Stephen Crane's Short Story, "The Essay

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The proprietor, Scully, is unable to calm the Swede down, unsuccessfully, and the Swede makes an ominous prediction. "I know I won't get out of here alive," he says.

Scully attempts to lay the blame at his son Johnnie's feet, but the Swede will not be swayed. "I will leave this house. I will go away, because I do not wish to be killed. Yes, of course, I am crazy -- yes." The Swede goes upstairs to retrieve his luggage and the men pondered the situation. Johnnie insists, correctly, that the men didn't do anything to provoke the Swede. The Easterner supports the boy, saying, "I didn't see anything at all." Scully follows the Swede upstairs in an attempt to get him to stay, and succeeds. They share a drink and return downstairs. They sit by the stove, ate dinner together and, despite the Swede's increasingly bizarre behavior, end up playing a game of cards. Then the Swede accuses Johnnie of cheating. "Such scenes often prove that there can be little of dramatic import in environment," Crane writes. "Any room can present a tragic front. …This little den was now hideous as a torture-chamber." Things go downhill from here.

Violence erupts in the room and Johnnie insists on fighting the Swede.

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For him, it is a matter of pride, "I'll fight any man what says I cheat," he throws at the At first, the other men try to stop the fight, but the Swede will not back down from his accusation and Johnnie won't back down from the need for a physical fight. Finally, the Swede agrees to fight Johnnie. "Yes, fight,' roared the He was like a demoniac," Crane writes. The other men seem to have given up. The cowboy is in despair and turns to Scully for an answer. "We'll let them fight," was the Irishman's verdict.

The Easterner, as the observer, take sit all in. The men have moved outside into the snow, and Crane notes that the Easterner "took lasting impressions of the three men." Scully was the "iron nerved master of the ceremony." The Swede was "Pale, motionless, terrible." Johnnie, the boy, was "serene yet ferocious, brutish yet heroic." The buildup to the fight, Crane, writes, "had in it a tragedy greater than the tragedy of action."

The fight that ensures between the Swede and Johnnie is violent, and the other three men -- Scully, the cowboy and the Easterner -- act as spectators and, at times, cheerleaders. The cowboy was cheering for.....

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