the cowboy had ceased his board-whacking, which leaves the Swede as the lone boisterous man. The scene ends with the beginning of the fight, and the system of alliances is obviously different. The cowboy pushes the Swede around while the Easterner goes with Scully to Johnnie’s side. In the first game, the players had been a group of men defined as partners, balanced in their similarities. At the end of the second game, the Swede’s departure from his partnership with the Easterner marks a shift in the behavior of all of the men. The game is now a mismatch: three men (and Scully) versus one swaggering Swede. Not only does this shift speak to the momentum of each character’s actions, it highlights the Easterner’s choice to remain silent about Johnnie’s cheating. Crane’s use of the card game pairings ably describes the clashes of character in the story.
In many ways, the conflict of “The Blue Hotel” is a reflection of a card game. Each man makes a wager about how he will fare. To borrow gambling terminology, the cowboy goes along for the ride, emotional about how he fares in each hand. The Swede and Johnnie go all in, and the Swede tries his luck again at another table where a professional gambler gets the better of him. The Easterner folds when faced with a difficult round to play. These men each fare in life and in the game as much as they can control. Scully does not play, but does all he can to affect the game to his advantage. Crane’s use of the card game as a central feature of “The Blue Hotel” is a brilliant use of narrative structure, and his characterizations and parallels provide the story with intense meaning and emphasis.
Works Cited
Crane, Stephen. “The Blue Hotel.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 7th ed. Vol. 2. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2008. 619-38.
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