Humor in Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” Essay

Stephen extends short narration The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky is considered by many to be a masterpiece. superstar writer even called it the greatest invention ever written. One of the reasons the story is so good is that Crane uses conception to make some well(p) points almost people in general and the Old West in particular.In the initiative part of the story, Crane portrays bozo putter and his immature wife as humorous characters. Not only argon they unhandy with each another(prenominal), scarcely they be too completely out of base in the fancy railroad car that is taking them to the Yellow Sky. Crane makes us see them through the eyes of the condescending porter and the other passengers, who keep giving the couple stares or derisive enjoyment. dogshits fear about how the people of Yellow Sky leave react to his marriage is besides amusing because we would expect a townsfolk marshal to be brave, not afraid of the people he is nonrecreational to protect.Part II presents another comical situation- a l matchless inebriate is able to scare a whole town just because Jack Potter is away. This situation is especially funny because of an ironic contrast that the proofreader already knows about. The man the townspeople are depending on to protect them is the very(prenominal) man we have just learned is afraid to tell them he is married. Part II also includes the comical character of the un laughableing traveling salesman, whose increasingly agitated questions about Scratchy Wilson set the state for the face-off the reader knows will occur. Crane is in effect setting us up for the punch line of his story. First we hear about the raging, dire drunk who is terrorizing the town- and then we see him.In Part III we stand a close look at this Scratchy Wilson, whom we are supposedly prepared for. At first glance, he does behave like a typical ill-considered West villain. However, we soon learn details about him that make him seem ridiculous. For o ne thing, he wears a shirt do by women in New York City and boots favored by dwarfish boys in New England, hardly the outfit we would expect an authentic westward villain to wear. In fact, these details are the readers first hint of what will develop as Cranes major(ip) theme that the West is no longer a terribly cracked pose. The lengths Scratchy goes to in order to frighten a dog also show him to be a bit ludicrous as a bad guy.Scratchy may roar and bellow terrible invitations to fight, but Crane lets us know exactly how terrifying he authentically is The calm adobe preserved their demeanor at the passing of this humble thing in the middle of the street.In Part IV, Crane at long last brings his two major characters together for a showdown that is comical because it disappoints our expectations. approach Scratchy down without a gun, Potter proves to be just as brace as we have been led to believe, but as a villain, Scratchy turns out to be pretty easily subdued. Presented with the news of Potters marriage, he loses all his menace and sadly walks away. Ironically, he is defeat not by brute force or sheer braveness but instead by a foreign condition that he does not understand. His world is suddenly turned upside down by Potters news. Ferocious, gun-toting drunks and the courageous town marshals who fight them are not supposed to have wives. Once the bride comes to Yellow Sky, the rules of the game are so different that Scratchy no longer knows how to play.According to one critic, Donald B. Gibson, the point of Cranes story is that by the late 1800s, the Wild West was dead, even though some people living in that respect did not realize it. While Jack Potter has taken a big step toward adjusting to the changed world he lives in, Scratchy is simply mixed-up by it.Gibsons interpretation makes sense and it gets at the heart of the humor in Cranes story. However, one cannot help but suspect that Crane is doing more than simply mocking the conventions of the Western. That would make his story a funny parody, but certainly not a masterpiece. Crane is also showing us what happens to a society in transition, a coating whose values are in a state of flux. A simple child of the earlier plains, Scratchy Wilson is an anachronism, a man who finds himself out of place historically. Luckily, he has the good grade and good sense to realize his dilemma and walk away from what he cannot understand. But who knows- perhaps some solar day hell find himself a bride and bring her back to Yellow Sky.