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A computer assisted analysis of Stephen Crane's grammatical style

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A computer assisted analysis of Stephen Crane's grammatical style

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Content A COMPUTER ASSISTED ANALYSIS OF STEPHEN CRANE'S GRAMMATICAL STYLE by Dorothy Margaret Guinn A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) JANUARY 1978 Copyright by Dorothy Margaret Guinn 1978 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007 This dissertation) written by ·------------------- Dorothy _Margaret __ Guinn ___________________ _ under the direction of h.er ... Dissertation Com mittee) and appro1Jed by all its members, has been presented to (lfld accepted by The Graduate School) in partial fulfillnient of requirernents of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY z:.~A ~ ··········~----------------------- ---· ·······················~···--y--·--------- Dean Date .... /4~ · __ 1 .1/.~-------------------- / I DISSE TA'TION I ITTEE ------------------------------ ----------------· J 1 Chairman .. - . . . ..f. .. -.. - /:-_._ .--., .. - --- . TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION Purpose Procedure Choice of Texts Choice of Works Choice of Grammatical Theory . . 11 1 II. ASSESSMENTS OF CRANE'S STYLE IN THE CRITICAL TRADITION 17 Early Studies The 1920's The 1950's to the Present The Extra-Linguistic Dimension of Style The Quasi-Linguistic Dimension of Style The Linguistic Dimension of Style Summary III. SYNTAX AS AN EXPRESSIVE INSTRUMENT Structures and Strategies Base Sentences Sentence Expansion Substitution Coordination Modification Parenthetical Insertion Right-, Mid-, and Left-Branching Coherence An Overview of Crane's Syntactic Style IV. STAGE ONE: PROVENIENCE AND EARLY MATURITY The ''Sullivan County Sketches" Maggie: A Girl of the Streets The ~ed Badge of Courage 46 90 V. STAGE TWO: TRANSITION AND LATE MATIJRITY "The Wise Men," "The Five White Mice," and "A Man and Some Others" "The Open Boat," "The Monster," "The Blue Hotel," "The Price of the Harness," and "The Clan of No-Name" Summary VI. STAGE THREE: NEW HORIZONS The O'Ruddy Summary VII. CONCLUSION SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDIX A APPENDIX B APPENDIX C APPENDIX D APPENDIX E APPENDIX F APPENDIX G . . . 111 144 193 216 227 233 240 242 266 278 284 299 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Purnose When Stephen Crane prematurely died at the age of twenty-eight, his literary bequest was a remarkably fine body of novels, short stories, and poems. Influential in his own decade, the 1890's, and beyond into the twentieth century--especially because of his super lative style--Crane has secured his place as a major American writer. 1 From the first, critics of Crane's work have generally agreed upon the striking nature of its style and its key role in his arListic success. However, attention to what constitutes its uniqueness was minimal until the 1950's. And since then, to borrow Seymour Chatman's classification · 2 of approaches to style, most studies of Crane's style have been extra- linguistic, concentrating on his favored choices of theme, genre, types of characters, and the like. Next most frequent are quasi-linguistic studies, those of Crane's favored imagery and word choice. Thelin guistic aspect of Crane's style has generally remained neglected. Only one study focuses exclusively and extensively on Crane's grammatical choices: Eleanor Steppe's unpublished dissertation, "A Transforma- 3 tional Analysis of Stephen Crane's Novels." Her in-depth study of Crane's generative and transformational choices in 150 sentences from three of Crane's prose fiction works affirms their belonging to the particular genres to which critics often assign them: naturalistic (Maggie: A Girl of the StTeets), impressionistic (The Red Badge of Courage), and romantic (Active Service); and specifies the unified inter-relationship of manner and matter as responsible for the strength of Maggie and The Red Badge and a diffuse inter-relation~tip as responsible for the weakness of Active Service. 2 1 This study differs from Stoppe's in aim, method, and scope. Its aim is to determine the role syntax plays in the development of Crane's stylistic artistry throughout his career and its consequences for Crane as a writer. The data for this study are narrative-descrip tive samples drawn from the entire spectrum or Crane's prose fiction. The salient features of Crane's grammatical choices 1n these samples that are amenable to computer analysis are examined with computer as sistance, a requisite aid for such an extensive study. Hence, al though this dissertation too is characterized by close grammatical analysis, its focus is primarily on surface structures, and its scope is broad rather than deep. In the remainder of Chapter I, I will discuss my choice of edi tions, types of passages, works included in the study, and grammatical theo-ry. Chapter II reviews past critical assessments of Crane's style. Chapter III outlines a grammar of linguistic features that critics of style agree contribute to syntactic versatility, and pre sents an overview of Crane's changing grammatical style based on two representative passages, one from the early Sullivan County tales and the other from a late war story, "The Clan of No-Name." Chapters IV, V, and VI argue for three stages in Crane's syntactic development. 3 Chapter IV presents 1n detail features of Crane's early style based on selections from the "Sullivan County Sketches," Maggie, and The Red Badge. Chapter V establishes Crane's Mexican and Western adventure tales as a transition between his early work and later work, repre sented by "The Open Boat," "The Monster," "The Blue Hotel," and the late war tales. Chapter VI argues that Crane moves on to new horizons with his last novel, The O'Ruddy, left uncompleted at his untimely death. Chapter VII summarizes the findings of the study. Procedure Choice of Editions. Any literary study demands the best and most re liable editions of an author's work. Ideally one strives to get as close as possible to an author's own words, untainted by non-authorial emendations, whether intentional ones by publishers, careless ones by copyists and compositors, or authorial ones forced by publishers' pressures. Crane's work presents many problems in this regard. Much of his work was published in newspapers, an outlet notorious for typo graphical errors and arbitrary editorial cuts in the name of predicted reader wrath or the exigencies of space. In addition, Crane often was unable to proofread his work before publication, and when he did was often careless in correcting mistakes. For many of his works manu scripts are nonexistent; typescripts are often nonexistent too. The Virginia Edition of The Works of Stephen Crane is intended to remedy such textual problems in Crane's work and stand as an accurate critical edition, one scholars can use with assurance. This disserta- tion mainly relies upon the Virginia Edition but not exclusively for reasons that will be pointed out below. 4 The Virginia Edition serves as text for all selections from the "Sullivai-i County Sketches," "The Wise Men," "The Five White Mice," "A Man and Some Others," "The Open Boat," "The Monster," "The Blue Hotel," "The Price of the Harness," and The O'Ruddy. 4 For the most part edi tor Bowers' decisions about substantive and accidentals emendations, spelling, and so forth are accepted. Occasionally, however, alternate readings have been chosen, mostly reverting to Crane's manuscript wording where available. For example, in The O'Ruddy Bowers opts for past tense "chose" rather than this study's choice of the manuscript's present tense "choose": "The inn-keeper had told me that Kensington Gardens was the place where the grand people mostly choose to walk and flirt and show their clothes on a clear Sunday." At other times, late authorial changes chosen by Bowers have been emended so that what Crane wrote at the particular time period being examined is restored. For example, Crane later revised his original frequent use of "mystic" 1n "A Man and Some Others," finding substitutes such as "mysterious," "strange," and "uncanny," substitutions that are deleted in favor of "mystic" here. All emendations are listed in Appendix G. The Virginia Edition does not serve as text for Maggie and The Red Badge ~1nce, as pointed out by a number of scholars, though un doubtedly on the whole the best available, The Works includes far from ideal critical editions of Maggie in Bowery Tales, Volume I, and The 5 Red Badge, Volume III. Nor are the editions of each novel long con- 5 sidered standard any more ideal. Up until the mid and late 1950's, when the 1893 Maggie's signifi cance as an important work in its own right was perceived, the 1896 Appleton version was generally considered standard despite deletions of individual "profane and objectionable" words and even whole sec tions, such as Maggie's encounter with the fat man in Chapter XVII; deletions apparently produced by the Appleton editor or under his pres sure in order to satisfy the requirements of the genteel reading pub lic. Crane's letters to Hitchcock testify that Crane did not initiate reducing or subtracting "the words that hurt." 6 "Jaded" though he was with revising Maggie, Crane still accurately perceived that the new Maggie was in spirit as well as letter not like the old: "Seems to me the book wears quite a new aspect from very slight omission." 7 Under Bowers' editorial hand, the Virginia Edit"on of Maggie displays still another aspect. It is an editorial composite of the 1893 and 1896 edi tions of Magg_it- that 1s even further removed from Crane's· words than the 1896 edition. Hence Crane's 1893 version of Maggie, available in f'ac simile, was chosen for the Maggie text. 8 The Virginia Edition of The Red Badge presents problems similar to those of Maggie. As textual scholars have remarked, Bowers has emended the novel excessively, imposing a complex "system" on the nov el, a system that he reads into Crane's intentions, unfulfilled but nevertheless evident to Bowers. Although Bowers' system has mainly to do with the rendering of dialect, the problems of emendation carry over elsewhere. Bowers, adhering to the 1895 edition of The Red Badge, excises extensive manuscript passages, passages unmarked for excision 6 and for which no clear proof exists of Crane's authorizing their exci sion. Furthermore, the crucial question has been raised as to whether or not these excisions, if Crane did indeed authorize them, were made under publisher pressure, especially since those at the novel's end shift meaning: from ironic mockery of Henry Fleming to acceptance of 9 his self-approval. Therefore, in order to hold closely to Crane's own words, and since a facsimile of The Red Badge holograph manuscript is readily available, Crane's manuscript provides the text for The Red Badge selections. The facsimile of the holograph rough draft manu- cript serves for a supplemental assessment of stylistic changes be tween the rough draft and final manuscript in this key work of Crane's. 10 Any emendations made in Maggie and The Red Badge, almost entirely typographical and spelling corrections, are listed in Appendix G. Choice of ?assages. Since it is best to keep passages for analysis and comparison as much alike as possible to reduce the variables and make stylistic study meaningful, only descriptive-narrative passages from Crane's prose fiction were selected. Dialogue and introductory or sub sequent utterances related to dialogue were omitted, even if more than the minimal "he said" (for example, in "' Ah, what deh hell,' he said, and smote the deeply-engaged one on the back of the head" from Maggie, neither dialogue nor subsequent words would be included). 11 Because this study ¼as meant to characterize changes 1n Crane's grammatical 12 choices as he proceeded through his career, should such changes occur, the data encompass passages from Crane's prose fiction beginning with the "Sullivan County Sketches," written mostly in April and May 1892, and ending with Crane's last work, his novel The O'Ruddy, compl ted through Chapter XXV when Crane died in June 1900. 7 Quantitative studies of the kind attempted here ordinarily rely on a data base of 10,000 word samples from approximately four works by a particular author. However, two factors argue against proceeding 1n exactly this fashion with Crane's work. The first is, that his predi lection for the short story and short novel forms combined with ex tensive use of dialogue (for example The Third Violet 1s a short novel composed mainly of dialogue) frustrates extraction of the desired num ber of words from single works. The second is that choosing a smaller number of words from more works enhances the chance of perceiving any subtle and gradual changes in Crane's style. Hence, selected passages incorporate less than 10,000 words each, even from the novels. Where short stories constitute the data base for a particular time span in Crane's career, several stories written in close sequence are grouped to obtain a cumulative word count approximating that of the novels. Choice of Works. The works chosen for study, their groupings, approxi mate writing date, and word count from the passages are: Works and Dates The "Sullivan County Sketches" (mostly April and May 1892) From those narratives as a group which involve the "little man" as central character: "F M . our en 1n a Cave," "The Octopush," "A Ghoul's Accountant," "The Black Dog," "Killing His Bear 11 "The Cry of a Huckleberry Pudding" "The Mesmeric Mountain." ' Group No. Words 1 3678 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (finished-Januaryl893) The Red Badge of Courage (draft) (1894) 13 The Red Badge of Courage (manuscript) 1894 "The Wise Men," "The Five White Mice," "A Man and Some Others." (late spring or early summer 1896) "The Open Boat" (February 1897) "The Monster" (September 1897) "The Blue Hotel" (December 1897) "The Price of the Harness" (September 1898) "The Clan of No-Name" (October 1898) The O'Ruddy (completed through Chapter XXV when Crane died in June 1900) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 5022 1853 6780 5269 5727 4862 6616 8 Total Words 39 807 14 , Although different critics would disagree on the qualitative rank ing of these works, except for the early "Sullivan County Sketches," all are generally accepted as being among Crane's best prose fiction efforts. Choice of Grammatical Theory. Once one decides to study a writer's grammatical choices, the problem arises about which grammar to apply. The three major competing theories are traditional, structural, and transformational-generative. The last, muddy and contentious though the field is today, offers the dual advantage of analyzing both deep and surface structures and the transformations chosen to derive the latter from the former. For example, the surface structure The fright ened sparrow flew away quickly contains three underlying propositions: Something frightened the sparrow. The sparrow flew away. The sparrow flew quickly. Recovering these underlying propositions shows among I 9 other things that the instigating agent has been deleted in the surface structure. One can also see that other transformations could have been performed, resulting in different surface structures. To give only one possible alternative derivation, the sentence might have been written: When something frightened the sparrow, it flew away quickly. In this derivation, the outside force frightening the sparrow is assumed and emphasized. Studying writers' recurring transformational choices, both ! of optional transformations and kinds of transformational operations, can make explicit our intuitive reactions to their style, "simple," 15 "complex," and so forth. However, while the advantages of transformational-generative gram mar cannot be denied, such analysis has the disadvantage of taking time, much time; hence, studies in this mode depend upon limited amounts of data. Stoppe's study of Stephen Crane's style, mentioned earlier, depends upon fifty sentences (some, very short sentences) each from three of Crane's novels. Curtis W. Hayes's comparison of the styles of Edward Gibbon and Ernest Hemingway is based upon one hundred sentence prose samples from each of the writers. 16 These are lengthier than most others in this mode, which are generally limited to a par agraph or two from one work or from several works if authors are being 17 compared. Both traditional and structural grammars lack the dual advantage of transformational-generative grammar; they look at only surface structure. Yet each can, in its own way, also make explicit our intu itive reactions to a writer's style. 10 Analyses conducted within the traditional approach usually examine particular aspects of a writer's style that catch the critic's notice, say a writer's use of finite versus non-finite verbs, or whether modi fication is mainly adjectival or adverbial, using, of course, the tra ditional parts of speech categories in the analysis. Ian watt employs the resources and terminology of traditional grammar to study Henry 18 James's late prose style. Based upon his examination of the first paragraph of The Ambassadors, Watt establishes a quantitative basis for intuitive critical reactions labeling James's late prose style as characteristically abstract (revealed in his preference for intransi tive verbs many abstract nouns, much use of reported speech intro duced by "that," elegant variation to avoid piling up personal pro nouns and adjectives, and the presence of many negatives and near nega tives). Watt's syntactic analysis leads him to see style as psycho logical revelation: "The most obvious and demonstrable feature of James's prose style, its vocabulary and syntax, are direct reflections of his attitude to life and his conception of the novel. ,,l 9 Yet, ex emplary as Watt's study 1s, one questions the validity of his extend ing his conclusions not only to characterize the style of The Ambas sadors as a whole but to James's late style in general, all on the limited basis of one paragraph. Structural grammar approaches to style can assume a variety of forms. For example, within this school, M.A.K. Halliday in his sys temic grammar distinguishes three levels of syntactic structure: that of the sentence, that of the simple clause (which consists of constitu- 11 ents such as subject, predicate, complement, adjunct), and that of the group, nominal or verbal. 20 Using these categories as a bas·i s, one may examine, for example, sentence length as a criterion of simplicity or complexity by analyzing the immediate constituents of a sentence. That is, one may ascertain whether the immediate constituents consist of one clause or more than one, whether the constituents are paratactic or hypotactic, and so forth as a basis for judgment, even granting that multiple factors make it difficult to fully determine sentence com plexity. As part of her more comprehensive analysis of Shakespeare's grammatical style, Burton uses this approach to examine sentence ele ments in Richard II and Antony and Cleopatra, concluding that although the syntax of Richard II is simpler in one way, its immediate constitu ents tend more often to be single clauses, the syntax of Antony and Cleopatra is simpler in other ways such as sentence length, preference for parataxis over hypotaxis, and a decrease in clause structures at lower levels of the sentence. 21 Halliday uses his own grammatical categories to discuss the style of Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" and some short prose passages, concen trating on nominal group patterns [(Modifier) Head (Qualifier) where the head may optionally be preceded by a modifier and optionally fol lowed by a qualifier], lexical sets (words grouped according to com mon reference), and cohesion (created by grammatical dependence; co ordination; anaphora, as in deictics, which refer to elements outside their structure; and lexical repetition) to illustrate the advantages of applying descriptive grammar to literary stylistic analysis. 22 He 12 finds that in "Leda," with its "preponderance of nominal groups, the verbal items are considerably deverbali.zed," but that they "get lexi cally more powerful as they get grammatically less 'verbal.' n 23 Both these critics, and others operating in the same mode, offer interesting observations on style, qualitative judgments supported by quantitative facts. Halliday does not use the computer to aid his analysis (although Burton does), but his categories of grammar have proved amenable to computer programming, unlike the categories and processes of trans formational-generative grammar, which have not. Computer assistance, of course, spells the difference between a critic's analyzing brief selections from an author's work and analyzing an extensive corpus such as that assembled for this study, with its approximately 40,000 words and 2,400 sentences. In any case, much of what we observe about style resides in surface structures. Furthermore, a text fully marked for both form and function can be submitted to interpretation by more than one grammatical approach. That is, if a marked text shows, say, a preponderance of sentences beginning with adverbials, one can easily discuss these in terms of left-branching embedding versus right-branch ing. In addition, enlisting the computer's support, more than perhaps any other means because of numerous steps requiring minute examination of the data, enforces close reading of the literary work undergoing study. Therefore, because of the advantages that structural grammar and computer assistance offer, their combined potential was called upon L_ 13 for this grammatical analysis of Stephen Crane's style. (See Appendix A for discussion of the computer program used and the computer process. Appendix B contains the key to the computer code for forms and func tions, Appendix C representative samples of the various computer printouts obtained for analysis.) I 14 Notes 1 Numerous critics admire the quality of Crane's style. Ford Madox Ford early acclaimed him as "the first American writer," who neither looked to Europe for guidance or protest, in "Stephen Crane," Portraits from Life (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1937), p. 46. Representative also are John Berryman, who takes special pains to praise Crane's style, and note its becoming an ideal model for subse quent American prose (in Stephen Crane [New York: William Sloane, Associates, Inc., 1950]); R. W. Stallman, who avers that that which is permanent in Crane's work is his use of language (in his Introduction to Stephen Crane: An Omnibus [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952]); and Maurice Bassan, who recognizes Crane's remarkable literary achievement and the influence of his style on such writers as Ernest Hemingway (in his Preface to Stephen Crane's 'Maggie': Text and Context, ed. Maurice Bassan [Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1966]). 2 "Stylistics: Quantitative and Qualitative," Style (Winter 1967), 29-43. 3 "A Transformational Analysis of Stephen Crane's Novels," St. Louis University 1973. 4 The Works of Stephen Crane, ed. Fredson Bowers (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1969- ). The "Sullivan County Sketches" are in Vol. VIII; "The Wise Men," "The Five White Mice," "A Man and Some Others," "The Open Boat," and "The Blue Hotel" are in Vol. V; "The Monster" is in Vol. VII; and The O'Ruddy is in Vol. IV. Sub sequent references to these stories and novel appear in the text. Ref erences to other stories or introductory material appear in notes with this edition hereafter cited as The Works. 5 See particularly Hershel Parker and Brian Higgins' "The Virginia Edition of Stephen Crane's Maggie: Mirror for Textual Scholars," Proof, 6 (in press); but also Thomas L. McHaney's and Donald Pizer's reviews of Bowery Tales, Vol. I of The Works,in American Literary Realism, 4 (Winter 1971), 91-97, and Modern Philology, 68 (November 1970), 212-214. 6 Stephen Crane: Letters, eds. R. W. Stallman and Lillian Gilkes (New York: New York University Press, 1960), pp. 112-113; hereafter cited as Letters. 7 Letters, pp. 122 and 113. 8 Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, ed. Joseph Katz (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1966). 9 Hershel Parker in his review of The Red Badge of Courage: A Facsimile Edition of the Manuscript and The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of The American Civil War, Vol. II of The Works, in Nineteenth Century Fiction, 30 (March 1976), 558-562, plausibly argues that the 15 same conventional religious strictures forcing excisions in Maggie were also responsible for those in The Red Badge, in the latter case dic tating an upbeat, "the young man is saved," ending. 10 Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage: A Facsimile Edition of the Manuscript, ed. Fredson Bowers (Washington, D. G.: NCR/Microcard Editions, 1972 and 1973 . Subsequent references to this edition appear in the text. 11 This is not to say that a study of Crane's dialogue would not be interesting and valuable . In fact, dialogue in a small segment of Crane's work has been studied by Alan Robert Slotkin in "A Study of the Use of Dialect and Diction in Selected Works of Stephen Crane: The Language of New York City and Its Rural Environs," Diss. University of South Carolina 1970. 12 Bernard O'Donnell in An Analysis of Prose Style to Detennine Authorship (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), p.59, states that"it is gener ally accepted that a writer's style may change over a long period of time [but] in a short period [such as, one may assume, Crane's eight year writing career] . . . style tends to remain stable." See also Fredson Bowers, who asserts in direct reference to syntactic order, idiom, and subject-verb agreement that Crane had "relatively fixed stylistic habits." In his Introduction to Bowery Tales, Vol. I of The Works, p. lxxi. 13 The draft does not figure in the major study. However, since The Red Badge is acclaimed Crane's major work, it was deemed of interest to analyze stylistic changes between draft and manuscript. Some of these changes enter into the discussion of Crane's style in Chapter IV; Appendix F presents a more detailed analysis. The data for comparison of the draft and manuscript are those passages from the draft that are counterparts of those from the manuscript included in the larger study. 14 The computer program counts compounds as one word. 15 Richard Ohmann's article, "Generative Grammars and the Concept of Literary Style," Word, 20 (1964), 424-439, was one of the first to argue that examination of writers' habitual transformational choices is important to literary stylistic analysis. 16 "A Stud~r in Prose Styles: Edward Gibbon and Ernest Hemingway," Texa~ Studies in Literature and Language, 7 (1966), 371-386. 17 See, for example., Ohmann's "Generative Grammars and Literary Style," in which he examines specimen paragraphs from Faulkner, Heming way, James, and D. H. Lawrence. 18 "The First Paragraph of The Ambassadors: An Explication," in Essays in Criticism (July 1960); rpt. in Contemporary Essays on Style, eds. Glen A. Love and Michael Payne (New York: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1969), pp. 266-283. 19 Watt, p. 282. 20 See "Categories of a Theory of Grammar," Word, 17 (December 1961), 241-292. 21 Dolores M. Burton, Shakespeare's Grammatical Style (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973), pp. 102-115. 2 2 M.A. K. Halliday, "Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies," in English Studies Today, ed. G. I. Duthie (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964); rpt. in Linguistics and Literary Style, ed. Donald C. Freeman (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970), pp. 57-72. 23 Halliday, pp. 62-63. 16 17 CHAPTER II ASSESSMENTS OF CRANE'S STYLE IN TI-IE CRITICAL TRADITION Stephen Crane's style has always attracted attention. And crit ics of Crane's day and since, whether disapproving of his style or com plimentary, have generally not been content merely to note its unique ness, but rather have in a variety of ways attempted to analyze, char acterize, and describe it. The purpose of the discussion 1n this chapter is to trace key represe~tative critical responses to Crane's style from those of his contemporaries through those of current liter ary scholars. Early Studies Early studies, whether discussing the style or content of Crane's work, are generally nescient and critically inconsequential. In fact, most early critiques of his work are excuses to dwell on the man, es pecially his eccentricities--bohemian rebellion, Bowery friendships- rather than his art. Although some critics such as William Dean Howells, George Wyndham, Edward Garnett, and H.G. Wells discuss Crane's themes and technique, even their studies shade more toward en thusiastic appreciation than penetrating analyses of his art. 1 To take Wells as an example, from a brief survey of much of the Crane canon, he concludes that Crane's recurring theme is the idealist hero tested by danger and death and suggests a similarity between Crane's style and Whistler's impressionistic painting. But instead of supporting analy sis, Wells trails a series of admiring superlatives: Stephen Crane is L--~--- 18 the "most brilliant, most significant and most distinctively American of all English writers. 112 Certainly early stylistic studies are mediocre. Most concentrate superficially on Crane's color imagery. Few discuss his favored themes, types of characters, and other extra-linguistic dimensions of style. Some critics sensed the distinctive quality of Crane's grammatical style, but rather than intelligently apply an adequate theory to sup port and develop their intuitions, they examine Crane's grammar in terms of its unconventionality or settle for parody, unintentionally and paradoxically conveying a grain of truth about his style even as their exaggerations lie. One of the most extended early commentaries on Crane's style, and typical for what it condemns and what it praises, is Rupert Hughes's article in Godey's Magazine of September 1896. 3 Speaking from the viewpoint of a· traditional prescriptive grammarian of the Bishop Low thian school, he lambasts Crane as a "flagrant desecrater" of gram matical conventions, and charges that The Red Badge "bristles more with 4 false grammar than with bayonets," pointing to such solecisms as Crane's misuse of the reflexive himself for him ["and the whole mood of darkness, he thought, was one of sympathy for himself in his distress" (26)], misuse of the indicative mood for the subjunctive ["He wished without reserve that he was at home again, ... " (26) J, faulty sub ject-verb agreement ["There was perspiration and brumbling" (30)], multiple negation ["he could not flee no more than a little finger can commit a revolution from a hand" (45)], and on and on. 5 Interestingly, 19 Hughes misses one grammatical solecism that plagues Crane throughout his career, dangling modifiers [from The Red Badge: "Admitting that he might be wrong, a frenzied declamation of the kind would turn him into a worm" (36)]. In his discussion Hughes does concede that "the lan guage [of The Red Badge] is frequently of amazing strength and sugges tiveness, " 6 but he makes no attempt to assess the form of this strength. Bad grammar is what he talks about. Indeed, because grammar in the prescriptive sense is his main concern, he rates the style of Maggie higher than The Red Badge because it makes "no lunge at oddity. 117 Another way of characterizing Crane's style was through parody, usually, as illustrated in 1. below, focusing on his frequent use of color terms, or, as illustrated in 2. below, on his simple sentence structure. 1. Above, the sun hung 1 ike a custard pie in a burnt blanket. A Spanish cavalier, muttering mild green curses, stood near. He was stewing the last dish of leeks which his mother had given him before he left home. From a clump of sordid trees two miles off came the happy crackling of muskets. "There will be death to-day," said the youth. "Da.rk brown death." At this point [sic] cavalier's chameleon curse turned to a light yellow, owing to the proximity of a pot of Spanish mustard. 8 2. Nothing is easier. The method is simple. It presents no difficulties. It is distinct. It appeals to many. It is new. Therefore it pleases. For a time. But not permanently. Men of intelligence yawn. The trick is too readily seen through. It is like an infant's reader: My cat is called Tom. Do you 9 like cats? No, I like dogs. I like both cats and dogs. Both parodies capture some essential characteristics of Crane's style even as they deny its true nature and complexity by their over simplification coupled with excess. Crane does frequently use color, 20 often in odd collocations, not only to picture but to characterize. For example, in George's Mother Kelcey falls "with a yellow crash."lO And in The Red Badge "the battalions, with their commotions, were woven red and startling into the gentle fabric" (34). But the first parody misses the immanent functional quality of Crane's color imagery, a quality exhaustively analyzed by Tynan in a much more recent study. Looking specifically at The Red Badge's color imagery, Tynan persua sively argues that such imagery functions centrally in the formulation of Crane's ironic outlook, providing a means for the novel's thematic 11 development. The second parody captures Crane's penchant for simple declarative sentences, but careful attention to his prose fiction re veals, to varying degrees, far more complexity within the simple frame work, and, indeed, artfully constructed rhythms at times to match actions, as, for example, in the first two sentences of The Red Badge: "The cold passed reluctantly from the earth and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green the army awakened and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors" (3). As early critiques and parodies imply, Crane's style, to borrow Conrad's metaphor, "detonated" on his contemporaries with the "impact and force of a twelve-inch shell charged with a very high explosive.,f 2 While Conrad's assessment hyperbolizes, certainly, at the least, Crane's style puzzled his contemporaries, accustomed as they were to conventional nineteenth century literary prose, both English and its American modification, which, even as it aimed at realism, clung to 21 traditional stylistic norms: longer, more complex sentences, balanced equilibrium among elements, and a tendency toward the quietly emotive rather than the boldly intense, a style called "enumerative" by some critics. 13 Especially in his early prose fiction Crane sharply freed himself from this tradition as can be seen in a representative passage from Chapter I of Maggie: Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats. Tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap. On their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, they threw stones aiid cursed in shrill chorus. (4) Hence early critics responded to Crane with disturbed literary sensi bilities conditioned by the literary traditions of the time and tended to criticize Crane in the pejorative sense, albeit tempering their criticism with admiration for Crane's forceful, vivid, and expressive use of language. An anonymous reviewer is representative: "The book [The Red Badge] is written in terse and vigorous sentences, but not without some unpleasant affectations of style which the author would do 14 well to correct." The 1920's Soon after Crane's death both he and his work receded into obliv ion, until the 1920's when Crane was rediscovered. Then much of what mention occurred pertained to his relevancy to then current events--in the political world, The Red Badge to World War I; in the literary world, his position as .precursor of the Imagist movement. However, some critics attempted to establish Crane as a serious artist, partial ly because they recognized Crane's style and subject matter as being far in advance of his time and partially because they admired his . flaunting the social conventions of his time. 22 In 1921 Vincent Starrett edited a diverse collection of Crane's work, ranging from some Sullivan County Sketches to "The Open Boat" and the journalistic "London Impressions. 1115 Starrett's introduction clearly aims at dissociating Crane from the decadent writers of the 1890's and re-establishing him as a writer of great power, whether depicting war and adventure or satirizing conventional small-town morality. In 1923 Thomas Beer published his biography of Crane, an effort intended more to counter th mythof Crane as eccentric artist than paint an exhaustive, accurate, ronnded portrait of him. In the process Beer fashioned new myths: Crane the misunderstood artist, Crane a man dominated by fear--this latter myth dominating the inter- 16 pretation of Crane's work for years. Beer undoubtedly based his fear thesis on Crane's remark in a letter to John Northern Hilliard (tentatively dated from Ravensbrook, 1897): "the big reviews hel"e praised it [The Red Badge] for just what I intended it to be, a psycho- 17 logical portrayal of fear." But certainly Crane's work equated with Crane the man and reduced to "the manifestation of fear (as Literary History of the United States following Beer's lead, avers also of "The Blue Hotel" among other works) 18 is an over-simplification. En thusiastic endorsements of Crane's literary stature and reminiscenses by such prominant figures as H.L. Mencken and Joseph Conrad appeared, some of them as introductions in the Alfred Knopf publication of The Work of Stephen Crane that was part of the effort to arouse and sustain ! L 23 . . 1 . . C 19 cr1t1ca interest 1n rane. Yet despite the enthusiasm of key literary figures, little of critical depth and significance emerged to explain Crane's art and technique, and for the most part Crane was still uniformly deemed an inferior writer whose one great work, The Red Badge, was not enough to confer stature or lasting importance. Nothing of significance was said about his unique style other than passing remarks that it was, indeed, unique, primarily, according to Conrad and Beer, because of Crane's audacious word choice (Conrad finds "barbarously abrupt" 1n "The Open Boat" particularly inspired; "snarling smell" applied to an ancient egg appeals to Beer) and "astonishing ease of visual descrip tion" encoded in deceptively simply statements. Beer speaks for many critics when he says that "nothing could be better than the two lights of 'The Open Boat' which were the 'furniture of the world' to his 20 [Crane's] racked eyes." The 1950's to the Present The Red Badge, literature's perennial Sleeping Beauty, was re vived again with the onset of World War II, and some criticism con tinued to appear ~poradically, for instance a new critical recognition of the complex excellence of Crane's trio of late stories, •~he Open Boat," "The Blue Hotel," and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky." But it was not until the 1950's, precipitated by Robert W. Stallman's controversial interpretation of the symbolism of The Red Badg~ that the Stephen Crane industry geared up to full production. In this latest spurt of critical inquiry, critics have delved more into Crane 24 the artist than Crane the man. The entire canon, not only the old favorite, The Red Badg~ has undergone analysis, resulting 1n a seem ingly unending avalanche of articles and books discussing not only Crane's affinities to certain "schools" but his sources, influences, themes, techniques, and the like. 21 In addition, for the first time, critics have attempted to come to grips with Crane's style. The Extra-Linguistic Dimension of Style. The problem is that until recently most critics analyzing style have operated under the rubrics of organicist critical theory, "new criticism" as it is called, result- j ing in a limited approach to style. Organicist theory, the critical orientation reacting against earlier reduction of literature to socio logical, moral, or other kinds of documents, stresses the literary object, especially the internal structure that communicates a sense of its unity, rather than the relation of the piece of literature to nature, author, or reader. In the process, organicist theory often inflicts its own reduction of the viable grounds for literary analysis and evaluation. Allen Tate's, Cleanth Brooks's, and William Empson's well-known enthusiasms for the structures of tension, irony, and ambi guity, particularly the first two, undergird many critical studies of Crane's work. Undoubtedly critics study these structural components as much because of their training as inclination. Hence, although there is nothing inherent in organicist theory that precludes studying the linguistic structures that characterize a writer's grammatical style, critics simply do not choose to examine this aspect of style. In addition, since more than any other critical theory objective ' 25 criticism attempts to obliterate the distinction between form and con tent, structures have been examined largely in terms of how the meaning of a work is expressed through theffl. For these critics, at least in theirpurest manifestation, every statement is a unique style; there fore, any change in a statement, the conversion of an active clause to its passive counterpart or even the shifting of an adverb, changes meaning. As a result, meaning, the content of a literary work is primarily what is talked about. Style as a way or saying something tends to be submerged in favor of discussion of content, what is said. That 1s, critics focus on the extra-linguistic dimension of style. Stallman, searching for meaning in The Red Badge's "textural and structural tensions," early described the novel as a symbolic construct, linking Crane's style to symbol. 22 Denying that the banner of realism legitimately floated over The Red Badge as claimed by numerous earlier critics, he argued that wherever details approaching photographic real- I ism occur, such as Jim Conklin's side wound and torn, gory body, these details are used not for realism's sake but symbolically, in the in stance cited contributing to The Red Badge's theme of redemption and salvation. Precipitating a decade long controversy over proper inter pretation of The Red Badge, Stallman read the novel as a religious allegory with Henry Fleming being saved through the offices of the Christ-like Jim Conklin. He detected an overall symbolic structure of contrasting moods of hope and despair continually recapitulated until finally coalesced into a unified effect. The structure that Stallman finds central to The Red Badge becomes a model to him for ~xcellence in all Crane's work. Those works beginning and ending with a contrast of l hope and despair, a circular structure with ironic implications, are praised. Those that do not fit well into the scheme, such as "The Blue Hotel," are deemed less effective. 26 Chase, on the other hand, denies that Crane is a symbolist except 1n the sense of his symbols being the type produced by any writer with a poetic turn of mind; that is, his symbols are imposed more than . d . . h . 23 interwoven an are not consistent 1n t e1r context. For example, although Jim Conklin's death agony does echo the crucifixion, Fleming's report of it to his comrades is matter-of-fact; moreover, 1n Fleming's last internal debate of the book during which his manhood 1s still in question~it is the tattered soldier who fills Fleming's thoughts, not Conklin. Chase pegs Crane as an ironic naturalist whose "recurring, perhaps obsessive, idea" 1s that "man must believe what obviously is not true": that he is a rational creature who can control his des tiny.24 He argues that as a result, Crane structures his works in terms of an ironic contrast between man's idealization of his situ- ation and its actuality circumscribed by outside forces and man's own instincts and illusions. The agonizing predicament of the men in "The Open Boat," so near shore and safety yet so much at the mercy of the sea, illustrates this contrast as does "The Blue Hotel" among other stories. At the end of "The Blue Hotel" the Easterner announces that the murder of the Swede, like all sins, was "a result of a col laboration," but what Crane superimposes on this verdict 1s not so much that all involved share guilt for the Swede's death as that no body does, that no one involved really controlled anything at all. 27 Numerous critics, among them Griffith and Colvert, play variation on this motif of an essentially ironic structure informing Crane's prose fiction. Griffith agrees generally with Chase's analysis when he asserts that structural irony and tension occur between Crane's "deceptive" structural framework, that projecting a maturation theme, and "actual" structural framework, that projecting characters standing still or alternatively discovering new knowledge that though fraudulent becomes, nevertheless, the basis upon which protagonists '~redicate even grosser errors," not, however, at the expense of their being ridiculed. 25 Rather, Griffith concludes that Crane's ironic vision underscores his compassion: Henry Fleming's final self-deceptions in The Red Badge indicate how little he has learned through battle and his cowardly retreat, but he and all men need such illusions to preserve their sanity. To Colvert, 1n one of the most perceptive essays equating struc ture and theme in Crane's fiction, the characteristic structure of Crane's best works juxtaposes two ironically divergent points of view: the narrow, deluded perspective of the principle characters and the expansive, realistic perspective of the narrator. This juxtaposition creates a structural tension out of which arises Crane's most preva lent theme: the inevitable deflation of man's pride and his delusion under the stress of experience. This theme receives its fullest and most brilliant expression in Crane's mature work, as, for example, in "The Open Boat" and "The Blue Hotel." In the former the narrator's view as if from a balcony suggests less than cosmic significance to the 28 plight of the men in the dinghy. What to the men, whose vision is cir cumscribed by sl aty walls of water, seems to be nature's malignant power concentrated upon them in the snarling crests appears less catas trophic than "weirdly picturesque" to the narrator. A similar dis tancing of narrator and subject characterizes key moments i n "The Blue Hotel" too. Following his winning fist fight with Johnnie Scully, the still bellicose Swede struggles through a blinding snowstorm toward town. We are allowed to see him narrowly as a possible representative of "conquering and elate humanity," but immediately juxtaposed in the narrator's wider view of the Swede and his world as puny and inconse quential: "One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and con ceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb" (165). 26 The Quasi-Linguistic Dimension of Style. Elsewhere Colvert concludes that what constitutes Crane's style--imagery, metaphors, recurring motifs, and contrasts in tone and mood (that is, quasi-linguistic factors)--carries the burden of Crane's theme: "It is in style that . . "27 meaning exists. In "The Open Boat" the men's faulty per- ception of reality and their struggle to order meaningfully confused and contradictory experiences are carried by Crane's ironical style, an "indirect" counterpointing that al lows for errors of percept ion, Crane's as well as the men's. Among the elements of Crane's style that Colvert mentions, lietmotifs refer to various contradictory as pects of nature: sea gulls are both allies of the hostile sea 29 ("uncanny and sinister" with their "black beadlike eyes") and remote tracers of graceful patterns as they fly "slanting . . . up the wind"; the men's conflicting speculations about the imminence of their rescue convey a tone of ironic presumption; jagged waves and pointed rocks, imagery evoking the hostility of nature evident to the men, are coun terpointed by the view from the balcony, introducing the contrary idea ' of nature's indifference. Other critics studying the quasi-linguistic dimension of Crane's style in more detail than Colvert have focused primarily on Crane's use of imagery, especially his color imagery, and especially as it appears in The Red Badge. Besides Tynan's exhaustive study mentioned above, we have Wogan's, less extensive but detailed. She counts and locates color words in The Red Badge, finding that: red, blue, and gray predominate; color words cluster in the first few and last few chapters; colors function literally for the most part but often sym bolically or both literally and symbolically at the same time, and contribute in their panoramic effects to one of the underlying themes of the book, nature's indifference to man's affairs. 28 Simoneaux replicates Wogan's study with "George's Mother," discovering three of the same colors predominating (red, black, blue). She forms much the same equations of particular colors to symbolic meanings: red with bestiality and rage, black with age and death, and so forth; and issues the same caveat: the ratio of color to meaning is not consis tently one to one (crimson can connote death and decay as well as violence). Further, she argues that colors as Crane uses them show k . h. . h h. h 29 a ins ip wit is t emes. Both of these studies and others of Crane's color imagery are synchronically oriented; the diachronic 30 aspects of Crane's use of colors still remain to be explored. 30 Brief studies exist of Crane's other favored image types. Caze majou discusses Crane's use of mechanistic and animal imagery, noting frequent associations in _ The Red Badge of battle with immense and terrible machines, serpents, and fire-spitting dragon-like monsters, and in "The Open Boat" of death with the onmipresent shark. 31 Bassan finds metaphor tightly patterned to cohere to structure in "Experi ment in Misery" in which the central metaphor, "imperturbable granite wheels," in the night scene in the flophouse and other images initiate the reader into the grimness, the 'pathos' of man's condition. 32 Anderson examines the quantity and handling of Crane's epithets, find ing numerous parallels between The Red Badge and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, one of the most salient being Crane's employing the Homeric technique of increasing the frequency of similes as the fighting increases in savagery in The Red Badge. 33 The Linguistic Dimension of Style. Any number of other critics in the last twenty years have contributed in their own way to amplification of the extra-linguistic and quasi-linguistic dimensions of Crane's style. Hence we know much about Crane's recurrent settings, themes, characters, points of view, images, metaphors, and so forth. But in all of this exegesis the overriding goal has been to explain what Crane's fiction means. Pronouncements that emerge from these studies having to do with the linguistic dimension of style are often sub- 31 jective, impressionistic, unhelpful. Summational adjectives are cast upon the winds. Crane's style is variousl~ to name only a few: awkward, brilliant, colloquial, clear, clever, economical, fluent, hyperbolic, impressionistic, ironic, naturalistic, realistic, romantic, tortured, spare, symbolic, prose pointillism. It is true that some of these adjectives describe Crane's style in one story or novel as op posed to another, although that seems to imply that style is determined primarily by subject matter rather than the individual writing, but some disparate adjectives describe the same work. Without a critic's substantiating with hard facts what exactly Crane does that makes his style deserving of one descriptive adjective as opposed to another, the reader cannot assent to these adjectives although they may contain elements of truth. Two problems arise for critics attempting to characterize Crane's style diachronically. The first 1s whether Crane's style reveals con sistent change or development at all. Much seems to depend on how one defines style. Among those critics who do not detect consistent devel opment is Gibson, who brands Crane the least consistent of authors. 34 Gibson sees Crane altering his style randomly within particular works and throughout all his works, creating aesthetic problems as a result. Stylistic flaws of early works crop up later, as, for example, 1n Active Service, which Gibson claims reverts to Crane's early style. Yet any extended reading of say, Maggie, followed by a reading of Active Service, produces an intuitive feeling that in many ways their styles differ sharply and in fairly consistent fashion. One reason 32 that our intuitive reaction to Crane's style diverges from Gibson's conclusions is that what Gibson means by style, although he points to infelicities of sentence structure, diction, and choice of metaphors, is "tone," the author's attitude toward his material. Hence he finds that stylistically flawed works (Maggie, George's Mother, "The Blue Hotel") suffer from conflicts in tone, primarily occasioned by Crane's maintaining insufficient distance between himself and his materials. Where tone is consistent, as in "The Open Boat," Crane's style is "better." Although tone can certainly be a stylistic feature, like a number of other aspects of style, it is largely conditioned by subject matter. Most critics, however, either implicitly or explicitly recognize several changes of style during Crane's career. But again, as when they describe Crane's style in general, their intuitive reactions are encapsulated in synoptic adjectives that are at best suggestive, at worst confusing. And, certainly, they betray differences of opinion. To one critic Crane's early style is hyperbolic, elaborately rhetori cal, reflexive; to another it is somber-jocular, fantastic; to another angular, disjointed. His middle style to one critic is lean, open, sardonically understated; to another flexible, swift, abrupt, nervous; to another flexible, smooth. His late style is variously closed, cir cumstantial, normal, feeble. 35 Stallman, who emphatically argues that what is permanent in Crane's work is his use of language, was one of the first to divide Crane's style into three stages, correlating stage one with the 33 "Sullivan County Sketches," stage two with work immediately following the "Sullivan County Sketches" and continuing through "The Open Boat," and stage three with "The Monster. 1136 He characterizes stage one by attribution: "Kiplingesque. 1137 Stallman bases his conclusion partly on his detecting similarities of subject and theme in Crane's and Kipling's work and partly on Crane's letter to Lily Brandon Monroe in which he acknowledges his past regard for the ,:~lever Rudyard-Kip ling style. 1138 Crane's renouncing of this allegiance in the letter Stallman sees as marking the inception of stage two, which he charac terizes by a representative work: The Red Badge. Stallman describes the style of The Red Badge as "deliberately disconnected and apparently I disordered," even while "everything has relationship and is manipulated into contrapuntal patterns of color and cross-reference of meaning. 1139 Stage three is simply and uninformatively specified by a contrast be tween works. "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" fits into this third stage inaugurated by "The Monster," and its style somehow differs from "The Open Boat," assigned to stage two because like The Red Badge it is "abrupt and composed of 'disjointed sentences. ' 1140 But the char acteristics of this third stage are not even briefly and generally described. Colvert also suggests three stages, but although his divisions generally coincide with Stallman's, his assessment of "The Open Boat" differs radically. Colvert separates the early fiction in which Crane "experiments with a style of composition designed to emphasize . . . in~ congruous aspects of the hero's mind ... in simple images, often with ,- grotesque effect," from The Red Badge, in which the "rhetorical and symbolic patterns of the early fiction are fully developed" and the 34 1 later work represented by The Little Regiment and "The Open Boat" where the prose becomes "spare, disciplined, and enumerative." 41 Many critics accept these three general stylistic phases, but some such as Berryman, note anomolies. That is, after "The Open Boat," Berryman marks 1899 as replete with "downhill trash" broken only by the "laconic perfection of mannerless phrasing" of "Virtue in War" and the introduction of a "new syntax" in "The Clan of No Name." 42 Although other critics too mention individual works as stylistic anomolies, few mention syntax as a significant factor in Crane's style and almost no one perceives, as Berryman does (without explanation however) that despite various shifts there is something indentifiable 43 as a "Crane style." Yet one would expect consistent stylistic traits to mark Crane's prose fiction as being unmistakably his despite variations, as much as, say his major theme--the protagonist's search for attainment of identity encumbered by an inevitably faulty percep tion of reality--marks him despite its various manifestations. In fact, since other writers could easily be credited with the same over all theme, subject matter, types of characters, and larger structural patterns that Crane favors, examination of language elements more particularly characteristic of him would seem to be called for so as to more fully characterize his style. His unique color imagery is an important factor in his style, but even more revealing would be his syntax since it, more than any other language feature, is less con- trolled by subject matter and conscious manipulation. And, indeed, encouraged by a resurging interest in grammar pre cipitated by Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures and Aspects of the 35 Theory of Syntax some scholars have recognized and explored the lin guistic dimension of style, even though not all employ transformational ~ 1 • h d 44 generative met o ology. In fact, two well-known, intelligent, and I perceptive studies exist in the traditional and structuralist modes. Ian Watt, whose study was mentioned in Chapter I, uses the terminology of traditional grammar to examine Henry James's use of intransitive verbs, copulas, passives, verbals, and abstract nouns in the first par agraph of The Ambassadors, concluding that James's late prose style is characterized by abstraction and fosters a closer relationship between narrator and reader through reported speech than between narrator and main character. Louis Milic uses structural linguistic categories, and the computer, to describe and discuss Jonathan Swift's prose style, especially Swift's use of sentence connectives, which Milic argues leads 45 to rhetorical persuasiveness rather than clarity in Swift's prose. No studies in either the traditional or structural mode parallel ing those of Milic and Watt probe Crane's grammatical choices. Any number of critics mention Crane's penchant for short, simple sentences, but go no further. Holton points out a few grammatical characteristics of Crane's style: a paring away of adjectives, prepositional phrases, participles, and gerunds, and a "less angular and more maturely handled periodicity" in a later work, "The Clan of No-Name";but does not ex- 46 amine these grammatical elements. Support for his conclusions is limited to brief quotations from the early "On the New Jersey Coast" and late "The Clan of No-Name": 36 Asbury Park creates nothing. It does not make; it merely amuses. There is a factory where nightshirts are manufactured, but it is some miles from town. This is a resort of wealth and leisure, of women and considerable wine. The throng along the line of march was composed of summer gowns, lace parasols , tennis trou sers , straw hats, and indifferent smiles . The procession was composed of men, bronzed, slope-shouldered, uncouth and be grimed with dust . ("On the New Jersey Coast") But something controlled him; something moved him inexorably in one direction; he perfectly understood, but he was only sad, sad with a serene dignity, with the countenance of a mournful young prince. ("The Clan of No-Name") Harold Martin probes more deeply but less widely into Crane's grammatical style. He compares the first paragraph of "The Open Boat" to a passage from James Fenimore Cooper's The Pilot written seventy five years earlier, his goal being to reveal changes in diction and syntax in nineteenth century American fiction. In the process he notes Crane's shorter sentence length, relative lack of sentence complexity, greater use of coordination than subordination, emphasis on action and the agent of the action through emphasis on verbs and nouns cou pled with a corresponding decrease of adjectives and adverbs, slightly more monosyllabic than disyllabic or polysyllabic words, and a mix- ture of conventional and unconventional diction (Crane uses "bathtub· ," which would have been considered indecorous in 1898). 47 Although Martin's analysis is concretely supported, he is not, of course, attempting a thoroughgoing examination of Crane's style but rather of only those traits that loom conspicuously against the background of Crane's contemporaries. Hence, the reader is left to speculate on wheth I 37 er Crane's early· workwould be even more strikingly divergent from his contemporary's or less and what constant choices link Crane's early and late work. Another syntactically based study in a comparative vein 1s by Bernard O'Donnel~ who aimed to establish correct authorship of chapters and even paragraphs in The O'Ruddy,Crane's last novel which was fin ished by Robert Barr after Crane's death. 48 (The manuscript was sub sequently found, proving O'Donnell wrong by one chapter. He assigns Chapter XXV to Barr not Crane as it should be.) O'Donnell selects seventeen lexical, grammatical, and punctuation variables best suited to predict authorship based on O'Donnell's analysis of accredited samples of each author's work, not necessarily those variables best suited to establish the basic characteristics of Crane's style, not even in The O'Ruddy, the only work studied. 49 Nor does O'Donnell evaluate the impact of Crane's grammatical choices on either Crane as a writer or Crane's readers. In a particular way Crane's changing style is the subject of another study of Crane's grammatical choices, the choices being clear ly related to the differing genres of three Crane novels. In this study, the most extensive investigation of Crane's syntax thus far, Eleanor Stoppe dissects Crane's generative and transformational choices in Maggie, The Red Badge, and Active Service, using that version of transformational-generative theory set forth by Noam Chomsky in Syntactic Structures and modified by Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Stoppe examines the deep and surface structures and the transforma- I 38 l I tions connecting both levels in fifty randomly selected sentences from each of the three novels, and discusses her findings in terms of how Crane's choices suit the novels' genres and points of view. Not too surprisingly, since her methodology moves from external dogma (the three novels belong to certain genres) to the texts rather than the other way around, she concludes that Crane's grammatical choices in each novel are appropriate to primary genre: in Maggie, naturalism; 1n The Red Badge, impressionism; and in Active Service, romanticism. Stoppe characterizes the primary style in the three novels as follows: action verb conjoinings, front shifted place adverbials, nominal and adjectival compounding support a naturalistic emphasis on action and environment in Maggie; numerous thought structures with embedded factives, relative clause and appositive thought structures, cause and change adverbials, and adjectives modified by the place of appearance all support impressionistic reality in The Red Badge; con joinings, nominal depth, BE equivalences, BE descriptive statements, verb periphrases, "of" periphrases summarizing thoughts, and manner adverbs create a longer, evaluative style in Active Service consonant . h h . h , . 50 wit t e nineteent centurf American romance. Stoppe also analyzes Crane's syntactic deviations from the standard English norm, his "creative" or "poetic" uses of language (based on selectional restric tions as described by Chomsky that have to do with such semantic features as animate, concrete, abstract, and human), concluding that Maggie is the most compressed, The Red Badge next, and Active Service the most expanded of the three; that Maggie and especially The Red 39 Badge make the most integrated use of "creative" language while such language in Active Service is ambiguous and not uniform; and that while matter and manner are best fused in Maggie_ and The Red Badge, Active Service is diffusive and has a weak style. Predictably, in view of her choice of novels, she implies a decline in Crane's style in the late work. Active Service, a late novel, has received little critical at tention and even less critical acclaim. Witness, for example, Gibson's remarks above. Whether Active Service retrogresses to Cran'e earlier style is questionable, especially in view of Stoppe's finding its style more expansive than the earlier work (Gibson, of course, is main ly interested in tone, not grammar), but the pejorative aspect of Gibson's remarks is echoed by Stoppe and other critics. One wonders if an examination of a more highly acclaimed later work, one receiving accolades similar to those awarded Maggie and The Red Badge, say "The Open Boat" for instance, would not suggest a positive development in Crane's style, especially in view of many critics pointing intuitively to Crane's best late work as exhibiting a finer, smoother, more vari ably discriminated style than the early work. One might legitimately conjecture that these components of Crane's late style have something to do with increased syntactic ma turity, that is, increased ability to manipulate grammatical struc tures more effectively. It is this aspect of Crane's style that this study seeks to describe: the grammatical choices that constitute the "essential" Crane style at all stages and the changes in his handling of syntax as he moves through his writing career. The goal is to further lift the curtain on the crucial question of Crane's verbal artistry. Summary 40 Throughout all critical comments on Crane's work we find over whelming agreement that Crane's success as a writer is due in no small measure to his style. However, critics during Crane's lifetime and up to about 1950 treated his unique style superficially, preferring in stead to dwell on Crane the man rather than his work, biography rather than artistry. Beginning in the 1950's, resurging interest in Crane's work coupled with the objective approach to literary criticism pro duced concerted efforts to describe and define the extra-linguistic dimension of Crane's style. Riding the main currents, critics explored Crane's recurring choices of larger structural elements, favored themes, characters, settings, and so forth as they appear in single novels and short stories and the Crane corpus as a whole. Less re search has aimed at describing the quasi-linguistic elements of Crane's style beyond The Red Badge and a few other pieces. And even less attention has been accorded the linguistic dimension of Crane's style, that are less consciously controlled by a writer, hence in many ways more revealing of a writer's style. Although Crane's grammatical choices have been studied in depth in three novels, unanswered ques tions center around what the basic elements of Crane's grammatical style are that identify his work as his (that Crane is pegged as impres sionistic does not really tell us very much since Henry James is also pegged as impressionistic and one would never mistake Crane's writing 41 for James's), and what changes occur in his style that cause most crit ics intuitively to observe a progressive movement from an early angu lar and disjointed prose style toward a smoother, more flexible, more restrained, in fact, a more mature prose style. 42 Notes 1 For Howells no particular review 1s of special note--his praise was highest for the early Crane of Maggie, for example in the North American Review (December 1902); Wyndham praises Crane's "remarkable book," The Red Badge, in The London New Review (January 1896); Garnett comments on Crane's impressionism in the London Academy (December 17, 1898); Wells discusses Crane from an English standpoint in North American Review (August 1900). All are reprinted in Stephen Crane: The Critical Heritage, ed. Richard M. Weatherford (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), pp. 61-62, 106-114, 225-229, 267-274. 2 Weatherford, p. 273. 3 Rpt. in Weatherford, pp. 158-164. 4 Weatherford, p. 159. 5 Hughes's references for his quotations are primarily to page number only in an unspecified edition. My source of quotations to support Hughes's list of grammatical errors is the facsimile of The Red Badge manuscript. In the case of the misused reflexive, "himself" appears in the 1895 edition but is corrected to "him" in the manuscript. 6 Weatherford, p. 164. 7 Weatherford, p. 162. 8 Paul M. Paine, "The Blue Blotch of Cowardice: An Incident of the 1 Pursuit of the Insurgents, With Profuse Apologies to Mr. Stephen Crane," Life, 23 April 1896, rpt. in Weatherford, p. 152. 9 Jane H. Findlater, "The New Art of Description in Fiction," The National Review (January 1900); quoted 1n The Literary Digest, 20 (February 10, 1900), p. 182. lO Bowery Tales, Vol. I of The Works, p. 147. 11 Daniel Joseph Tynan; "A Computer Concordance to The Red Badge of Courage, 1895 Edition, with an Introductory Essay," Diss. University of Wisconsin 1972. 12 Joseph Conrad, "Recollections of Crane and His War Book," Last Essays (1926); rpt. in The Red Badge of Courage, eds. Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty, and ~Hudson Long (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1962), pp. 209-219. 13 James B. Colvert, Introd. to Maggie in Bowery Tales, Vol. I of The Works, p. xxxiii. 14 Review in the New York Times, 19 October 1895; rpt. in Weather- .ford,_ p. 90. ________ _ 43 15 Men, Women and Boats (New York: Boni and Liveright, Inc., 1921). 16 Stephen Crane: A Study in American Letters, with an Introduction by Joseph Conrad (New York: Alfred Knopf, Inc., 1923). 1 7 Letters, p. 158. 18 Robert E. Spiller et al., eds., LHUS, 3rd ed. rev. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963), I, 1024. 19 In 12 vols., ed. Wilson Follett; rpt. in 6 vols. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963). 20 Beer, pp. 13, 51, 93, 214. 21 The first extended discussion linked Crane with the naturalist school, the two most famous studies being Lars Ahnebrink's The Begin nings of Naturalism in American Fiction: A Study of the Wor~of Hamlin Garlancf; Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris (Uppsala-,-Sweden: A.-B. Lundequistka Boklandeln, 1950) and Charles C. Walcutt's American Liter ary Naturalism: A Divided Stream (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956), both of which place Crane fi~ly in the naturalist tradi tion although other critics disagree. See, ' for example, Richard P. Adam's "Naturalistic Fiction: 'The Open Boat,"' Tulane Studies in English, 4 (1954), 137-146. This study is not the place to evensum marize the criticism which places Crane in, out, or somewhat in or out ot naturalism; but, inevitably, most naturalistic criticism classifies more than criticizes, and to fit Crane's work into that procrustean bed necessitates ignoring many elements in his fiction (most notably irony) or explaining them away. Crane is also pegged as an impressionist, ironist (especially since Cleanth Brooks sent critics irony hunting after his 1949 article, "Irony as a Principle of Structure"), realist, and so forth. 22 Omnibus, p. 189. 23 Richard Chase, in his Introduction to The Red Badge of Courage and Other Writings (Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, 1960). He assigns Crane "generally speaking" to the naturalist school, and then discloses how Crane departs from this classification. 2 4 Chase, p. xiii. 25 Clark Griffith, "Stephen Crane and the Ironic Last Word," Philological Quarterly, 47 (January 1968), 86. 26 James B. Colvert, "Structure and Theme in Stephen Crane's Fiction," Modern Fiction Studies, 5 (Autumn 1959), 199-208. 27 James B. Colvert, "Style and Meaning in Stephen Crane: 'The Open Boat,"' Texas University Studies 1n English, 37 (1958), 40. ----------- -·-------------------------, 28 Claudia Wogan, "Crane's Use of Color in The Red Badge ·of Courage," Modern Fiction Studies, 6 (Summer 1960), 168-172. 29 Katherine G. Simoneaux, "Color Imagery in Crane's George's Mother," CLA Journal, 14 (June 1971), 410-419. 44 30 Crane's use of color imagery is not a point of this study, but a brief glance at the data reveals progressively less color imagery during the span of his career, although red is scattered throughout his fiction, and certain colors crop up more frequently in certain works: yellow in Maggie and brown in "The Clan of No-Name," for example. 31 Jean Cazemajou, "The Red Badge of Courage: The 'Religion of Peace' and the War Archetype," in Stephen Crane in Transition: Cente nary Essays, ed. Joseph Katz (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1972), pp. 54-65. 32 Maurice Bassan, "The Design of Stephen Crane's Bowery 'Experi ment,"' in Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed . Maurice Bassan (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1967), pp. 118-122. 33 Warren D. Anderson, "Homer and Stephen Crane," Nineteenth Century Fiction, 19 (June 1964), 77-86. 34 Donald B. Gibson, The Fiction of Stephen Crane (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968), especially pp. 141-149. 35 The critics are Colvert, Berryman, LaFrance, but others, with other adjectives, could easily be found. 36 In his Introduction to Omnibus, p. xxxix. However, elsewhere in the same Introduction he inconsistently asserts that Crane "never developed," p. xxiv. 3 7 Omnibus, p. xli. 38 Quoted in Omnibus, p. xxx1x. 39 Omnibus, p. 187. 40 Omnibus, p. xliv. 41 James B. Colvert, "Stephen Crane: Style as Invention," in Stephen Crane in Transition, ed. Joseph Katz, pp. 134, 139, 143-146. 42 Stephen Crane, pp. 252 and 255. 43 Stephen Crane, p. 284. 44 Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1957); Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass.: The M. I. T. Press, 1965). 45 45 · k M·1· A Q . . A h h S 1 f Louis Ton o 1 1c, uant1tat1ve pproac to~ ty e ~ Jonathan Swift (The Hague:-Mouton & Co., 1967). 46 Milne Holton, Cylinder of Vision: The Fiction and Journalistic Writing of Stephen Crane (BatonRouge: Louisiana State University Pres~ 1972), pp. 77-79. 47 "The Development of Style in Nineteenth Century American Fiction," Style in Prose Fiction, ed. Harold C. Martin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 116-131. 48 In An Analysis of Prose Style. 49 The variables are word, simple sentence, impersonal construc tions, semi-colons, initial conjunctions, color references, metaphors, adjectives, adverbs, present participles, dialogue, past participle phrases, mean sentence length, verb/adjective ratio, clause/dependent clause ratio, and sentence/verb ratio. 50 For detailed explanation of these terms and analysis of the structures, see pertinent sections of her dissertation. 46 CHAPTER III SYNTAX AS AN EXPRESSIVE INSTRUMENT Crane's specific remarks about grammar always have to do with ad missions that his grammar is "bad," 1n the sense of not following cor- 1 rect usage. But allusions to grammar in its broader sense also sur- face. Implied in Crane's "chiefest desire," "to write plainly and un mistakably" 1n the "simplest and most concise way" so that his audi ence "might read and understand," is his awareness that the rhetorical effect of his fiction depended upon its syntactic underpinnings. 2 Indeed, grammatical constructions do have rhetorical consequences; that is, they have effects other than simply organizing words into phrases and clauses. While it might seem that the ideals of simplicity and clarity that Crane held for his fiction lie in short active declar ative sentences juxtapqsed with few connectives, this is not necessari ly so. To be plain and unmistakable, to convey what is needed in the way it is needed, often requires more than the simplest sentences. It requires a highly developed and flexible skill in manipulating various syntactic structures from the simplest to the most complex in order to successfully communicate. Hence skillful writers ideally command all the grammatical prin ciples of their language, not only in terms of competence, their abil ity to understand varinus constructions, but_ in terms of performance, their ability to use the structures appropriately and effectively. A writer's facility with grammar, whether conscious or unconscious, has 47 much to do with the kinds and numbers of voices he can project, the coherence and authority of his message, his ability to elaborate a description, in sum how limited or unlimited he is as a writer, and how seriously or superficially he is received by his audience. While no one would ever claim that Crane ever achieved the rich grammatical subtleties of Henry James, based on the evidence amassed in this study (not a preliminary hypothesis for which supporting data were sought), we can say that Crane's syntactic versatility increases during the span of his career. As one would expect for so short a career, the increase is not drastic; but it is noticeable, and contributes to many critics concluding that Crane's later work is stylistically different from and of greater stature t~an his earlier work. 3 His syntax becomes a richer, more flexible instrument for communicating his ideas and for affecting his readers. The last part of this chapter will present a preliminary overview of Crane's changing stylistic power by comparing two passages from works that are sharply separated by time; the first is from a Sullivan County tale, "The Octopush," the second from a late war tale, "The Price of the Harness." But before we proceed with this analysis, it will be helpful to review some of the grammatical struc tures and strategies that stylisticians agree promote syntactic versa tility. The review will not be exhaustive, but will instead concentratE on those stylistic features that will enter into our discussion of Crane's style. 4 In order for people to express themselves, they need to order their words, which is what syntax means: to arrange together. The English language has six basic ways of arranging words together, dis- tinguished by types of predicate patterns. 5 The review begins with 48 these grammatically complete yet minimal sentences, those which pre sent the bare essentials of propositional content. The next step is to outline ways base sentences can be altered and expanded. Through substitution, coordination, bound and free modification, and paren thetical insertion, structures ranging from simple one word structures to elaborate subordinate clauses are commonly grafted onto base sen- 6 tences. Where these structures that alter and expand base sentences are placed and how sentences are connected one to another are also crucial to a writer's optimum expressive power. The second and third steps, therefore, in our syntactic review are to discuss placement 1n terms of types of branching and methods of achieving coherence. Although the sentence unit dominates the review of grammatical forms which follows, this does not mean that discussion of Crane's grammatical style will deal only with isolated sentences and the smaller units of which sentences are composed. That sentences antici pate, suspend, complicate, and resolve one another across wider verbal spaces is recognized as is the fact that the effects of grammatical constructions are ultimately determined in large measure by their rhe torical context. The sentence, the basic grammatical unit of language, is simply the best place in the structural hierarchy to begin. Structures and Strategies Base Sentences. Base or kernel sentences, minimum active, declarative sentences cast in any of the basic predicate patterns, are the founda tion of expressive syntax. The stylistic effects of these base sen tences can be both advantageous and disadvantageous. 49 One advantage is their ability when used sequentially to create the effect of numbness, of a mind shattered by some overwhelming experi- ence. Crane uses the monotony and awkwardness of disjunctive minimal sentences to such effect in The Red .Badge when Fleming, in flight from the battlefield, encounters the corpse of a soldier: The mouth was opened. Its red had changed to an apalling yellow. Over the grey skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of bundle along the upper lip. (62) Another advantage of stark sentences is that set off within the context of longer, more complex sentences, they create emphasis through ontrast, and if the last sentence of a sequence, a sense of resolution, or finality as in this paragraph from "The Open Boat": Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and hawing. To express any particular optimism at this point they felt to be childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the situation in their minds. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any open sug gestion of hopelessness. So they were silent. (71) On the other hand, base or near base sentences when used in se uence can ineffectively create childish prose, barrenness, and crystal lized monotony. The opening sentences of an early Crane piece, "Four en in a Cave," illustrate this disadvantage: The moon rested for a moment in the top of a tall pine on a hill. The little man was standing in front of the camp-fire making oration to his companions. . . . . They were won. The litnle man was determined to explore a cave, because its blackmouth had gaped at him. The four men took lighted pine knots and clambered over boulders down a hill. In a thicket on the mountain-side lay a little tilted hole. At its side they halted. (225) so It is true that this passage is not composed of only base sentences, but they are minimally elaborated and what elaboration there is tends to structural monotony, consisting primarily of prepositional pharases of much the same length. Crane has erected a house with foundation and walls, but no ceilings, roof, windows, or various decorative ef fects. The rhythm stumbles haltingly along as the reader's eye is jerked from one spot to another, one action to another, assimilating a series of disjunctive parts that do not cohere into a meaningful whole. Without rhetorical advantage in its context, the passage strikes us as a piece of juvenile prose. Only children write prose composed of sentences such as these, or adults if they are writing stories for children. Adult readers simply do not like short sentences one after another. They are abrupt. They are inarticulate. Just as children speaking like adults discomfit other children so adults holding onto childish mannerisms discomfit other adults. Therefore, skilled writers use base sentences not .as entire constructions but as foundations to be altered and expanded for greater expressive power, reserving stark kernel sentences for special effects, either singly or 1n groups. Sentence Expansion. Base or kernel sentences can be expanded, in the process of which they are, of course, altered, through these chief methods: substitution, coordination, and bound and free modification. Substitution. The particular type of expansion referred to here is that of words, phrases, or clauses functioning as nouns in noun slots. Crane's substitutions 1n noun slots receive only peripheral attention throughout subsequent discussion of his grammatical style, 51 1 but some facts about them emerged in the process structures in the data that warrant mention here. of analyzing other I Like infinitive and participial modifier• s, gerunds, gerund phrases, infinitives, and infinitive phrases functioning as nouns are also reduced structures, tightly coiled syntactic strategies for con structing mature, inforrnative , forceful sentences. Further, they draw into the noun slot the animated quality characteristic of verbal forms. Both gerunds and infinitives can occupy subject and object 7 positions; in fact, gerunds can stand wherever a noun can stand. Yet despite these varied possibilities, Crane overwhelmingly chooses gerunds as objects of prepositions and characteristically places them mid-sentence, the position receiving least emphasis. Only three times in the data does Crane use a gerund as object of a verb, never as a subject, noun subjective complement, or appositive. Gerunds can be extraordinarily effective structures. Their own verbal activity often aptly matches the described experience (compare "of squeezing the sponge" to its noun counterpart "of a squeeze of the 8 sponge"); they save a writer from adding independent clauses or re- lying on more static noun structures; they convey an air of informali ty. Yet Crane does not frequently use them. While their absence may certainly be a matter of his conscious choice, it may also be attri buted to syntactic maturity since they quantitatively increase in Crane's later work, excepting The O'Ruddy. Gerunds, especially gerund subjects, are sophisticated structures. The command of them comes late in the language acquisition process, or for some people, never in I I I I terms of performance, producing gerund subjects as opposed to under standing them. 52 Much the same is true of infinitive subjects. Hence it is inter esting to note Crane's use of infinitive nominals. Crane frequently uses infinitives and infinitive phrases in noun slots other than sub ject, gaining by this use much the same effect as that imposed by gerunds: economy of expression, force, liveliness, and, in addition, at times an aphoristic quality. Yet, paralleling his avoidance of gerunds and gerund phrases in subject slots, Crane also eschews in finitives and infinitive phrases in this position, only not as com pletely. Three infinitive subjects occur in the data, two in Crane's last work, Th~_ O'Ruddy, one in the next earlier work, "The Price of the Harness." Sentence initial infinitive subjects, in addition to the general effects created by verbals, also secure emphasis and authority I because of their being sophisticated syntactic strategies. An authori- tative stance is important for the narrator of "The Price of the Har ness" and also for forming a crucial aspect of O'Ruddy's character. Complete clauses substituted in noun slots also expand base sen tences by joining related propositions into one sentence. Again, although noun clauses can occupy various noun slots, Crane prefers as is typical of him, predicate expansion, choosing of the various pos sible subordinators only'what' and'whateve~•["Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail" (The Red Badge, 15)] to introduce his infrequent subject noun clauses. Nowhere in the data does Crane use a noun clause introduced by that as a sentence initial subject. He 53 does frequently write that introduced noun clauses as postponed sub jects in sentences introduced by expletive it. While such use is not particularly sophisticated, it is more so than sentence inversions formed on expletive-there, since it inversions require an embedded clause. Expletive-there sentences occur frequently throughout Crane's work, although less so in the second half of his career. Conversely, although he rarely uses expletive-it sentences in his early fiction, he increases their use greatly in his later work. Unmarked subordinate clauses (that omitted) can substitute for nouns in the accusative slot, and they always occur in conjunction with parenthetical matrix propositions. Neither marked nor unmarked that noun clauses were counted, but the data convey a clear impression that both, along with noun clauses introduced by other subordinators, increase in the later work, contributing to Crane's style becoming in- creasinglynominal and conventionally literary as opposed to conversa tional, again excluding The O'Ruddy. 9 Unmarked subordinate noun clauses are less formal than marked, especially when they accompany parenthetical matrixes. Crane particu larly uses them this way in The O'Ruddy ["Bristol I confess, fright ened me greatly" (4)] to assist in lending a conversational, collo quial immediacy to his novel. Coordination. Another way of expanding the basic sentence types is through coordination. Simply stated, coordination links structures of equal grammatical rank whether they are single words, phrases, or clauses. In its most common, unsophisticated form, the various struc- ltures appear to be collected rather than deliberately coordinated. 54 The resulting effect, whether intended or not, is often of untutored ex pression, an effect similar to that created by simple sentences juxta posed with little or no syntactic connection. Although loose coordina tion 1s common to much prose and has its rhetorical advantages in cer tain contexts, the more effective coordination process integrates this discursive type with the more controlled, literary type. It is in controlled literary expression that we find full play of 1 a special kind of coordination, parallelism (including antithesis, and the subtle effects of asyndeton, polysyndeton, and climax forms), in which lies the importance of grammatical coordination. As Richard D. Altick says of parallelism, a sentence in which phrases are matched against phrases, clauses against clauses, "like three arches in the facade of a cathedral" lends a distinct and pleasurable eloquence to 10 prose. In asyndeton, conjunctions are omitted between parallel words, phrases, or clauses, creating a sense of economy, acceleration, and emphasis. Yet even as asyndeton clearly illuminates the people, things, ideas, and qualities in the series, it draws all elements into one hurried impression. That Crane consciously perceived asyndeton's potential effects is demonstrated in "The Five White Mice" when he enters the mind of the New York Kid at the moment when the Kid anti cipates being knifed by a Mexican. Crane revr als that the Kid's "views were perfectly stereopticon, flashing in and away from his thought with an inconceivable rapidity until after all they were simply one quick 55 dismal impression" (49). Thus attuned to its effects, not surprising ly,Crane uses asyndeton frequently, undoubtedly influencing readers' judgments of his style as being fast-paced. On the other hand, polysyndeton, proliferating conjunctions be tween all items in a series of words, phrases, or clauses in a sen tence, slows the movement of a sentence even while similarly emphasiz ing each structure when spotlighted in turn. In cinematic terminology, actions in the first process are speeded up by flash-cutting, in the second retarded by slow panning punctuated by lingering holds: One viewed the existence of ntan then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb. ("The Blue Hotel," 165) Also, he was drilled and reviewed, and drilled and drilled and reviewed. (The Red Badge, 13) In the first example asyndeton combines with climax pattern (parallel words, phrases, or clauses ordered so as to mount by degrees of in creasing weight and force, inevitably confounding syntax and semantics) to emphasize in hammering sequence the unleashed fury of the physical forces of nature. 11 In the second example polysyndeton evokes the sheer endless monotony of camp life for young Fleming, the time he has to dwell upon each repetition of the same activity as he simultaneous ly yearns for battle and fears his response to it. A special form a parallelism in which contrasting ideas are con joined in balanced or parallel structures is antithesis. Like the other forms of parallelism just discussed it can be created by align- 56 I ing words, phrases, and clauses. Distinct advantages inhere in use of antithesis: clarity through immediate proximity of contrastive fea tures, sharpened and emphasized contradictions, discrimination between opposing ideas, coherence through explicit linking. Additionally, anti l thesis conveys an aura of carefully weighed thought, of a knowledge able writer decidedly in control of his material, especially in bal anced clauses such as this one from "The Clan of No-Name": "One of his stars was bright, like his hopes; the other was pale, like death" (123), which emphasizes the inevitable fate of the brave soldier, draw ing together what he was and what he will be. In sum, then, control of parallel structure offers these important advantages to writers: they can create graceful prose rhythm, unify equivalent ideas, establish a climactic order of ideas, and impose bal ance, contrast, and harmony, all ingredients of mature, effective writing. Modification. Skeleton-like kernel sentences become more meaty through added modifiers, which supply further information about a word or word group by limiting, commenting upon, or qualifying the word or group to which the modifier is attached. Often, the noun and verb state the known information in a sentence, and it is the modifiers that carry the "news. " The simplest and most common type of modification used by writers 1s with simple adverbs and bound preposed adjectives and participles. Moving up the ladder of sophistication, bound prepositional phrases, relative and subordinate clauses, and infinitives also add details to 57 sentences. All these elements tend to define more than comment, and, because of their relatively fixed position, except the extremely mobile simple adverbs, and fusion with the rest of the sentence are relatively closed to expansion, some more than others. Infinitives, for example, occur almost always 1n bound form yet can often be expanded generously with additional details ("to pass in as much of a rush as possible between these two wings"). In addition, infinitives, reduced structures (He saw the girl. The girl walked on. --- 1 Seeing the girl walk on, he ... ) like participles (Black clouds smolder.- ·--) Black, smoldering clouds .. . ), are effective strategies for modifying noun, adjective, and adverb word and word 12 groups. The girl walk on incorporates an unmarked infinitive, re- quired after certain verbs such as see.) This is because infinitives and infinitive phrases (an infinitive plus its modifiers and/or com plements), like participles, carry active as well as descriptive force, and at the same time economize expression by subordinating proposi tions directly and concisely. Free modifiers, first described and discussed by Francis Christen- . 1 f d" 13 sen, are a spec1a means o expan 1ng sentences. Although free modi- fiers are like bound modifiers in that both add details to base sen tences, free modifiers offer several added advantages: (1) they tend much more to comment than define, (2) their position is relatively flexible compared to the relatively fixed position of bound modifiers, and (3) free modifiers, set off as they are from the rest of the sen tence by punctuation or textual clues indicating juncture are, unlike 58 bound modifiers, inherently open to expansion, hence capable of adding greater concreteness and particularity to base clauses. They need not do so, of course. "Electric lights, whirring softly, shed a blurred radiance" (as Crane wrote the sentence at the start of Chapter XVII of Maggie) is no more informative or concrete than "Softly whirring elec tric lights shed a blurred radiance" would have been, but the sentence as written contains the possibility of expansion ("whirring softly in the gathering dusk") not possible in the recast sentence. Furthermore, even without exploiting their possibility for expansion, a writer still gains effects resulting from free modifiers being set off: intensi fication of and emphasis on descriptive and narrative details. Sentences with free modifiers move deductively. The main idea, the most general, abstract one, is presented in the base clause with more specific, qualifying ideas presented in attached free modifiers, form ing multi-level sentences with layers of structure that create a dense ly textured prose. Density of texture depends upon the number and variety of additions to a base clause, those free modifiers that "stay with the same idea, probing its bearings and implications, exemplifying it or seeking an analogy or metaphor for it, or reducing it to de Texture, then, is a qualitative as well as quantitative term. The free modifier types that Christensen designates are the sub ordinate clause (SC), relative clause (RC), noun cluster (NC), verb cluster (VC), adjective cluster (AC), adjective series (A+A), absolute (Abs), and prepositional phrase (PP). Of these structures, Christensen 59 distinguishes the clusters and absolute as the chief marks of a mature, versatile prose style and sentences with more additions on several lev els of specificity as more densely textured than those with less or none. All free modifiers are economical structures, adding informa tive details without recourse to additional clauses, allowing ideas to ride piggy-back on the base clause. A selection from "The Wise Men," numbered and indented to reveal its levels, can illustrate this pro cess and some of the free modifier types: 1 Freddie, 2 desperate, (A+A) 3 his teeth shining, (Abs) 15 3 his face contorted, (Abs) 2 whirling along in deadly effort, (VC) 1 was twenty feet behind the tall form of old Pop, 2 who,/ /gained with each step. 3 dressed only in his-- (VC) 3 [dressed] only in his underclothes-- (VC) (37) Illustrations of the other types of free modifiers are: The four men clambered into the beautiful boat and the individual manoeuvered his craft until he had dealt out to four low-spreading stumps, four fishers. (SC) ("The Octopush," 231) Momentarily, Jimmie was sullen with thoughts of a hopeless altitude where grew fruit. (RC) (Maggie, 32) The wall at the left happened to be of the common prison-like construction--no door, no window, no opening at all. (NC) ("The Five White Mice," 4 7) Their linen clothing was notable from being distinctly whiter than those of the men who, one hundred and fifty in number, lay on the ground in a long brown fringe, ragged--indeed, bare in many places--but singularly resposeful, unworried, veteran-like. (AC) ("The Clan of No-Name," 122) Suddenly the panes of the red window tinkled and crashed to the ground, and at other windows there suddenly reared other flames, like bloody spectres at the apertures of a haunted house. (PP) ("The Monster," 20) 60 Free modifiers offer distinct advantages. Appositive adjectives (clusters and series) like predicate adjectives can predicate something of the entire subject or object, not only a particular noun, and em phasize descriptive details. Adjective cluster5 are also capable of incorporating other grammatical structures besides simple adjectives; adjective series, on the other hand, include only adjectives, rarely more than three. These appositive structures, along with the noun cluster, a structure that renames and expands its antecedent, qualify and clarify without requiring additional clauses. Prepositional phrases typically qualify and clarify; in those introduced by like, analogy provides a means of probing the implications of some element in the base clause. Subordinate clauses and relative clauses also further comment on and describe other words or word groups in a sentence, par ticularly adding information about accompanying conditions or time or dering of events. In verb clusters the headword, the participle, functions apposi tively to comment upon a noun or pronoun in the clause in which the verb cluster is inserted. Both past and present participles carry verbal force, but whereas active force dominates in the present parti ciple, descriptive force dominates in the past participle. Hence each offers the chance to establish particular effects. Verb clusters of 61 I either tense allow writers to suggest two actions being performed si multaneously, that of the verb cluster and that of the base. Such si multaneity is a characteristic effect of absolutes too as can be seen in the sentence above from "The Wise Men." They, like verb clusters, also incorporate a participle but differ in that the participle in the absolute has its own subject, is even more freely mobile within a sen tence, and can modify an entire sentence, not only a substantive within the sentence. Absolutes even more frequently than verb clusters zero in on details attendant to actions or situations in the same way a cam era zooms in from a wide-angle to a close-up shot, or magnify details of appearance, or provide explanatory details(but this last much more rarely, at least for Crane). Parenthetical Insertion. Parenthetical insertions are those syn- tactic structures that interrupt a sentence's normal syntactic flow and are cut off from the syntax of the rest of the sentence. Techni cally, absolutes could be so classified, but what is being referred to here are authors' brief asides, their editorializing or interpolated comments which set off the reader's thoughts on a tangent as in this illustration from The O'Ruddy: Neither my books nor my father's stories--great lies, many of them--God rest him--had taught me that the duelling gentry could think at all and I was quite certain that they never tried. (8) Such asides reinforce or counterpoint ideas 1n the matrix clause and suspend the movement of time. They, like free modifiers, are a syn- tactic strategy to surmount the inherent linearity of sentences. Set off as they are, parenthetical assertions receive special emphasis, 62 eliciting heightened emotional responses in readers. Before proceeding to a discussion of branching and coherence, a recapitulation of the structures and stragegies and their significance to Crane's style is in order. In terms of base or near base sentences, one of the salient fea tures of Crane's style illuminated by the data is the number of thread bare sentences he writes, sentences with no expansions whatsoever or with only a simple attributive a<ljective or an adverb or prepositional phrase. However, wAat is equally important to Crane's style is the decline in unadorned sentences that occurs throughout his career up to The O'Ruddy, whose conversationally colloquial, first person mode lends itself to simple sentences. Monotonous juxtaposition of simple sentences with little variation in pattern marks the first phase of Crane's style whereas later, except for stark kernel sentences mostly reserved for specific effects, either singly or grouped, Crane prima rily writes base sentences not as entire constructions but as founda tions to be altered and amplified for greater expressive power. Of the structures available to Crane for expanding and altering his sentences, some, as revealed within the parameters of the method ology employed in this study, more saliently contribute to his changing grammatical style than others. Hence, of lesser importance to our discussion of Crane's style which follows are his loose, common coordi nation, simple and/or bound modifiers, and substitutions in noun slots with these exceptions: (1) unmarked subordinate noun clauses accom panying parenthetical matrices in The O'Ruddy, where, in a sudden blossoming, they contribute to the novel's intimate immediacy, and 63 (2) infinitive subjects, which do not appear until Crane's last two works. This is not to say that coordination, simple modifiers, and so forth will be ignored. In fact, one notable change in Crane's style is his lessening reliance on simple modifiers, especially as they ap pear in bizarre form ("flames struggled cholerically") in order to cre ate intensity and the appearance of depth in an essentially leveled style. But what we are primarily interested in are those structures that Crane increasingly uses during the span of his career or begins to use for the first time, those marks of a mature writer that substi tutes appropriate complexity and variety for early reliance on simple sentences, eccentric modification, and wrenched inversions. There fore, of the structures and strategies discussed, our attention will be primarily focused upon free modifier types and the multi-level depth and breadth Crane creates with them, and the more elegant mani festations of coordination. Right-, Mid-, and Left-Branching. Where a writer places structures, especially free modifiers, which are relatively mobile, can contribute to or detract from pleasing prose rhythm, coherence, and optimum ex pression of ideas. It is the placement of modifiers, to the left of the base, interrupting it, or to the right of it, pointing backward or forward to elements 1n the base sentence, that shapes the ebb and flow of sentences, which Ian A. Gordon asserts forms the characteristic wave-like pattern of English prose. 16 And it is placement that con tributes to the centrifugal or centripetal force of the sentence, its internal and external coherency, and to enhancing or impeding the reader's decoding process. 64 Right-branching sentences begin with a grammatically complete base clause with its bound modifiers, to which are added free modifiers that 1 amplify, expand, limit, and illustrate the main point. Progress is linear, with backward pointing modifiers in forward moving expansions as various modifier structures narrow down to concrete and precise de tails. Right-branching sentences present few decoding problems since they follow the natural pattern of unreflective thought. Right-branch ing absolutes in sentence final position are often particularly effect ive as they zoom in on a particular detail once the whole situation has been established, as we can see in this sentence: It [the sound of the fire whistle] released the muscles of the company of young men on the sidewalk, who had been like statues (RC), posed eagerly, lithely (VC), their ears turned (Abs) . ("The Monster, "18) Mid-branching modifiers interrupt the main clause and postpone its grammatical conclusion. The sentence above from "The Wise Men," de lineating Freddie's desperate but doomed attempt to win the race with Pop, illustrates effective use of such delay. The suspended conclusion of the main clause creates in readers a sense of expectancy and accel erated motion as their expectations are spurred on in anticipation of its ending. Mid-branching modification imposes a compression and den sity on the entire clause that is not shared by left and right-branch ing sentences, which spin out their elaborations from a grammatically complete center rather than concentrate and enclose them. In addition, although mid-branching sentences avoid the tendency to top-heaviness that sometimes accompanies left-branching sentences, they share a characteristic with them: that of appearing more calculatedly organ- 65 ized than linearly advancing right-branched sentences, although an au thor may well have pondered equally as long or longer the right-branch- ing or cumulative sentence. In left-branching sentences, modifiers anticipate the base clause, bringing with their placement both disadvantages and advantages. One disadvantage is that decoding problems can result for the reader if the elaboration is too complex since left-branching modification precedes its referrent. In addition, as mentioned, left-branching sentences can become top-heavy, resulting in awkward prose. On the other hand, front-shifted adverbials naturally and helpful ly set the scene, the time, place, attendant circumstances, and so forth, of the sentence's main proposition. The following is typical: From their position as they again faced toward the place of the fighting, they could, of course, comprehend a greater amount of the battle than when their vision had I been blurred by the hurling smoke of the line. (The Red Badge, 133) And, under certain circumstances, left-branching can engender an appro priate aura of irresolution and suspense, as in this sentence from Chapter XVII of Maggie: Chuckling and leering, he followed the girl of the crimson legions. (149) However brief, the delayed disclosure of what is being talked about makes the main clause emerge as an almost inevitable climax, both sharply to the point and with a sense of finality. Moreover, as men tioned above, the appearance of carefully weighed thought clings to left-branching sentences. Another advantage of left-branching has to do with word order. An !obvious but not trivial observation one can make about English sen- 66 I I tences is their overwhelming tendency to begin with the subject (es- I pecially noun phrases introduced by determiner the). In fact, accord- I ing to Christensen's count based on 200 sentences each from selected I I works by modern American authors, only a quarter of the sentences writ- ~ ten (24.47%) started with something other than the subject. Pri marily that "something" was an adverbial (22. 98%), which has, as pointed out, a practical scene-setting function. Coordinating con junctions (mostly and and but) opened 6.65% of the sentences; verbal groups 1.17%; inverted constructions, including appositive nouns or 17 adjectives, inverted complements and verb phrases, only 0.32%. All of these structures are not, of course, modifiers; nevertheless, they are, since they come before the subject, left-branching. And despite the fact that proportionately few sentences begin with something other than the subject, those few instances are important to a writer's over all projection of variety and coherence, the latter a particular point of the discussion in the next section. 18 The significance of branching to Crane's grammatical style lies 1n both the quality and quantity of it. Although the computer is not programmed to count these various structures (for example, only the fact that a structure is subordinate is marked, not whether a structure is, say, a relative or subordinate clause, nor certainly, whether a clause functions adverbially and how), individual spot counts indicate a number of interesting stylistic facts about branching. One is that Crane habitually prefers sentences which start with the subject and spin out their elaborations, if any are spun out at all, after the 67 essential grammatical construction is complete. Left- and mid-branch- ! ing appear less frequently in the early work compared to that after The Red Badge, and what left-branching occurs tends to be top-heavy. In the later work Crane not only front shifts modifiers and interrupts sentences with them, he more often combines two or three modes in one sentence. In terms of placing something before the subject, Crane fol lows the pattern discovered by Christensen, but there is an increease in sentences opened with something other than the subject in the work afte.· The Red Badge. Hence the sentences of the later work marck along 19 less monotonously and also, as we shall see next, more coherently. Coherence. Skillful writers use a number of syntactic devices to fos- ter coherence between propositions: demonstrative and personal pro nouns, repeated key words and phrases, parallelism, conjunctions, and conjunctive adverbs. Judicious use of these devices assists clarity through pointing back to what has been said in order to connect it to what will be said or by drawing ideas together through their being framed in identical structures. Indeed, expert writers may create a need for connective devices, as, for example, by creating junctures in order to insert coordinators that will highlight what precedes and what follows. Sentence initial coordinators, besides providing an alternative to sentences opened by the subject, al so assist coherence by establishing certain relationships between sentences (as they do also between in dependent clauses of compound sentences): coordinate (and, which be sides grammatically indicating addition often rhetorically suggests weighty afterhought), observative (but), causative (for), conclusive 68 (so), and alternative (or). 20 Conjunctive adverbs also connect propositions and express these same key relationships, but differ from coordinating conjunctions in I their mobility and power to modify. 21 The former 1s the more impor tant function. Whereas coordinating conjunctions must stand between the clauses they connect, conjunctive adverbs can be shifted to almost any position within the sentence other than between modifiers and the word modified. For example, in "But then it is the innocent old scan dal-mongers, poor old placid-minded well-protected hens, who are the most harmful" (The O'Ruddy, 139), "but" must head the sentence although Crane could have shifted "then" to other positions except within the structures headed by "scandal-mongers," "hens," and "harmful" to attain variable effects. Conjunctive adverbs in stressed sentence initial position tend to impart a formal quality to writing and draw focus upon the connective itself; those moved about within the sentence soften the formal effect and shift stress to the words abutting the connective. (The effect in the sentence from The O'Ruddy is further to emphasize "but," already stressed by being in sentence initial position, and the fact that the content of this sentence opposes that of the preceding sentence.) As Milic noted in his study of Jonathan Swift's style, connective signposts, especially conjunctive adverbs and subordinating conJunc tions, function crucially to "provide the reader with the author's own key to the relation of the materials and throw the entire compo- 1 sition into focus"; therefore, "good writers must always be concerned about the appropriateness of their connectives . 112 2 Such connectives J 69 are the fulcrum of hypotactic style, in which ideas and actions are explicitly ranked and linked to one another. Paratactic style, on the other hand depends much more upon the reader's discerning hierarchies and relationships since clauses are juxtaposed with no explicit autho- rial connections. To illustrate the difference, let us compare a para- tactically styled paragraph from Maggie and its possible hypotactic counterpart: On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro dodging, hurling ·stones and swearing in barbaric trebles. ( 4) At the instant their antagonist tumbled to the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on him. Under their attack he crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The scene was chaotic as little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles. In the recast version not only connectives are added but details neces- sitated by the shift in style. One characteristic of hypotaxis is that it generates more details, is more informative, than parataxis. Cunne explains paratactic style as a primitive stage from which hypotaxis emerged. An early stage of hypotaxis, with subordination marked in thought but not yet specified, survives today in unmarked relative clauses: "Another thing I recall is that I had not the slightest doubt of my ability to kill Forister" (The O'Ruddy, 67). An intermediate stage connects sentences with multifunctional and, still heard in colloquial Irish English and exemplified also in The O'Ruddy: "By this time, they were so angry that Mickey, seeing how things were 70 going and I being a mere lad, took me from the room" (64). Formal, full hypotaxis marks the latest stage in the historical development of English, and allows many fine shades of meaning to be expres?ed. Al though not as direct and lively as p~rataxis, it is more compact, ac curate, and economical than the looser, clumsier parataxis, hence more 1 . . d. 23 preva ent in written iscourse. Writers' facility with both styles enables them to project different voices, to be subtle or bold, to in crease logic or increase liveliness to anticipate readers' puzzles or let readers solve them themselves. The notion of coherence or lack of it functions significantly in discussion of Crane's style. During the span of his career Crane moves from an extremely paratactic style toward fuller exploitation of the language's hypotactic possibilities. He moves from minimally guiding the reader's apprehension of his fictions to overt guidance. Testifying to this change is his enlisting the aid of such devices as conjunctive adverbs (see Appendix E) and the unifying possibilities of 1 parallel structure. Such additions to his repertoire extend his early limitations, opening up possibilities for expression of mature ideas. I say possibility because any grammatical structure, even those which seem to offer only advantages to a writer, must be appropriately chosen and placed whenever choice and place are optional. Nonetheless, control of a variety of structures is crucial if a writer is to make those choices. In this respect then, as Crane gains manipulative power over the structures and strategies discussed he makes of syntax . . f h. f. . 1 24 a more expressive instrument or is 1ctiona messages. 71 An Overview of Crane's Syntactic Style With these syntactic structures and strategies in mind, we can now proceed to an advance overview of Crane's increased narrative-descrip- 1 tive power as evidenced in two representative and temporally distinct passages from his prose fiction. The first passage comes from the "Sullivan County Sketches," the second from Wounds in the Rain: 1. (1) A night wind began to roar and clouds bearing a load of rain appeared in the heavens and threatened their position. (2) The four men shivered and turned up their coat collars. (3) Suddenly it struck each that he was alone, separated from humanity by impassable gulfs. (4) All those things which come forth at night began to make noises. (5) Unseen animals scrambled and flopped among the weeds and sticks. (6) Weird features mas queraded awfully in robes of shadow. (7) Each man felt that he was compelled to sit on something that was damply alive. (8) A legion of frogs in the grass by the shore and a host of toads in the trees chanted. (9) The little man started up and shrieked that all creeping things were inside his stump. (10) Then he tried to sit facing four ways, because dread objects were approaching at his back. (11) The individual was drinking and hoarsely singing. (12) At different times they labored with him. (13) It availed them nought. ["G'home, dern fools."] (14) Among themselves they broached various plans for escape. (15) Each involved a contact with the black water, in which were things that wriggled. (16) They shuddered and sat still. ("The Octopush," 232-233) 2. (1) The battalion moved out into the mud and began a leisurely march in the damp shade of the trees. (2) The advance of two batteries had churned the black soil into a formidable paste. (3) The brown leggings of the men, stained with the mud of other days, took on a deeper color. (4) Perspiration broke gently out on the reddish faces. (5) With his heavy roll of blanket and the half of a shelter-tent crossing his shoulder and under his left arm, each man presented the appearance of being clasped from behind, wrestler fashion, by a pair of thick white arms. (6) There was something distinctive in the way they carried their rifles. (7) There was the grace of an old hunter somewhere in it, the grace of a man whose rifle has become absolutely a part of himself. (8) Furthermore, almost every blue shirt-sleeve was rolled to the elbow, disclosing fore-arms of almost incredible brawn. (9) The rifles seemed light, almost fragile, in the hands that were at the end of these arms, never fat but always with rolling muscles and veins that seemed on the point of bursting. (10) And another thing was the silence and the marvelous impas sivity of the faces as the column made its slow way toward where the whole forest spluttered and fluttered with battle. ("The Price of the Harness," 100) 72 The passages are similar in length: paragraph one totals 185 words, paragraph two, 214 words; similar in choice of basic sentence patterns: Subject-Verb, Subject-Verb-Object, Subject-Verb-Subject Com plement; and similar in their overall simplicity. But there are no ticeable differences. Despite the shorter length of paragraph one it contains sixteen sentences compared to ten sentences in paragraph two. The longest sen tence in paragraph one contains twenty-one words, the shortest four, but most cluster between twelve to fifteen words. This compares to paragraph two's longest sentence being forty words and the shortest eight. That the increased length of the sentences in paragraph two does not result from simple compounding is evident in the number of T-units. Paragraph one contains twenty T-units varying from nineteen to three words, averaging 9.05 words in length, whereas paragraph two contains almost the same number of T-units as sentences, eleven, which vary in length from forty to seven words and average 19.36 words. Because of the more frequent and evenly spaced full stops at sen tence and T-unit end, the characteristic rhythm of paragraph one is choppy, awkward. If paragraph one were told from first person or even third person limited point of view such a nervous rhythm might I 73 be expected since it would appropriately underscore a person's trepi- dations in the dark, but we do not expect it from an omniscient nar rator, who, if he is to be trusted as our guide, must remain aloof from the senseless fears of the men. In contrast, the variety of sentence length, hence T-unit length, in paragraph two contributes to a smoothly flowing rhythm, a rhythm generating a sense of ebb and flow, appropriate to the leisurely march of the men through the inhibiting mud, by alternation of long and short sentences: nineteen, fourteen, eighteen, eight, forty, eleven, twenty five, sixteen, thirty-three and thirty words. Indeed, within the sen tences themselves this same rhythm is reinforced as modifiers point backward and forward to the base clause. Creation of appropriate rhythm in language 1s fundamental to the achievement of effective communication. This means, of course, not only rhythm appropriate to content but to audience. The rhythm of paragraph one is not only less suitable to context but to Crane's readers and critics. It is as if we are experiencing a dance marred by occasional missteps in paragraph one compared to our experiencing a smoothly executed waltz in paragraph two. This is not to say that Crane gives up his characteristic rhythm that is built on a foundation of short simple sentences and dependent upon repetition and parallel structure; but later Crane tunes his individual rhythm more discrimi natingly in terms of subject and audience. Longer T-units and sentences with a variety of free and bound = ;nodifters equate with more grace and economy of expression and a densely textured style. Many kernel or near-kernel sentences result 74 in the opposite. Only one kernel sentence, that is, one with no modi fication at all, occurs in the two passages, and it is in paragraph one: "It availed them nought." That this bare bones sentence is di rect and concise is true, but its possible effect of emphasis is under mined by its context: not much longer and almost no less direct sen tences. The rest of the sentences in paragraph one employ at least some expansion through modification. Simple types are preposed adjec tives: "night wind," "impassable gulfs," "coat collars," "dread ob jects," "different times," "various plans," "black water"; only one participle: "creeping things"; some adverbs: "suddenly ... struck," "masqueraded awfully," "damply alive," "hoarsely singing," "sat still." Prepositional phrases are a major means of modification, among them "of rain," "in the heavens," "at night," "among the weeds and sticks." All of the prepositional phrases are bound as are all the relative clauses and all but one of the subordinate clauses, resulting in a thin texture according to the Christensen schema. In fact, even of the bound variety there are very few subordinate clauses: "that he was alone," "that he was compelled to sit on something," "that all creeping 1 things were inside his stump," or relative clauses: "which came forth at night," "that was damply alive," "which were things," "that wrig gled." Only one subordinate clause is free, but positioned as it is in its normal order seems not to be: "because dread things were approach ing his back." There is only one verb cluster: "separated from human ity," and none of the other types of free modifiers. Generally Crane resorts to separate clauses and bound modifiers to add informative details. 75 In paragraph two many more preposed adjectives occur and, as a whole, tend to be more precisely descriptive, more colorful: "lei surely march," "damp shade," "black soil," "formidable paste," "brown leggings," "deeper color," "reddish faces," "heavy roll," "right shoul der," "left arm," "thick white arms," "old hunger," "blue shirt sleeve," "incredible brawn," "marvelous impassivity," "slow way." As in paragraph one, only one preposed participle occurs, bringing with it, as in paragraph one, verbal power in addition to descriptive power: "rolling muscles and veins," furthered by the subsequent gerund: "that seemed on the point of bursting," the gerund and gerund phrase being sophisticated syntactic structures that do not appear in paragraph one. ("Of being clasped" in paragraph two is also a gerund.) Simple ad- verbs are: "broke gently out," "almost incredible brawn," "has become absolutely." As in paragraph one, bound prepositional phrases are a key means of adding informative details, but there are also several free ones: "by a pair of thick white arms," "wrestler fashion" (un marked prepositional phrase), and "in the hands that were at the end of these arms." Several verb clusters (for example, "stained with the mud of other days"), one absolute introduced by 'witll' ("with his heavy roll of blanket and the half of a shelter-tent crossing his right shoulder and under his left arm"), several appositives--in Christensen's termi nology noun clusters, adjective clusters, and adjective series--(for example, the adjective cluster "never fat but always with rolling mus cles and veins that seemed on the point of bursting"), and one sub ordinate time and attendent circumstances adverbial ("as the column made its slow way toward where the whole forest spluttered and flut- I tered with battle") add to the variety of free modifiers. tive clause modifiers and subordinate clauses are bound. 76 Other 1ela- Crane also shows more diversity in sentence openers in paragraph two than one. Five out of ten sentences begin with a structure other than the subject whereas in paragraph one only four sentences out of sixteen begin with something other than the subject. One sentence in paragraph one begins with the adverb suddenly, and additionally employs it-inversion to postpone the sentence's true sub ject, giving us a foretaste of a structure that will become more com mon in his later work. It-inversion joins variety and complexity as opposed to simple expletive there-inversion, and is unobtrusive as opposed to intrusive subject-verb inversion (an example in paragraph one is "in which were things that wiggled"), a pretentious structure, 25 the use of which demands justification for the emphasis it creates. Another sentence begins with the common conjunctive adverb then showing a time relationship; two begin with prepositional phrases. The impetus for these alternate sentence openers seems to be more Crane's wish for diversity than establishing coherence. Indeed, ascer taining connections between the propositions largely depends upon the reader: because a night wind began to roar and rain threatened, the men turn up their coat collars; as they do so, the men realize they are alone; but it turns out that they are not quite alone since they are soon joined by the fauna that emerge after dark, and so forth. Sen tence order often seems arbitrary rather than organic: for example, sentence eight more logically follows six (or it could precede six or even five) and sentence nine more logically follows seven than eight. J 77 I syntax tends to be fractured with repetition of a key word or its vari ants or pronoun reference unifying a few sentences, then a repetition of this process for another few sentences, on through the paragraph. Parallel structure, a grammatical device for, among other things, uni fying balanced or complementary ideas or sentences does not so function I here (witness the parallel subject forms: "a night wind," "the four men," "all those things," and so forth). The end result is a paragraph whose syntax and sense do not quite march to the beat of the same drummer. Paragraph two, on the other hand, uses a variety of sentence openers other than subject: the extended absolute introduced by "with, 11 the conjunctive adverb expressing emphatic addition, "furthermore," two inversions with expletive "there," and one initial coordinating conjunction "and," this latter a device for suggesting weighty, impor tant afterthought, and in its relaxed quality, a kind of resolution en tirely fitting for a last sentence of a paragraph in general and the content of this paragraph in particular. The paragraph is unified by its circular organization, starting and ending with the battalion en masse, and the first sentence, which sets up the content for the remainder of the paragraph: the soldiers' leisurely march in the mud. Within this structure the description is detailed, its order spatial and associative. Crane guides our eyes from the battalion as a whole to the mud through which they slog, to the men's boots stained with that mud then to the men's perspiration stained faces, to the equipment they bear, which along with the mud, causes their perspiration then to the rifles also carried by the men, 78 1 which draws the eye next to the arms and hands carrying those rifles, muscles bursting with a turbulent strength that contrasts sharply with I the impassive faces of the men as they march toward the battlefield. Without Crane telling us what these men think or feel, his description shows what they think and feel. These men and their plight become far more real and meaningful to us than the four men and their problems in the "Sullivan County Sketches," due in no small measure to Crane's syn tactic manipulation, another evidence of which is his handling of the two expletive there-inversions, still another the intricate verbal rhythm created in sentence five. The opening of the second there-inversion parallels, echoes (there - V - NP (Det - N) - PP), and more specifically defines the "something distinctive" of the first sentence as "the grace of an old hunter" 1n the second sentence. Then, modulating to a climax, underscored by "absolutely," the definition is expanded even further and at the same time re-echoes earlier words: "grace" and "rifles." If sentence four's rhythm is climatic, sentence five's is intricate, with its base submerged in its center. The intricacy of the sentence effectively supports the intricate mounting of the soldiers' equipment on their backs. Its balanced details might be marked off this way: With his heavy roll of blanket and the half of a shelter-tent crossing his right shoulder and under his left arm, each man presented the appearance (base) of being clasped, wrestler fashion, by a pair of thick white arms. In fact, the heaping up of details describing the men throughout the paragraph generates remarkable force, a force enhanced by structure matching sense. 79 Crane's employing more of the options allowed by the English lan guage and employing them with more skill than in the earlier passage allows him not only to elaborate his descriptive-narrative prose but also to project the voice of a mature narrator, one who speaks with knowledge and authority and therefore commands the reader's respect and trust. However, one might argue that these passages just discussed differ 1n subject matter hence would naturally exhibit different stylistic qualities. To some extent such an argument is certainly true. To t~e an extreme example even intuitively a reader can detect stylistic dif ferences in Crane's The O'Ruddy from his other work, stylistic differ ences entailed by The O'Ruddy's being a romance set in early Georgian England and involving a young Irish adventurer as its hero and narra tor. There 1s, as some critics have remarked, an Irish lilt to it. Yet despite changes in subject matter and narrative viewpoint, Crane does reveal characteristic syntactic choices at certain times in his writing career that, taking the broad view of particular works, mark those works as being early or late irrespective of changes in subject matter. To illustrate, we can examine a passage from The Red Badge. This passage, like that from "The Price of the Harness," is a description of a military unit, also an infantry column heading into battle. I.h - like paragraph two, however, this passage contains two paragraphs and less words (169); but no one paragraph this close in subject matter I occurs in The Red Badge, whose characteristic paragraph length is fairly short. 3. (1) Presently, the calm head of a forward-going column of infantry appeared in the road. (2) It came swiftly on. (3) Avoiding the obstructions gave it the sinuous movement of a serpent. (4) The men at the head butted mules with their musket-stocks. (5) They prodded teamsters, indifferent to all howls. (6) The men forced their way through parts of the dense mass by strength. (7) The blunt head of the column pushed. (8) The raving teamsters swore many oaths. (9) The commands to make way had the ring of a great importance in them. (10) The men were going forward to the heart of the din. (11) They were to confront the eager rush of the enemy. (12) They felt the pride of their onward movement when the remainder of the army seemed trying to dribble down this road. (13) They tumbled teams about with a fine feeling that it was no matter so long as their column got to the front in time. (14) This importance made their faces grave and stern. (15) And the backs of the officers were very rigid. (83-84) 80 What we see when we analyze passage three 1s that stylistically in some ways it falls between paragraph one from "The Octopush" and para graph two from "The Price of the Harness," but overall is closer to paragraph one. Simple sentence modification follows much the same pattern as par agraphs one and two in that all sentences except one contain expansions beyond their base structure (the exception being sentence fourteen, but as a pattern six sentence with a compound object complement, its ef fect is not that of a bare bones sentence). In quantity of proposed adjectives, passage three compares most closely with paratraph one: "calm head," "forward-going column," "sinuous movement," "dense mass," "blunt head," "great importance," "eager rush," "onward movement," "fine feeling." But in descriptive quality, its simple modification 81 falls closer to that of paragraph two, being more precise for the most part and more evocative than paragraph one's (compare, for example, I "sinuous movement" to "coat collars"). As in paragraphs one and two, Crane uses only one proposed participial modifier, "raving temsters"- technically, that is, since "forward-going" though counted as an adj ec tive carries with it the same verbal plus descriptive force of "rav ing."26 Instead, he depends upon active verbs ("butted," "pushed") and infinitives ("to confront," "to dribble") to convey the sense of action 1n the passage. That sense of action is notably chaotic. Passage three is shorter than paragraph one yet contains almost as many sentences (fifteen) and only slightly longer T-units (11.26), creating a similarly choppy rhythm. As in paragraph one sentence lengths cluster, here around eleven words. Also contributing to the disjunctive rhythm is the num ber of sentences beginning not only with the subject but identical or similar subject structure forms and lexical items ("the men" occurs three times, "they" four times) parading with monotonous regularity down the page. In fact, whereas Crane employs the slightly more so phisticated device of compounding in paragraph one ("The four men shiv ered and turned up their coat collars"), he ignores that option in passage three ("The men at the head butted mules with their musket stocks. They prodded teamsters, indifferent to all howls.") Also, like paragraph one, passage three reveals little effort to connect propositions explicitly. One sophisticated gerund phrase sub ject (sentence two) and a subordinate adverbial clause (sentence l_:welve) are the only two attempts to show time and circumstance rela- 82 tionships among the descriptive and narrative details presented. Sen tences grammatically cohere through pronoun reference and some repeti tion of key words or their variants ("column," "men"; "oaths," "com mands"), but this grammatical coherence is at odds with sense. It is as if Crane recorded numerous, isolated images on film, each of much the same duration and from much the same angle and distance, although accompanied by a change in camera position, then spliced the shots together carefully, insuring similarity between each shot but without regard for intelligible sequences or dissolves. When we read the pas sage and then put it aside, no clear, coherent picture of the moving mass of men can be recalled as it can after reading paragraph two. No lens zooms in lingeringly to show the details suggested by the wide angle shot. We see the scene from The Red Badge in a piecemeal blur, not only here but throughout the novel, as details in short, terse sen tences bombard us like a hail of bullets. As critics have remarked from the earliest reviews of The Red Badge, its power is not descriptive but subjective. Sights and scenes, the details of men caught in the drama of battle, do not come alive so much as the fever and confusion of the mind that attempts to see them does. What description there is is kaleidoscopic. Although, since we are immersed in the battle scene with Fleming, not standing off at a distance as with the narrator of "The Price of the Harness," we would expect to see more clearly, paradoxically our vision is blinded. We rather feel the confusion and vagueness of the battle field, the terror and bewilderment of Fleming. 83 Point of view has much to do with this apprehension. The Red Badge is told from third person point of view, but for the most part narrator and Fleming are indistinguishable. Even though the narrator does intervene from time to time somewhat obtrusively to evaluate for the reader Fleming's conduct and attitude, viewpoints are often as signable to either, sometimes within a paragraph, sometimes even within a sentence. This latter fine shading is illustrated in the sentence starting Chapter VII when Fleming exclaims: "By heavens, they had won after all" (59). "By heavens" is Fleming's di·:ect speech; "they had won after all" the indirect speech of the narrator. Blending within a paragraph is illustrated ·n the second paragraph of passage three. Fleming cannot know what the men in the infantry column feel; only the narrator can. Yet we feel that the entire description is reported from Fleming's vantage point, which is established in the paragraph preceding the quoted ones. In it Fleming seats himself to watch the behind-the-lines activity surging about him, an activity that includes the column threading its way toward the battlefield through the re treating mass of men and equipment. What Fleming reports of the ad vancing column he might deem everything, 27 but he reveals less of the column of men than of his bewildered mental processes, aptly encap sulated in the rapid hail of abrupt sentences. In effect, with the short, structurally unvaried sentences, the broken sequences of details, the lack of clear description of the scene, the narrator of The Red Badge, whether omniscient or Fleming, largely comes across to the reader as much the same person as the nar rator of "The Octopush." The crucial difference is, however, that the 1 effect is entirely suitable to naive, confused Fleming but entirely unsuitable to the narrator of "The Octopush," who is not the "little man" yet speaks as we might expect the fearful little man to speak. 84 It would appear that Crane's early stylistic power optimally fit ted both subject, a psychological portrayal of the fearful mind of a young soldier facing battle, and point of view, that of the young sol dier in The Red Badge. Crane's inability to separate his narrative voice from his protagonist's voice, a liability in the Sullivan County tales, became an asset in The Red Badge. By writing in a way that he appears to have been limited to at this point in his career, Crane made the most of these limitations to write his war story masterfully, ren dering the experience of war as it had never been rendered before. (One is reminded of Hemingway's remark about the "unavoidable awkward- ness" of his style of which he too made the best.) 28 It is not until the later work that Crane can begin to project a multiplicity of voices, freed in part by his increasing control of language. 85 Notes 1 See, for example, a letter to Ripley Hitchcock [April 2, 1896], in which Crane asks that somebody review Maggie, watching for bad gram matical form and bad spelling, in Letters, p. 122. 2 See two letters addressed to John Northern Hilliard ([January, 1896?] and [1897?]) in which Crane states what to him is "good writing," in Letters, pp. 109 and 158. Also, as reported by Robert Stallman, Vosburgh, an artist with whom Crane lived while composing The Red Badge, attested to Crane's studying and refining his phrases, and then reciting them aloud to his friends to assess their effect. In Stephen Crane: A Biography __ (New York: George Braziller, 1968), p. 169. 3 This is said with the full realization that The Red Badge, Crane's major work, was written early, not late. But although The Red Badge would thus appear to be an anomaly, as we examine Crane's gram matical choices synoptically in this chapter and in more detail in subsequent chapters, we will see why in this particular case less syntactic maturity helps the novel's effect rati~er than hinders it. 4 Not entirely though. Some potentially interesting features of Crane's style emerged from the data during the process of concentrating on other features. These "minor" stylistic features were not studied in detail and are mentioned only in passing in the overview and in the chapters which follow. However, since they either mark characteristic grammatical choices of Crane's and/or point to areas that might be well served by further study, it was decided to mention them briefly during this review of syntactic structures. 5 The number varies slightly depending upon whether grammarians focus on the type of verb phrase or entire predicate pattern. Hence, the linking verb followed by either a predicate adjective or predicate noun may be considered one sentence type. A similar collapsing of the predicate patterns verb - direct object and verb - indirect object - direct object into one type may also be accomplished. A common grouping into six types (using sentences from the Crane data to illustrate) is: 1. Subject - Verbintransitive They agreed. 2. Subject - Verbtransitive - Direct Object A ventriloquist followed the dancer. 3. Subject - Verbtransitive - Indirect Object - Direct Object This land ~ cape gave him assurance. 4. Subject - Verblinking - Predicate Noun These two were pals. 5. Subject - Verblinking - Predicate Adjective The bundles were stolid. 86 6. Subject - Verbtransitive - Direct Object - Object Complement Scully ... made them prisoners. The diff~rence in number of basic sentence types depending upon analy tical method is of no significance to our discussion. Nor, indeed, are the particular patterns. It is the stripped-down aspect of these base sentences that is sig'ni.ficant to our discussion of Crane's style. 6 That these categories are not neatly parallel is unavoidable. Both modification and substitution include subordination so ·_ t does not form a separate category balancing coordination. Free modifiers con stitute a special type of modification, enjoying relative freedom of placement in a cla~se nJt characteristic of bound modifiers. Paren thetical insertions are similar to one particular type of free modifier, the absolute, in grammatical independence, but function differently. In addition, discussion of the basic methods entails discussion of parallelism, antithesis, asyndeton, and so forth along the way, and points to grammar not being as neatly separable from rhetoric as sug gested by the use of the term "grammatical style," since some of the terms are quite frankly borrowed from rhetoric. That grammar and rhetoric march hand in hand at times, however, is no new discovery and should cause no confusion. Rhetorical choice plays its part in the writing process whenever two or more grammatical options are possible, 1n other words, virtually as soon as expansion of base sentences begins. 7 In structural grammar gerunds are distinguished formally from nouns of action by the former not being preceded by a determiner. Stealing is a noun of action in The stealing of the horses brought a jail sentence, a gerund in Stealing horses brought a jail sentence. The difference in meaning between the two forms is a sense of definite ness and particularity adhering to nouns of action as opposed to the feature of infiniteness connected with gerunds. However, both verbals are dynamic rather than static in effect. Only gerunds conforming to the structural definition are counted in this study. (See Appendix E.) 8 The former is Crane's choice: "Won by this attitude, Henry would sometimes allow the child to enjoy the felicity of squeezing the sponge over a buggy-wheel, even when Jimmie was still gory from unspeakable deeds" ("The Monster," 11). 9 While nominal style is often judged inferior to verbal style (see Rulon Wells, "Nominal and Verbal Style," in Style in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok [Cambridge, Mass.: The M. I. T. Press, 1960], pp. 213- 220), such judgment refers to excessive nominalizing. Crane's nominal izations never become excessive; rather than creating monotony they function in the later work to create variety and grace. 10 Preface to Critical Reading (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1963), p. 210. 87 11 Another climax pattern occurs in "The Open Boat," building up to the worst kind of catastrophy for the captain of a ship: "The injured captain, lying in the bow) was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down" (68). No thorough analysis was made, but from a cursory survey it appears that, as the examples cited sug gest, Crane only uses the climax pattern to intensify doom although he could as easily use it to intensify happier events. But he does not, and we are reminded that even stories that end happily carry an under lying note of imminent sorrow. That the world, no matter how benefi cent it seems today, may turn on one tomorrow is a frequent message in Crane's fiction. 12 "---1)" is a symbolic convention being used to mean "is trans fonned into" or "is rewritten as." 13 Beginning with "In Defense of the Absolute" in College English, May 1950, through "A Generative Rhetoric of the Paragraph" in College Composition and Communication, October 1965, for a total of six essays, all reprinted with an introductory Preface in Notes Toward a New Rhetoric (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1967. l4 Notes, p. 6. l5 Sometimes absolutes are marked by what seems to be the preposi tion with: "Then if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, per haps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant" ("The Open Boat," 85). But this with is an "empty" grammatical marker of the absolute construc tion; it can be omitted, unlike the preposition with, which cannot be: "Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone with the thing" ("The Open Boat," 84). 16 The Movement of English Prose (London: Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd., 1966), pp. 19-21. 17 Notes, pp. 43-47. 18 These strategies have developed in response to partially lost sentence dynamics as English has come to depend upon word order rather than inflections. 19 Part of Crane's trend to increasingly opening sentences with something other than the subject is his increasing use of sentence initial coordinating conjunctions. (See Appendix E.) Simulation of conversational speech may well have been his conscious aim, especially in view of their increased use in The O'Ruddy, but throughout his work 88 Crane gains coherence and cohesion by their use. An interesting phenomenon that emerged in regard to sentence initial coordinators is that even though "and" is his most frequently chosen coordinator in the work as a whole, it does not predominate in sentence initial position, where "but" (seconded by its close variants "yet" and "nor") becomes his favored coordinator. In the data "but" occurs fifty times as sen tence opener, "and" twenty-six times (including one occurrence of "and yet" and two of "and so"), "so" nine times, "nor" three times, and "yet," "for," "or" each once. Such use may, of course, simply be acci dental, but it seems more likely a reflection of his desire to stress opposites. Many critics have remarked Crane's fiction as being defined by tensions between two diverging points of view: the deluded view of his fictional characters opposed to the knowledgeable, unswervingly realistic view of his narrator-observers. The syntactic choice of the coordinator "but" placed in the emphasized sentence initial position is a useful syntactic realization of these diverging points of view. 20 I borrow these terms from W. Ross Winterowd, "The Grammar of Coherence," College English, 31 (May 1970), 828-835. 21 Some principal conjunctive adverbs are nevertheless, however, meanwhile, then, therefore. Some prepositional units functioning the same way are on the other hand, on the contrary, in the meantime. 22 A Quantitative Approach, p. 123. 23 George 0. Curme, Syntax, Vol. III of A Grammar of the English Language (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1931), pp. 172-173. 24 A measure of his growing syntactic maturity, and one that will figure in discussion of Crane's style, is T-unit length. The T-unit is a syntactic entity consisting of a main clause and any subordinate clause or phrase attached to it. Number of words per T-unit has proved to be the most reliable single indicator of prose that is judged mature. For a fuller explanation of the T-unit as a measure of syntactic matu rity and the increasing length of Crane's T-units, see Appendix D. 25 There are, of course, other types of inversion (for example, displaced objects and complements) which Crane also uses. 26 The computer program marks all words functioning in an adjective slot ADJ. Since it counts compounds as one word, they are marked for their overall fonn and function. Hence, "forward-going," composed of an adjective and a participle, is marked ADJ. 27 Indeed, elsewhere (Chapter XIV) Fleming insists that he sees everything "bold and clear"--at this point blades of green grass, changes in the surface roughness of the brown or grey tree trunks, the men of the regiment with their "starting eyes and sweating faces" (138), but he does not see clearly, of course, as the narrator lets the reader know by undercutting Fleming's faulty self-evaluation. 89 28 George Plimpton, "An Interview with Hemingway," in Hemingway and His Critics, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961), p. 30. 90 CHAPTER IV STAGE ONE: PROVENIENCE AND EARLY MATURITY None of Crane's works is exactly like any other, no more in syn tactic features than in plot, or theme, or characters. Yet, just as some of his fictions warrant grouping on the basis of certain similar ities of plot, or theme, or characters (Maggie and "The Monster" as social commentary, for example) so some warrant grouping on the basis of style. Because of the grammatical choices that Crane makes 1n the "Sullivan County Sketches," Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, and The Red Badge of Courage as revealed in the data, we can cluster these works as representative of his early style, a style that invites the epithet "abrupt." Although not alike in subject matter, narrative point of view, or artistic merit, they nonetheless all reveal certain general characteristics that support this label: fragmented syntax composed of short sentences and T-units juxtaposed with few connectives, reliance on eccentric word choice rather than syntactic variety and complexity to obtain intensity and narrative texture, and amplification of base sentences primarily through limited bound modifiers. Discussion of these works in turn, respectively Groups 1, 2, and 4 in the data, will expand on these general features and the ways in which the works con form to them (and, on occasion, depart from them). It will also com ment on the implications of Crane's choices for the artistic success of the works. 91 The "Sullivan County Sketches" The "Sullivan County Sketches" reveal Crane testing his wings as a creative artist, establishing themes and structures that he would sustain with variations throughout his career. Hence, even though the "Sullivan County Sketches" in no way approach the artistic merit of Crane's works that make up the bulk of the selections for this study, they are important for what they reveal of the provenience of Crane's work. In keeping with Crane's career at the time, some of the pieces belonging to the "Sullivan County Sketches" are journalistic reports relating local history and follow ways in an attempt to define the Sullivan County locale and ambiance. But Crane's camping trips with friends that formed the basis for these reports also catalyzed Crane's fictional impulse, resulting in the series of tales that follow the trail of the "little man" and his fellow adventurers in the Sullivan County "wilderness." It is passages from these early fictional ef forts, not samples from the journalistic pieces, that are included in this study. The nameless protagonist, "the little man," given to vain glorious, pseudo-courageous braggadocio to mask his underlying dread of what he believes to be a dark, demonic, supernaturally powerful land scape, wanders through the woods threatening or believing himself to be threatened by bears, mountains, caves, weed-choked ponds, ghouls, and mad hermits. To create their effects the tales rely on a single recurring formula summed up by Cady: "the exaggerated egotism of 'a little man' is tested by his companions or by circumstances, or both; the little one wins or loses; but in either case the end is bathetic, 92 and the bathos illustrates the folly of mankind, .,l and a style heavily dependent upon startling word choice and embrangled syntax. There is a certain raw crudeness in these tales, even after Crane's reworking them. That Crane was carefully revising from the start of his career is apparent from an originally untitled draft (en titled "The Fishennen" 1n The Works) that became "The Octopush." Par allel passages reveal him not only polishing but adding details. 2 Yet despite his syntactic and lexical changes that help to intensify, en liven, and smooth his narrative-description, the overall effect of the Sullivan County tales is of inarticulate, disjunctive prose, of Crane struggling to manipulate language, which he castigated as "as infer nally bad vehicle for thoughts," in an attempt to achieve his aim of approaching in his fiction "the nearest to nature and truth. ,, 3 Ironi cally, despite or because of his efforts he created a style generally labelled contrived and unnatural. Contributing to Crane's abrupt style is the length of the stories themselves: stories are presented, barely developed quickly ended; on the next level, paragraphs often are similarly truncated. Sentences (average length: 13.42) and T-units (mean length: 9.64) follow the same pattern, being the shortest of each in all the works sampled. Sensations, scenes, actions are unreeled in rapid montage. The opening of "Four Men in a Cave" ill-ustrates this montage effect as the narrator ' moves swiftly, in short sentences and almost as short paragraphs, from the moon to the little man orating to his detennination to explore a cave to the four men clambering down a hill with that intention. 4 Another of many examples that could be cited occurs in "A Ghoul's 93 Accountant" (241) at the point where the little man faces his captors. The reader's daze equals the little man's as abrupt sentences vaguely describe the room's chaotic appearance and the little man's terror. Falling in dead center of the paragraph between these two descriptions the sentence "There were moments of silence" should in its brevity and quietness provide needed respite from the frenetic activity. It does to some extent, yet much of its potential impact is lost in the midst of equally short sentences and T-units. Not only are readers forced to assimilate rapid-fire visual and emotional sequences, but, as these two passages show, they must do so without connections being made for them. Transitions and connective devices are conspicuous by their absence. 5 In this excessively para tactic style, readers must impose their own connections and hierarchi cal ranking of propositions (rightly or wrongly) on the basis of simple juxtaposition. At this stage, and to some extent over the entire span of his ca reer, Crane's chief methods for connecting his fragmented prose are association, equivalence chains, and exact repetition. All can operate 6 within one paragraph as they do in this one from "The Octopush": A ghost-like mist came and hung upon the waters. The pond became a grave-yard. The grey tree-trunks and dark logs turned to monuments and crypts. Fire-flies were wisp-lights dancing over graves, and then, taking regular shapes, appeared like brass nails in crude caskets. The individual began to gibber. A gibber in a bass voice appalls the stoutest heart. It is the declaration of a genie. The little man began to sob; another groaned and the two remaining, being timid by nature, swore great lurid oaths which blazed against the sky. (233) Equivalency chains are "waters" and "pond"; and "gibber," "it," "decla- 94 ration." Association connects "monuments and crypts," "graves," "cas kets"; and "sob," "groaned," "swore." Repetition occurs with "gibber." However, these devices establish minimal since they continue for at the most three sentences as Crane darts from one focal point to another. The result is not only lack of cohesion but thinly developed narration and description. Such anemia is reflected 1n another aspect of Crane's early style: a tendency to repeat himself, not for studied effect as he will later, for example the "No one said that it was so," "No one mentioned it" of 7 "The Open Boat," but from lack of creative impulse. Some repetitions from the "Sullivan County Sketches" data are: The music of the wind in the trees is songs of loneliness, hymns of abandonment, and lays of the absence of things congenial and alive .... The moon was looking through the locked branches at four imperturbable bundles of blankets which lay near the agonized campfire. ("A Ghoul's Accountant," 240) Alone, the camp-fire spluttered valiantly for a time, opposing its music to the dismal crooning of the trees that accented the absence of things congenial and alive. A curious moon peered through locked branches at imperturbable bundles of blankets which lay in the shadows of the tent. ("The Cry of Huckleberry Pudding," 255) One is reminded of Crane's remark to his friend Corwin Linson 1n 1894 that when he first began to write he hardly knew what to write about. 8 Still another aspect of Crane's style (which uses semantic, pho- nological, and syntactic elements available to all writers only more so and ignores or rarely uses others that are also available) is its in tensity, created not only by short, direct sentences but by semantic and phonological choices. Scholarly and melodramatic diction ("ora- tion," "crypts," "lurid," "dishevelled," "appalls," "throe") is im- 95 posed upon juvenile syntax ("The moon rested ... ," "The little man was standing ... ," "They were won," "The little man was determined ... ," and "The four men took ... "). Crane also rhymes words ["tangled men and strangled cries" "Four Men in a Cave" (227)], and frequently alliterates ["The panting procession halted under some drip- ping, drooping hemlocks. ." (242)] to gain vividness and a sense of density that he does not gain through syntactic variety and complexity. Crane's syntactic manipulations center around the device of in version, whose chief uses are to achieve the rhetorical effect of em phasis and to escape the subject-verb word order cage of English. The least obtrusive, hence the least emphatic, types of inversion are those that are preceded by expletive there or it. Although all Crane's writing is liberally sprinkled with there inverted sentences, it is in the early prose with its shorter sentences and T-units and little variety in sentence length and patterns that their quantity is most noticeable. And an abundance of expletive-there sentences can weaken prose style. Frequently Crane uses there-inversions simply out of habit or to vary his sentence opening. "There were moments of si lence" in the passage from "A Ghoul's Accountant" (241) mentioned above is an example of an unobtrusive, non-emphatic there-inversion, used for sentence opening variety. Occasionally, there-inversion creates an emphasis that does not compensate for its awkwardness: "In conse quence, the four men confronted a sheet of water from which there up reared countless grey, haggard tree-trunks" (230). The equally inobtrusive inversion with it postponing the subject occurs only once in the "Sullivan County Sketches" data. It is not 96 until the later fiction (particularly in The O'Ruddy) that Crane uses with any frequency this more sophisticated syntactic strategy for cre ating emphasis of an entire clause. Crane often simply inverts subject and verb, not always justi- fiably: He investigated and discovered that the little corridor took a sudden dip down a hill. At the bottom shone a yellow light. The little man wriggled painfully about and descended feet in advance. ("Four Men in a Cave," 226) That is, for the next paragraphs it is the downward plunge in the cave that involves the four men, not the light. In another instance of hyperbaton Crane ineffectually emphasizes a sentence's weakest content word, "things" (in its fourth appearance in the paragraph): Each involved a contact with the black water, in which were things that wriggled. ("The Octopush," 233) Another inversion, this one shifting the direct object out of its natu ral order, is also more contrived than reasoned: The four men clambered into the beautiful boat and the individual manoeuvered his craft until he dealt out to four low-spreading stumps, four fishers. ("The Octopush," 2 31) Such isolation focuses the readers' attention and adds force but the game isn't worth the candle. No conversion from men to fishers occurs within the sentence, which would justify highlighting the noun phrase, and because of the inversion, coherence with the next sentence ("He thereupon repaired to a fifth stump where he tied his boat") is dam aged. But Crane can also at times invert effectively: Off over the ridges, through the tangled sounds of night, came the yell of a hound on the trail. ("Killing His Bear," 249) 97 Here he left-branches two free prepositional phrases that create sus pense with a subject delaying inversion. Crane's primary means of amplifying his basic sentences to picture scenes, characters, and actions is not, however, the free modification of the sentence just quoted but bound modification, especially simple adjectives and adverbs and prepositional phrases. Many adjectives and adverbs startle through Crane's mixing schol arly with ordinary diction or attributing human--and often evil--as pects to inanimate objects ("venerable pipe," "sepulchral roar," "elo quent tobacco," "traitorous rocks," "vindictive weeds," "flames strug gled cholerically," "wind frenziedly opposed"), and tend more to in tensify than clearly describe. However, despite Crane's conscious searching for unique and stunning modifiers, he nevertheless often re lies on the same modifiers, which because of their obtrusiveness, iter ate monotonously through these tales. Almost anything and everything seems to be lurid (curses, the sky, arms) or red (curses, eyes, si lence) or yellow (the sky, fingers, windows). That Crane relies heavily on bound prepositional phrases to add details to his sentences points to nothing unique about his style since they, like the poor, are always with us. But his particular use of them is of stylistic interest. Often sentence after sentence marches by with no expansion other than minimally expanded prepositional phrases and an occasional simple adjective or adverb, as the following paragraph from "A Ghoul's Accountant" illustrates: He cast a dazed glance about the room and saw vaguely that it was dishevelled as from a terrific scuffle. Chairs lay shattered, and dishes in the cupboard were ground to pieces. Destruction had been present. There were moments of silence. The ghouls and the wild, gray man contemplated their victim. A throe of fear passed over him and he sank limp in his chair. His eyes swept feverishly over the faces of his tormentors. (241) 98 The paragraph depends entirely upon bound modifiers for details, mostly prepositional phrases (single underscore) but with a sprinkling of single word modifiers (double underscore): two participles, three adjectives, three adverbs. All the sentences stay on one structural level, thinly textured and minus those verbal forms, free or bound, that create a sense of simultaneous activity. Rather than show us the room and its chaos, or render the tense atmosphere, Crane less effectively tells and reports in sentences that individually move swiftly but combine into a static paragraph. He depends more upon startling word choice than modulated syntax to drive home his effects. This does not mean that Crane never writes more densely textured sentences and paragraphs in the "Sullivan County Sketches." But he certainly does not combine propositions so as to reveal details eco nomically as frequently as he does in the later work, beginning with the Mexican adventure stories of late spring and summer 1896 and up until The O'Ruddy. Only two sentences add a third level of specifi- . 9 city: 1 From a recess of the bank he produced a blunt-ended boat, 2 painted a very light blue, (VC) 3 with yellow finishings, (PP) 3 in accordance with Sullivan aesthetics. (PP) ("The Octopush," 230) 1 The little man,/ / remained in the shadows, 2/ with nerves tingling and blood throbbing, (PP) 2 like a fantastic bronze figure, (PP) 3 with jewelled eyes swaying sharply in its head. (PP) ("Killing His Bear," 250) And only one reaches a fourth level: 1 The trees kept up their crooning, 1 and the light in the west faded to a dull red splash, 1 but the little man's fancy was fixed on the panting, foam-spattered hound, 2 cantering with his hot nose to the ground in the rear of the bear, (VC) 3 which runs as easily and as swiftly as a rabbit, (RC) 4 through brush, timber and swale. (PP) ("Killing His Bear," 250) 99 In each of these sentences, especially the last two, Crane describes the scenes and characters sharply, zooming in from far to middle to close distance, at each step increasing magnification of parts of the whole. In the second sentence the little man's physical appearance and psychological state are vividly (although melodramatically) de fined in preparation for the drama of the third sentence, the unseen yet clearly pictured hound zealously tracking the bear. Additionally, the third sentence rhythmically pulsates with the chase as the three successive independent clauses build to a climax which is followed by three free modifiers, each ebbing and flowing as the sentence winds down with a sense of finality. Most sentences with free modifiers develop no further than the second level, even if, which is rare, more than one modifier is added as in this sentence, which illustrates not only this stylistic fea ture but also Crane's use of absolutes: 1 2 Fascinated, 2 their tongues cleaving, 2 their blood cold, they arose to their feet. (VC) (Abs) (Abs) ("Four Men in a Cave," 228) 100 Since absolutes elaborate with specific information the general state ment made by the base clause, their effect usually is imparted better when they accumulate after the base clause. Yet at times the antici pation produced by front-shifted absolutes may have advantages in a particular context. Such is the case here. The sentence occurs at that moment in "Four Men in a Cave" when the men tumble out of the dark, slimy corridor that leads to a chamber of the cave they have been exploring into the light, and the fiery, threatening gaze of the cave's occupant, a deranged old man. The top-heavy, hyperbolic ver bals, one participle and two absolutes, cumulatively develop the four men's panicky reaction to their plight and heighten the surprise of the base clause. From the build-up, readers would expect the men not to manage to rise but rather to remain frozen in a tumbled heap on the floor of the chamber. Crane, albeit heavy-handedly, undercuts the four men. He also microcosmically foreshadows the structure of most of the tales wherein the little man, and often his companions too, are de flated, the point being man's insignificance and foolishness. Crane's free modifiers in this sentence illustrate three other characteristics of his early style. One is that free modifiers, espe cially absolutes, tend to cluster. Another is that at least in the Sullivan County tales they tend to be front-shifted, hence emphasized, even when awkwardness results. 10 A third characteristic is that not only 1s Crane less likely to 101 expand sentences with free modifiers, he is less likely to take advan tage of their potential for expansion. They are as clipped as his sentences; Crane rushes off to the next detail before fully developing the one at hand. Such abruptness, an earmark of Crane's style at this stage, causes stylistic problems that have a bearing on narrative problems and, in a larger sense, the failure of the Sullivan County tales. The narrator sounds too much like the fearful little man; what he says and how he says it align him too closely with the little man for him to be a reliable guide. Time after time he leads the reader astray. Al though he describes an animistic nature that can mourn tenderly ("On the ridge-top a dismal choir of hemlocks crooned over one that had fallen") or one stolidly indifferent to the little man's ferocious as sault ("The mountain under his feet was motionless"), most often he portrays nature's aspect as dark and sinister ("Night also came very near and menaced the wanderers with darkness") or with barely con cealed threat underlying its daytime beneficence ("The sun gleamed merrily upon the waters" but beneath the surface "millions of fern branches quavered and hid mysteries"). 11 Descriptions such as the last two match the little man's fear of what lurks in the dark woods. Hence the little man's terrors seem legitimate to readers, who assume that his interpretation of people and events is justified: that, for exam ple, the hermit in the cave could indeed be a "ghoul" or a "vampire" or someone equally satanic, or that the four men stranded in a "grave yard" pond by their drunken guide are indeed vulnerable to "dread objects." Justified, that is, until, with a quick final twist, the 102 narrator at story's end exposes the little man's absurdity, but 1n a contrived not inevitable fashion. The essence of Crane's moral values remains uncommunicated, victim of Crane's inability to distance his narrator from the protagonist. Throughout most of the tales manner and matter are not well-fused, a methodological instability not unexpected in budding artists, includ ing Crane, who are groping their way toward mastery of their craft. However, one Sullivan County tale reveals Crane's incipient ability to unify manner and matter: "Killing His Bear." Crane moderates his pur ple prose ("The little man, with nerves tingling and blood throbbing, remained in the shadows, like a fantastic bronze figure, with jewelled eyes swaying sharply in its head" is the story's extreme example), mod ulates his sentence rhythms and lengths (particularly effective is the tersely understated "He is sorry he came" that emphatically conveys the heart of the tale's moral lesson), sustains focus, and establishes co herence. These function significantly to produce and control atmos pheric effects and irony, from a softly tender nature ("hemlocks crooned over one that had fallen") and the agony that the hound's cries herald ("his baying tells of the approach of death") to the ironic self-satisfaction of the little man as he kills his bear ("Upon his face was the smile of a successful lover"). Readers immediately trust the omniscient narrator, who knowledge ably sets the scene, describes the events of the story, and locates the little man in his proper place within both. It is the narrator who, through his expansive and keenly aimed description, diametrically opposes his values (hence the reader's values) to the little man's. 103 The little man wears a "hideous cap," stamps "impatient feet," utters soft curses," and viscerally imagines himself gloriously "killing a thousand bears." More damning, the little man leaps into the air when his bullet speeds home, waving his hat and yelling "hit." And, smiling, sadistically kicks the ribs of the dead bear. On the other hand, the narrator is sensitive to the sorrowing, vulnerable land scape, the dire meaning of the hound's baying, and the bear's frantic rush for life, all of which are humanized to create a point of refer ence for readers and guide their judgment. Edwin H. Cady links Crane's Sullivan County tales and sketches to a major mode of American humor variously labelled "'frontier' or 'West ern,' 'Old South-West' or 'picaresque,' perhaps 'adolescent,' cer tainly 'masculine' and probably 'precivilized. "' 12 Humor of the ego-de flating, put-down type underlies the Sullivan County tales and is not absent from "Killing His Bear," but the mocking deflation of the brag ging little man takes second place to the tale's more serious message: death, whether of inanimate or animate nature, is the occasion for sor row, not triumph. In large measure it is Crane's more mature style, his more adroit handling of syntax and word choice that establishes the narrator's distance from the little man and authorizes this message for readers, who in this story at least, are rarely distracted by vivid, yet fragmented, contrived prose. Crane, who disparaged his Sullivan County tales as "clever," 1s impressively not clever 1n "Killing His Bear," and to that degree is more successful. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets Of Maggie Crane made two statements that are not entirely true. 104 One, direct, referred to response to Maggie's publication in 1893: "It fell flat. Nobody seemed to notice it or care for it." 13 The other, implied, referred to its style; Crane claimed to have abandoned his "clever Rudyard-Kipling style" sometime in 1892, that is, the style of the "Sullivan County Sketches," before completing Maggie. 14 But at least Hamlin Garland responded to the 1893 Maggie, imrnedi- ately and enthusiastically "because it [was] the work of a young man, and also because it [was] a work of astonishingly good style" despite its being a "fragment," "pictorial, graphic, terrible in its direct ness." Partly because Maggie "no conventional phrases," Crane im- 15 pressed Garland overall as a stylist of "almost unlimited resource." And when Maggie was revised and published in 1896 to ride the crest of The Red Badge propelled wave of popular success, many reviewers remark ed on its qualities (remarks in general applying to either edition), often having to do with its unprecedented outspokenness about slum life and its innovative style. Maggie's style is, indeed, like none of its slum novel predeces sors, nor other contemporary novels, but in many ways it continues to display the ungainly style of the Sullivan County tales. Despite Maggie's being a sustained effort that holds our attention until the novel winds down to its tragic and ironic end, not a group of short tales, the sketch form underlies Maggie. It impresses us more as a series of related incidents strung together than a carefully plotted novel. The battle between the youthful Rum Alley and Devil's Row an tagonists is followed by other violent incidents: Jimmie pummeling Maggie, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson engaging in a drunken brawl, and so on. 105 We get a lengthy description of Jimmie growing up and working--and fighting--as a truck driver, hear of Maggie's seduction and desertion by Pete, her even more sordid career as a prostitute and descent to death in the river, each episode forming, along with others, almost a separate one-act drama. These episodes forming the novel's larger structure are seconded on the more microscopic structural level through Crane's emphasis on individual words, phrases, and sentences. The result, fragmentated syntax, is a key ingredient of the colloquial style developed by Amer ican writers between 1825 and 1925, according to Bridgman. 16 Along with fragmented syntax came accent on individual verbal units, more concrete and colloquial diction, and simplified syntax, all common ingredients of Crane's prose fiction style, except that his diction tends to be mixed and his fragmentation extreme, particularly in the early work. Maggie continues many of the stylistic features evident in the Sullivan County tales, including the substitution of intensity and stress for depth and strength and startling word choice for modulated syntax to obtain rhetorical effects. The first group of paragraphs describing the street fight that inaugerates the novel illustrates these propensities of Crane's. 17 Crane's description of Jimmie defending the honor of Rum Alley against attackers from Devil's Row combines educated diction ("urchins," "wrath," "gamins," "assassins," "precipitately," and so forth) with ordinary ("boys," "madly," "grins"), implementing a contrast that am plifies the intensity of the scene. Reinforcement comes from ener- 106 getic verbs such as "circling," "writhing," "charged," "stumbled," and modifiers such as "furious," "insane," "barbaric," "howling." Short paragraphs, sentences, and T-units also contribute to the tumult. But action, paradoxically, is retarded. Nearly every sentence begins with the subject, directing action inward so that each sentence tends to harbor its own dynamic force. Each moves swiftly only to abruptly stop before the next sentence, the next action, curbing movement of the passage as a whole. There are few connective devices between propositions. Later in this description of the street fight, as the Rum Alley/Devil's Row battle winds down to an exchange of taunts, Crane uses a conjunctive adverb sentence initially to relate two events in time sequence: "A few stones were thrown at long distances, and words of challenge passed between small warriors. Then the Rum Alley contingent turned slowly in the direction of their home street" (7). But this is the only sentence initial conjunctive adverb occurring in the Maggie data, showing that Crane is not yet trying to achieve coherence and estab lish relationships through this grammatical device whose chief functio is to accomplish these two effects. The chief connector in the quoted passage is 'and," suggesting, in conjunction with the isolated sentences, sequential, not coinstantane ous actions. It is as if Jimmie stands on the heap of gravel, then throws stones, then glares furiously, then twists his body as he rains curses down upon his enemies, and so on. Only rarely in these para graphs does Crane employ syntactic options open to him that could sim ulate a welter of simultaneous events. One is the free subordinate 107 clause "As they charged," but because of the coordinate structure of the main clause, "they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus," the effect of battle turmoil is not as pronounced as in the last quoted sentence with its attached verb clusters: "The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles." Here Crane establishes not only concurrent movements but at the same time gracefully moves from the panoramic to the particular. (Otherwise, for the most part, the narrator presents the details of the scene in fragments and expects the reader to coordinate the various pieces and fill in missing links.) In fact, Crane's deviation from standard English syntax forces the reader to fill internal sentence gaps as well as those between sentences. For example, the first two sentences in the passage are both elliptical, a poetic use of language characterizing Crane's early style particularly (we have already noted his frequent use of alliter ation and rhyming). In the first sentence the reader must supply "fighting" before "for the honor of Rum Alley," that is, defending it. In the second sentence the reader must supply an object for "pelting." The boys cannot simply pelt at Jimmie; they must pelt something, in this case stones or gravel. We have already discussed the effects of Crane's syntactic inver sions, which besides providing rhythmic variation also foreground sen tence elements, often nouns, focusing the reader's attention on par ticular objects or people. In similar fashion this process of ellip sis, another syntactic feature of Crane's style, exerts emphatic rhe torical effect. The reader is forced to participate as fellow creator 108 by substituting missing elements. Another example of poetic language is the synecdochic "Devil's Row throats," which even as it highlights the key part of the anatomy involved in the howling also dehumanizes the howlers. The reader must rehumanize and reconstitute the whole, the boys, from the part, their throats, substituting "the throats of the boys from Devil's Row." Almost immediately following we read the distorted syntax of "His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths." Here we have deviant use of the preposition in where we would expect the standard during introducing the prepositional phrase, or a subordinate clause: "during his delivery of great, crim son oaths" or "as he delivered great, crimson oaths." In often alter nates with during but only in limited context where the meaning is "at a point in the course of something" (They vacation during July or They vacation in July) but not where the meaning is "throughout the duration of something," the meaning required for the sentence in question. Two matters of interest to Crane's grammatical style emerge from this syntactic manipulation. One is whether such distortions of stand ard English syntax are rhetorically worthwhile. In this case two seem awkward and unnecessary. The little boy and his strategic location atop the gravel heap are already foregrounded in the first sentence of the novel, a repeated "stones" in the second sentence would not only eliminate descriptive vagueness but provide syntactic balance and a clear sense of the bombardment being reciprocal. In the third case Crane's synecdochic reference does forcefully relate the boys, their howling, in fact their fighting, to animals, indicating that they and their behavior are less than human, but the deviant syntax rests heavy handedly atop already melodramatic diction. What Crane does to a large 109 extent is sacrifice interesting and descriptive details on the altar of literary innovation, giving the reader an exclusive description de pendent upon stress for effect, rather than an inclusive one dependent upon details that would give more than a shadowy sketch of the battle and its participants. The other matter of interest is that the syntactic distortions cluster. We have already noted the clustering of modificational struc tures in the Sullivan County tales. Of the nine absolutes that occur in the tales, four occur in "Four Men in a Cave" in two sentences with two each, one of the sentences also including a verb cluster. Three absolutes occur in "Killing His Bear," all within three paragraphs and all in sentences additionally expanded with other free modifiers. In Maggie front-shifted dependent clauses also tend to cluster. In a sudden rush to subordinate propositions, almost as if he suddenly became aware of their transitive power, Crane increases his overall use of free clauses (bound were not separated out and counted) from thir teen in the Sullivan County tales to thirty-four in Maggie for aver ages of .035 compared to .096 per T-unit. Not only does Crane combine propositions and show relationships through freer subordination but he expresses a greater variety of relationships and foregrounds them more often by front-shifting. Three subordinate clauses are front-shifted in the Sullivan County tales (one time adverbial, two combined time and attendant circumstances) for an average of .004 per sentence whereas twenty-three are front-shifted in Maggie (eighteen time, one time and attendant circumstances, three condition, one concession) for an average of .081 per sentence. (Because of this heavy emphasis on 110 time in subordinate clauses coupled with front-shifted time word or phrase adverbials--"eventually," "momentarily," "in the finale," "at first"--Maggie appears more definitely placed in time than the Sulli- van County tales. And in space, since in terms of front-shifted phrase adverbials, place ("On their small, convulsed faces," "In the lower parts of the city") outnumber time by about 3: 1. Such choice of syn tactic structures and their placement contributes to the surreal qual ity of Sullivan County compared to the objective reality of the Bow- 18 ery.) Slightly more than half of these front-shifted subordinate clauses, twelve, occur in the lengthy description of Jimmie's adoles cence 1n Chapter IV. The result is that although the narrator de scribes Jimmie mainly through isolated, florid details, many more sug- . h 1· . 1 d . . 19 h 1 d . gest1ve tan exp 1c1t y escr1pt1ve, ea so connects some escr1p- tive and narrative details, clarifying main and supporting ideas and smoothing the flow of his prose. Jimmie does not at times have money o spend and occasionally feel satisfied with the world, but rather one entails the other: "When he had a dollar in his pocket his satisfaction ith existence was the greatest thing in the world" (34). Through the syntactic device of subordination, Crane can explicitly and unobtrusive readers to understand Jimmie's "moral" code: self-satisfac- ion for him is materially, not good-deed oriented. Crane also uses sub rdination to express conditional relationships having to do with Jimmie's actions and attitudes in his truck driver job. He is a trouble-maker under certain conditions: "If in the front and key- truck of chaos, he entered terrifically into the quarrel that was raging to and fro among the drivers on their high seats, and sometimes 111 roared oaths and violently got himself arrested" (35). On the other hand, "if he and his team chanced to be in the rear he preserved a demeanor of serenity, crossing his legs and bursting forth into yells when foot passengers took dangerous dives beneath the noses of his champing horses" (34). Although there is still much sentence expansion by coordination, Crane's favored method (the former of the two sen tences reveals this in its compounded main clause, which impairs the sentence's effect by separating Jimmie's cursing and his being arrest ed from his quarreling with his fellow drivers), through occasional use of subordination Crane varies his prose rhythms and is able to draw implications into his narrative description that express important things about Jimmie not expressible without the use of subordinate structures. Another example of clustered syntactic structures occurs in Chap ter XVII, the most notable stylistic achievement in all of Maggie. In it, in marvelous palimpsest effect, are chronicled Maggie's last night on earth literally, her walk through a wet New York evening soliciting gradually less desirable customers until she meets her doom at the 20 river either by suicide or murder, and her career as a prostitute symbolically, her downhill career from affluence to degradation cover ing an indeterminate time span. What may seem on the surface to be a major fault, Crane's sending Maggie soliciting ever more deg~nerate customers when she is early described as apparently prosperous "in her handsome cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her well shod feet the dryer spots upon the pavements" (145), 1s really a force ful and evocative compression of time and events. 112 Chapter XVII impresses us as being not of a piece with most of Maggie, and with good reason. It is this particular chapter that shows the figures on Maggie, numbers that by themselves belie Maggie's be longing to the early group 1n terms of grammatical style. Average sen tence length overall is 17.50 compared to 13.42 of the "Sullivan County Sketches" and 14.90 of The Red Badge; mean T-unit length overall 1n Maggie is 13.75 compared to 9.64 of the "Sullivan County Sketches" and 11.91 of The Red Badge, a mean T-unit length even greater than the Mexican adventure tales of Group 5; sentences are smoother flowing and more varied in length; and the number of free modifiers too is more on par with the later work than with either the Sullivan County tales or The Red Badge, and, indeed, with certain types even exceeds the later work. But clustering and the types of structures involved explain these apparently anomalous figures. For example, average sentence length in Chapter I is 14.62 and mean T-unit length 11.19, consonant with lengths in the Sullivan County tales and The Red Badge, whereas in Chapter XVII the average sentence length is 17.98 and mean T-unit length 15.00. The longer T-units show that Chapter XVII's longer sentences are not a re sult of simply compounding, but more subordinate structures and free modifiers embedded in and attached to main clauses, creating a stronger more densely textured, fluid style. This proves true in Chapter XVII where Crane's free modifiers in Maggie cluster. For example, eight of the fourteen absolutes occurring in the Maggie data occur in Chapter XVII (a ninth occurs at the beginning of Chapter XV 1n a parallel and foreshadowing situation in which another forlorn woman also loiters 113 along the city's avenues, futilely scanning men's faces: "Hurrying men, bent on catching some boat or train, jostled her elbows, failing to notice her, their thoughts fixed on distant dinners" [128]), twenty two of the sixty-five verb clusters. Many features of Crane's style typical of his early work and some spanning his career are, of course, present in Chapter XVII. There is an occurrence of an early favored verb, the highly literary "wended, 1121 which accompanies the ceremonial "procession" ["An endless procession wended toward elevated stations" (144)], creating a lofty contrast to the lowly means of mass transportation. There are odd word colloca tions: "pompous and philanthropic whiskers" (146) and "belated man" (146), and modifiers more suggestive than specifically descriptive: "A tall young man, smoking a cigarette with a sublime air .. " . , (145) and ones that characterize as well as describe: "Women shrugged impatient shoulders ... " (143). Moreover, Crane excludes details we might expect; we do not hear what Maggie says to most of her pros pective customers, nor are we privy to her thoughts; some encounters are disconcertingly abrupt; there is no definite mention of her death. Further, syntax can be both awkward ["People having been comparatively silent for two hours burst into a roar of conversation, their hearts still kindling from the glowings of the stage" (143-144)] and artfully innovative ["He had on evening dress, a moustache, a chrysanthemum, and a look of ennui, all of which he kept carefully under his eye" (145)]. But Chapter XVII is unlike many of Crane's early descriptive pas sages which depend upon separate clauses and bound modifiers to add 114 details and syntactic distortion to emphasize in that it extensively depends upon free modifiers to describe and highlight. Through the prism of Crane's kinesthetic structures we view telescopically Maggie's past and present state. Let us look first at Crane's use of absolutes, which simulate a camera zooming in from a panoramic, distant shot for a magnified close up, generating both kinesthetic and visual effects. Readers are enabled to see simultaneously parts of the same action, situation, thing, or person that they see as a whole. Absolutes zero in on the flower dealer during the initial scene setting: A flower dealer, his feet tapping impatiently, his nose and his wares glistening with rain-drops, stood behind an array of roses and chrysanthemums. (143) They highlight the man within the panoramically composed background for Maggie's entrance, a noisy, comfortable, busy, radiant setting suitable to her early prosperity. "Electric lights, whirring softly, shed a blurred radiance" on jangling cars "pulled by slipping horses," clat tering cabs "with coat-enshrouded drivers," and a crowd of men and women leaving the theaters for the storm-swept pavements," "their hearts still kindling from the glowings of the stage" (143-144). In a sharp syntactic departure from the more complex sentences fonning its context, a flat, straightforward sentence introduces Maggie: "A girl of the painted cohorts of the city went along the street" (144). Then Crane reverts to adding free modifiers to his sen tences, a series of verb clusters that speed the narrative line and economically pinpoint precise descriptive and characterizing features, for instance those signaling Maggie's affluence: She hurried forward through the crowd as if intent upon reaching a distant home, bending forward in her handsome cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her well-shod feet the dryer spots upon the pavements. (145) 115 Again absolute constructions to highlight identifying features of the men that Maggie encounters on her walk toward the river and death: A stout gentleman, with pompous and philanthropic whiskers went stolidly by the broad of his back sneering at the girl (146) She smiled squarely into the face of a boy who was hurrying by with his hand buried in his overcoat, his blonde locks bobbing on his youthful temples~ and a cherry smile of unconcern upon his lips . (147) He laughed, his brown, disordered teeth gleaming under a grey, grizzled moustache from which beer drops dripped . (149) The absolutes also create rapid fluid movement, adding to the sense of urgency permeating the chapter once Maggie steps upon the scene . Not only absolutes and verb clusters, but also prepositional phrases ("A dozen cabs, with coat-enshrouded drivers, clattered to and fro") zero in on specific details of the scene , establishing its ambi ance and creating an ebbing and flowing movement that continues throughout the chapter as Crane interweaves simple sentences with com plex, in the latter placing free modifiers in left-, mid-, and right branching positions to point both forward and backward . This wavelike movement uuderscores the telescoping time element crucial to the force and meaning of the chapter . Most left-shifted structures function adverbially and expectedly to establish such matters as the time and place of the sentence's main action: In the mingled light and gloom of the adjacent part, a handful of wet wanderers, in attitudes of chronic dejection, was scattered among the benches. (144) 116 They also produce cohesion between sentences, and, in this case, ironic contrast on the basis of "there-here" ordering, "there" being the glit tering sidewalks crowded with cheerful, prosperous theater-goers. Left-branching verb clusters can also function transitively, but more importantly they delay disclosure of prospective customers' re- . M . ' 1 · . . 22 actions to aggie s so 1c1tat1ons. A key instance occurs when Maggie propositions the repulsive fat man after progressively more degenerate men (though not rigidly so) reject her advances. For this encounter Crane loads his sentences with descriptive details, arousing the read er's apprehension and holding it through the verb cluster that intro duces the last main clause, which comes with a sense of inevitable finality: His small, bleared eyes, sparkling from amidst great rolls of red fat, swept eagerly over the girl's upturned face. He laughed, his brown disordered teeth gleaming under a grey, grizzled moustache from which beer-drops dripped. His whole body gently quivered and shook like that of a dead jelly fish. Chuckling and leering, he followed the girl of the crimson legions. (149) This action, the fat man's following Maggie with obscenely joyful lust, brings the chapter full circle to the setting for Maggie's departure from the scene, and life. As equally suitable to her late marcescence as the chapter's start is to her early affluence, in antithetical bal ance the chapter's last setting, the river of "deathly black hue" edged by tall, grim buildings, is silent, lonely, dark, and sinister. Crane by far prefers right-branching, cumulative sentences, not 117 only in Maggie (twenty-six right-branching free modifiers) but through out his work. This gives his prose a natural linearity patterned after unreflective thought, in which the basic idea of the sentence is stated in a grammatically complete structure to which various commenting structures are added . But as we have pointed out, he also left branches with free modifiers (nine times in Maggie) for certain ef- fects. (No effect in Maggie is that of a hardly justified ordeal to surmount before reaching the topic under discussion as 1n arguably the case in the Sullivan County tales.) Crane also frequently inserts free modifiers mid-sentence in Maggie (thirteen), all between the sub- ject and predicate, the most natural insertion point . Often the inter ruption is to insert incidental details, which in the following sen tence, as is often the case with Crane, characterize as well as de scribe: In the mingled light and gloom of the adjacent park, a handful of wet wanderers, in attitudes of chronic dejection, was scattered among the benches . (144) But at times the interruption adds suspense as a bonus: His small, bleared eyes, sparkling from amidst great rolls of red fat, swept eagerly over the girl's upturned face. (149) In either case mid-branching sentences turn in on themselves, and once the topic is announced propel the reader's thoughts forward to the expected grammatical conclusion of the main clause, a conclusion which brings the entire sentence into focus. Because mid-branching sentences have an air of deliberateness about them, they suggest to the reader a reliable, logical speaker, one who has organized and considered his sentences before writing them. Also, because grammatical completeness 118 hinges on what comes before and after the interrupting modifiers, mid branching sentences enjoy a density not shared by left- or right branching sentences which spin out from a central core. This density is enhanced in Chapter XVII by the abundance of free modifiers, many of them reduced, sophisticated structures. This is not to say that all Crane's narrative-description should be filled with free modifiers or that longer sentences and varied sen tence patterns necessarily equate with quality, but that where content is suitable, adoption of various syntactic options does make Crane's ideas, his message, more accessible to readers. This is true because they create not only livelier, more specific description but also es tablish a more authoritative narrative voice that can unobtrusively, but surely, guide readers' responses. Although Chapter XVII's paragraphs are still rather short, cre ating spurts of activity with rather frequent turnings of focus, and its diction and syntax are at times strained, still, Chapter XVII forecasts Crane's later syntactic style. The difference is that later Crane's control of syntactic features becomes more sustained and ex pansive, giving his prose a more general rather than intennittent fluidity and grace. The Red Badge of Courage Crane did not achieve popular success with Maggie in 1893, spec tacular as Garland thought it to be. Except for Garland and a handful of other reviewers, Maggie fell on deaf ears. Not so with The Red Badge, which burst upon the scene with a vitality equal to the work itself, a popular success that has diminished but not dimmed, and a critical success that has grown stronger through the years. 119 The question arises as to why The Red Badge is of such enduring interest. J.C. Levenson for one credits Crane's putting forth ''the most sustained painstaking effort of his life." 23 This may be part of the reason for its success, and, indeed, Crane remarked that "it was an effort born of pain, 1124 but we hav~ no reason to believe that Crane was not equally laborious in producing his earlier work. (And, in any case, if painstaking effort was all that was required, many ordinary mortals could write literary masterpieces.) Nor can we credit his suc cess to deliberate, purposeful development. Twenty-one when he started The Red Badge, Crane was not old enough, had not experienced enough, had not written enough to be a mature artist. Yet The Red Badge looms as the masterpiece of his early work, and we must therefore give large credit to inspired genius, that genius that made the most of his expe rience, imagination, and capabilities. In The Red Badge Crane found his metier. Style, content, and point of view all come together to impress upon his readers a heightened awareness of what war must appear to be to a young, naive mind and how that mind would react to it. In a number of ways The Red Badge is like the Sullivan County tales. Its chief protagonist too is vainglorious, harbors a dread of the unknown, and has his egotistical pride undercut. Its landscape too can be variously hostile: 1. Absurd ideas took hold upon him. He thought that he did not relish the landscape. It threatened him. A cold ness swept over his back and it is true that his trousers felt to him that they were no fit for his legs at all. A house, [standing placidly in distant fields] had to him an ominous look. The shadows of the woods were formidable. He was certain that in this vista there lurked fierce-eyed hosts. (35) beneficient: 2. He lay down on the grass. The blades pressed tenderly against his cheek. The moon had been lighted and was hung in a tree-top. The liquid stillness of the night, [enveloping him], made him feel vast pity for himself. There was a caress in the soft winds. And the whole mood of the darkness, he thought, was one of sympathy for him in his distress. (26) or indifferent: 3. But the long serpents crawled slowly from hill to hill without bluster of smoke. A dun-colored cloud of dust floated away to the right. 1be sky over-head was of a fairy blue. (24) 120 but in any case is equally animistic. (The various markings will be referred to as the chapter progresses.) But not only is The Red Badge like the earlier work in motif, it bl i ·t . . 1 1 25 A h ·11 t t resem es in grammatica sty e. st ese passages i us ra e, sentences and T-units are equally short and contained in brusque par agraphs, contributing to its similarly abrupt quality, reinforced by the rapid unwinding of successive, often disconnected, visualizations and perceptions, both real and imaginary, the turnings occurring not only with successive paragraphs but with successive sentences and even within sentences. For example, 1n sentence four of passage one, there is a swift shift in focus, and grammatical construction, between the two inde pendent clauses, then another turning in the start of the next par agraph. In passage two there are quick movements from the grass to the sky and moon. And passage three is followed by an equally rapid shift in perspective: The youth studied the faces of his companions, [ever on the watch to detect kindred emotions]. He suffered disappointment. (24) 121 Frequently in The Red Badge shifts in focus pattern like this last pas- sage. Separate clauses move like framed slides from panoramic to par ticular, from description to perception to response. At another time, in the midst of battle, we are bombarded with myriad details of color and noise, apprehending battle turmoil through 26 the regiment's eyes: 4. [Looking over their own troops], they saw mixed masses slowly getting into regular form. The sun-light made twinkling points of the bri ht steel. [To the rear], there was a glimpse of a distant road-way as it curved over a slope. It was crowded with retreating infantry. From all the interwoven forest arose the smoke and bluster of the battle. The air was always occupied by a blaring. [Near where they stood], shells were flip-flopping and hooting. Occasional bullets buzzed in the air and spanged into tree-trunks. Wounded men and other stragglers were slinking through the woods. (133) ' p • On another occasion we meet the horror death at close hand through Fleming's eyes. Fleming's confrontation with death immediately follows his crucial flight from the battlefield, during which he takes refuge in a forest chapel only to be confronted with a double irony. He en counters death in the form of a soldier's decaying corpse even as he seeks to avoid death, and he finds it in the anns of what has appeared to him, as he neared the threshold of the forest chapel, to be a benev olent nature. 5. He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated [with his back against a column-like tree]. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that once had been blue but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, [staring at the youth], had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was opened. Its red had changed to an a 1 palling yellow. Over the grey skin of the face ran litt e ants. One was trundling some sort of a bundle along the upper lip. The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was, [for moments], turned to stone before it. He remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes. The dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. Then, the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. [Leaning upon this], he retreated, [step by step], [with his face still toward the thing]. He feared, that if he turned his back, the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him. (62-63) 122 In all these examples as well as numerous others that could have been selected from throughout The Red Badge, ordering, connecting, and sometimes supplying descriptive-narrative details are relegated to the reader. To illustrate selectively from these passages, the reader must supply the causative connective between sentences three and four in passage one. In addition, sentence four, a descriptive summary of Fleming's reaction to his perception of the landscape, would be more logically and meaningfully ordered after the details of what in the landscape threatens him. In passage four readers must supply the con nection between sentences one and two, and some missing information. Presumably the troops carry guns, perhaps with bayonets attached, angled to catch the sun's rays. Also in passage four, between sen tences three and four readers must solve the ambiguous'it' reference; the infantry may be crowding only the roadway or the entire slope. To take one more example, much the same lack of cohesion is also apparent in passage five. Crane again composes short, choppy sen tences, excluding rather than including descriptive details and ig noring several opportunities to combine propositions. Fleming sees, 123 and forces the reader to see, the body piecemeal and haltingly: the uniform fading to green, the fish-hued eyes, the open mouth and sepa rately its yellow color, the grey skin, the crawling ants, and then the burden of once living flesh borne by the ants as his gaze settles first on one ghastly feature, then another, sufficient and necessary to portray the corpse's decay and Fleming's numbed state of mind. Al though punctuation is not a point of analysis in this study, we can note that internal sentence punctuation also contributes to the general effect. Rhetorically inspired, not syntactically required, the enclos ing sets of commas in the last two sentences--isolating "step by step" and the that-clause following "feared"--break up the otherwise smooth h h f h . . 1 h 1 . 27 r yt mo t e sentences into an appropriate y a ting one. Presenting the vivid details of the decaying corpse in separate clauses is a syntactic strategy that evokes Fleming's "horror-stricken" state. In fact, the short, minimum sentences and T-units accompanied by the montage effect as sentences rapidly shift focus throughout the above passages and elsewhere in The Red Badge all contribute to an accurate rendering of Fleming's agitated mind through which surge "a thousand details of color and form" (43). Crane's chief device for uniting his fragmented syntax continues to be (besides dependency on the reader to supply connections) associa tion. For example, in passage three: "smoke," "cloud of dust,'' "sky"; in passage four "troops," "bright steel," "road-way," "forest," "air" and various types of movement: "flip-flopping," "buzzed," "spanged," "slinking." In passage five the synonym sequence "dead man," "corpse," "body," "thing" ties the two paragraphs together. 124 However, Crane also inserts conjunctive adverbs into his prose. Weighty sentence connectors, conjunctive adverbs occur more sparsely in fiction than non-fiction. And they are, indeed, very sparse in the Sullivan County tales and Maggie. But they quantitatively increase in The Red Badge, imposing a semblance of order upon Fleming's thoughts, which dart :incoherently first in one direction, then another. 28 But these conjunctive adverbs function not only for coherence; they char acterize. Throughout the novel, Fleming vascillates between hope and despair, arrogance and perspective. 29 Even at the end of the novel his mental processes are still "under-going a subtle change" (171) as he tries to perceive himself and his place in the world. Crane's major use of specific connectors, especially obversative ones, occurs in the early debates that occupy Fleming's mind. They serve to portray his sensitivity and intelligence even as they high light the burden of fear and uncertainty that plagues him. An impor tant aspect of Fleming's character is that he weighs one side and then the other in his debates. Often, connectors point out the reality that Fleming needs not only to see but cling to, even if that reality is simply that one never knows anything certainly, such as how one will face battle and possible death. For example, Fleming feels some con fidence in his similarity to Jim Conklin, who feels assured that he will face battle honorably. But Fleming quite naturally has some doubts: Still, he thought that his comrade might be mistaken about himself. Or, on the other hand, he might be a man heretofore doomed to peace and obscurity but, in reality, made to shine in war. (20) 125 Notably, during these early debates readers are not led to con- demn Fleming for his uncertainty and self-centered worry about his actions, because with it all Fleming has a conscience (though it be trays him at times) and a sense of responsibility. It is when Fleming thinks he knows it all, is "master," but does not and is not that he forgets all the however's and nevertheless's. He does so at the nov el's end when Crane's undercutting irony vitiates Fleming's unearned assurance that all is well with himself and the world. 30 Lack of descriptive details, like rapid shifts in focus and con tent, also suggest Fleming's bewildered state. Readers expect informa tion to be limited from Fleming's point of view, and it 1s. Fleming tries "to observe everything" (34), but his thoughts keep "careering off in other places" (45); therefore, his "jolted dreams [are] never perfect to him afterward;' but remain "a mass of blurred shapes" (45). He is hard pressed at times to find descriptive words; empty phrases such as "hither and thither," "to and fro," and "here and there" echo throughout the book as he loses "directions and locations" (128). In addition, there is a certain repetitiveness in descriptions of Fleming 1n flight: His canteen banged rhythmically upon his thigh and his haversack bobbed softly. (32) The flaps of the cartridge-boxes were all unfastened, and flapped and bobbed idiotically with each movement. (47) The flap of his cartridge-box bobbed wildly and his canteen, by its slender cord, swung out behind. (54) and in consecutive sentences, though a different sort of repetition: It seemed that the dead men must have fallen from some great height to get into such positions. They looked to be dumped out u on the round from the sk. 49 126 The effect of the former is of a slackening at times of imaginative power. The effect of the latter is to mark Fleming as puzzled and stunned, to affirm his perception and to sustain focus. In keeping with Fleming's limited perspective, Crane heavily uti lizes bound, minimally expanded modifiers, prepositional phrases (sin gle underscore in the representative passages above) and simple mod ifiers (double underscore), to add informative details to his base clauses. As is apparent from the passages, Crane uses a much smaller number of bound relative and subordinate clauses, and very few of the types of free modifier structures (bracketed) that potentially allow for more extensive description. Even when Crane does write free modi fiers, he rarely exploits their potential for expansion and particular and subtle effects through shifting their placement. Bound prepositional phrases define rather than comment and are often unavoidable. Many are the periphrastic genitive of, commonly used by speakers of English for inanimate possession rather than the compact 's ors' ("on the sides of a dead fish"). Only three times in all the data does Crane choose the compact form for inanimate posses sion, once in "The Cry of Huckleberry Pudding," creating awkwardness where he might have achieved a more fittingly balanced rhythm, wedding sound and sense: "They had slumbered through the trees' song of loneliness, and the lay of isolation of the mountain-grass" (255). There are two occurrences in The Red Badge, the idiomatic "guns were roaring without an instant's pause for breath" (119-120) and a rare attempt to avoid overuse of prepositions: "There was a portion of the world's history ... " (7). These are exceptions though. Crane is 127 very much concerned with prepositions but in terms of choice not number. We can see evidence of this interest in his changes from the draft to final manuscript. Crane adds prepositions and prepositional phrases, some additions lengthening sentences ("all his life" ---,,) "all of his life") more than enhancing their meaning. But at other times he searches for the exact preposition to express the meaning he wants, with "on" being the preposition most frequently changed: once to "along" ["The only foes he had seen were some pickets along the river bank" (13)], giving a clearer picture of the soldiers' extension in space, three times to "upon" [for example, "He was obliged to walk upon bog-tufts" (62)]. "Upon" adds a slight aura of formality and animation, since it carries a sense not only of place but motion toward. Crane also alters adverbs to their prepositional counterparts. The most astonishing of these is "suddenly" changed to "of a sudden," a truncated version of the more common periphrastic all of a sudden (which Crane never uses), occurring only twice in the Crane data, both times in The Red Badge (46, 159). They serve an emphatic function as do other deviations from standard syntax in Crane's early work, each of these in The Red Badge signaling a shift in subject matter and per- t . . k . f . 31 spec 1ve, a quic ening o tension. Crane's interest in prepositions points to an important factor in his prose style. The multitude of prepositional phrases throughout his work and frequent placement of them sentence finally gives his prose a characteristic rhythm. His typical sentence is fairly short, starts with the subject, often introduced by determiner the, and ends 128 with one or more prepositional phrases, often composed of three ele ments: preposition, determiner or adjective, noun, giving his sen tences a pseudo-iambic beat as they end. Another side effect of this syntactic choice is that nouns become featured in sentence final posi tion, contributing to his fiction's overall effect of concreteness. As the passages quoted above illustrate, Crane depends heavily upon simple modifiers, not only bound prepositional phrases, to expand his base sentences. Not as evident in these passages though 1s Crane's clashing scholarly and melodramatic with ordinary diction in order to add an element of surprise and density to his otherwise thinly and unifonnly structured syntax. (This absence is, in a sense, indicative because Crane's stylistic excesses do abate somewhat in The Red Badge.) In the passages above such simple modifiers as "grey" and "appalling yellow" evoking the dead man's appearance are vivid but expected. "Placidly" referring to a house personifies it but not startling so. "Fierce-eyed hosts" is the most bizzare modifier. Elsewhere in The Red Badge, however, Crane's modifiers more nearly coincide with those typical of his early work. Some intensify and suggest more than clearly describe: battles are "crimson blotches on the pages of the past" (6), men have "perched ears" attuned to hearing the "first words of the new battle" (159), songs are "wild, barbaric" (46), wrangles "stupendous" (120), oaths "complicated" (107) (and "lurid"--a con~i .. u ing favorite, "furious," "crimson," and so forth), flags "fierce-hued" (146), and numerous things are "unspeakable," valor (14) and noise (158) for example, all arousing more emotional than intellectual re sponse from readers, encouraging them to feel rather than see. 129 Often, simple modifiers function dually to characterize as well as describe, guiding the reader's response to Fleming and what is bein rendered through Fleming's eyes. Color terms are used this way at times, for instance when Fleming, in reaction to his mother's nay-say ing his enlistment in the army, makes "firm rebellion against this yellow light thrown upon the color of his ambitions" (8). Other sim ple modifiers function similarly. The enemy shoots "reflectively at the blue pickets" (13) and fires "despondent powder" (14). Firing dwindles from "an uproar to a last vindictive popping" (48). Fleming's "unguided" feet catch "aggravatingly in brambles" (63) as he flees the corpse in the forest chapel. His eyes open upon an "unexpected world" (106) after he receives his red badge of courage and returns to his regiment. We have already noted Crane's use of simple modifiers to portray sound and control atmosphere in the Sullivan County tales. The first two paragraphs from "Killing His Bear" amply illustrate various forms of flora and fauna crooning, quavering, and wailing in snow and icicle laden, wind-whipped surroundings as the dying sun sinks to give way to blurred blackness, Maggie's early battle of the gravel heap resounds with yells androaring curses. Even in Chapter XVII, which is more con cerned with sight than sound, the atmosphere is partially evoked and changes in it suggested by jangling horses, clashing saloon doors, and oilily lapping waters. The Red Badge is a veritable echo chamber of sound. The regiment "wheez[es] and bang[s] with mighty power" (45), bullets "spang" into tree-trunks (133), shells flip-flop and hoot (133) and snarl among the treetops (138), and there is much splitting, 130 spluttering, sputtering, shrieking, squalling, and squawking. That Crane's modifiers function as they do is undoubtedly a re sult of his conviction that description involved more than simply see ing. Early in his career he wrote that "the photograph is false in persepective, in light and shade, in focus. When a photograph can d . h d d th . · 11 h · , , 3 2 epict atmosp ere an soun, e comparison wi ave some meaning. Crane's striving to achieve such an amalgam of effects with words mainly surfaces in the bound modifiers he chooses at this point in his career. Not only description but action often depends upon word choice. The energetic, noisy modifiers are one method. (Verbs sur prisingly are not particularly important in this respect. Those having reduced verbal force, state of being and perception verbs, are common. Perosa counts 350 verbs of visual perception such as see, look, wit- 33 ness, and so forth.) Brief paragraphs, short sentences and T-units, swift reversals of sights, perceptions, imaginings, actions, and re actions are other methods. Preposed participial modifiers are another. As with his verb clusters, Crane prefers the more active present par ticipial form ("contending forces") than past ("trampled sod") with his bound participial modifiers, although not by as wide a margin. (Bound preposed and postposed: Present - 70, Past - 56; Verb Clusters: Present - 57, Past - 13.) Crane thus enhances the energy of his war novel, enforcing a sense of never-ending activity, as illustrated by "The rushing yellow of the developing day went on behind their backs" (23). Yet Crane does at times call upon the advantages of t~e past participle whose essence is its passivity rather than its pastness, the notion of an action being performed upon the modified noun by an 131 unknown performer. Often the effect is simply neutral ["The burnished sun sank until slanted bronze rays struck the forest" (64)], but at least once the missing agent of the action hints at a potentially awe some force. This is the effect that Crane projects in his description of a dead officer: His body lay stretched out in the position of a tired man, resting, but upon his face there was an astonished and sorrowful look as if he thought some friend had done him an ill turn. (47-48) (In his later work Crane enlists the passive more dramatically, for example, to suggest in "The Monster" Johnson's impotence in the face of the holocaust: "The still form in the blanket flung from his arms, rolled to the edge of the floor and beneath the window" (24). He uses the past participle modifier with equally dramatic effect. In "The Open Boat," "The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously by the crests, made progress that in the absence of sea-weed was not apparent to those in her" (73) portrays the little boat and its occupants as helpless victims of the sea's wrath. The past parti ciple in "He knew that he was thrusting himself into a trap whose door, once closed, opened only when the black hand knocked, and every part of him seemed to be in panic-stricken revolt" ("The Clan of No-Name," 130-131) with its unnamed agent closing the door enhances the aura of anolo's inescapable doom.) Crane's use of verb clusters, greater than the Sullivan County tales and most of Maggie, adds to the dynamic quality of The Red Badge b . . l . . . 34 y expressing s1mu taneous act1v1t1es: The men bending and surging in their haste and rage were in every impossible attitude. (46) In his life, he had taken certain things for granted, never challenging his belief in ultimate success and bothering little about means and roads. (14) Sometimes they also generate anticipation through left-branching: Leaning upon this, he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. (63) or mid-branching: After a time, he paused and, breathless and panting, listened. (63) 132 But typically, mid-branching simply functions to permit insertion of amplifying details: The creepers, catching against his legs, cried out harshly as their sprays were torn from the barks of trees. (60) Crane uses very few absolutes in The Red Badge, undoubtedly a di rect result of its point of view since very few occur in The O'Ruddy either. Absolutes are more "literary" in nature, therefore, more suit able to a third person omniscient narrator, not one very close to the protagonist as in The Red Badge or identical with him as in The O'Ruddy. Those that Crane does use zero in on specific details expand ing on the generalization in the main clause, but quietly, and have reduced verbal force, all of them being formed from BE, all but one with "being" deleted. All except one are introduced by "with," hence are less dramatic. Two examples occur 1n passage five above, one as Fleming crosses the threshold of the forest chapel, a second as he leaves it, which, since they are parallel in structure and focus, frame the scene. It is by and large the adjective clusters and adjective series that illuminate particular features that readers need to know and that help create atmospheric effects: 35 And against it, black and pattern-like, loomed the gigantic figure of the colonel on a gigantic horse. (21) His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures, extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds. (7) 133 Taken as a whole, however, Crane's style is not densely textured. Free modifiers when used are rarely expanded and typically are parceled out one to a sentence. Sentences for the most part remain on one struc tural level or two at the most: 1 Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. (62) 1 The eyes,/ / had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish 2 staring at the youth, (VC) (62) even when more than one free modifier is added: 1 1 But/ flew 2 2 but 2 2 /the guns stopped and/ /rumors again like birds at last (PP) among the men 1n the rifle pits, (PP) they were now/ /black and croaking creatures/ for the most part, (PP) who flapped their wings drearily near to the ground and refused to rise on any wings of hope. (RC) (120) There are only three exceptions of sentences whose complexity reaches a third level, one of which is: 36 2 On a slope to the left, (PP) 1 there was a long row of guns, 2 gruff and maddened, (A+A) 2 denouncing the enemy (VC) 3 who down through the woods were forming for another attack in the pitiless monotony of conflicts. (RC) (159) Yet although the texture of The Red Badge remains thin in terms of syntactic structural expansion and variety, it is, nevertheless, denser and more expansive than the draft manuscript. In the comparable por- 134 tions of the final manuscript and draft studied, Crane's desire to add descriptive details and vary his structures is obvious. These struc tures and details emerge either in added sentences, of which there are many, or additions to existing sentences. Most revisions distinctly improve style and expression of meaning as this revision illustrates: Draft: MS: Nearly every man was making a noise with his mouth. The cheers, snarls, imprecations, wailings, made a wild, barbaric song. (222) Many of the men were making low-toned noises with their mouths and these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild barbaric song that went as an under-current of sound, strange and chant-like, with the resounding chords of the war-march. (46) Crane combines two sentences into one in the manuscript, adding in the process a subordinate clause, an adjective series, a prepositional phrase. These additions not only amplify the description but give the sentence an appropriately surging beat not present in the original ver sion. Crane additionally achieves inter-clause coherence when he revises. As in the rest of the early work, Crane's syntactic manipulations converge on inversion for variety and emphasis, and non-standard con structions. Inversions with there continue to be his trademark with varying sentence openings his _ rnain purpose. Less frequently does Crane invert to emphasize the subject, sometimes with less than felicitous consequences: After complicated journeyings with many pauses, there had come months of monotonous life in camp. (12) This stilted inversion sterns from Crane's desire to throw into relief the topic of the following few paragraphs, the monotony of life in 135 camp. Simple subject-verb inversions preceded by left-branching pre positional phrases, often the impetus for an inverted structure, also emphasize the noun phrase subject, especially if it then falls in sen tence final position: Over the grey skin of the face ran little ants. (62) Crane also inverts other syntactic elements, often with clumsy results. Inverted adverbs emphasize place: Off, was the rumble of death. (61) (This sentence is not only inverted, but poetically elliptical, exclud ing exact location in favor of vagueness: off in the distance? off to the right? to the left? etc.) Inverted adjectives emphasize a particular feature: Under foot, there were a few ghastly forms, motionless. (49) An inverted reflexive emphasizes Fleming's contrast of himself to the enemy troops: He began to exaggerate the endurance, the skill, and the valor of those who were coming. Himself reeling from exhaustion, he was astonished beyond measure at such persistency. (53) Other non-standard constructions also call attention to themselves, . 1 1 h . 1 . bf 37 particu ar y t ose 1nvo ving ver arms: He dinned reproaches, at times. (21) He tried to reload his gun but his shaking hands prevented. (47) The mouth was opened. (62) The air was always occupied by a blaring. (133) One expects "reproaches" to be dinned at somebody and a direct object, "it," to follow "prevented." Where one would expect a copula plus 136 predicate adjectiv~ the next to last sentence instead employs a pas- sive construction, allowing both description of the position of the mouth and implication of some mysterious force, unnamed, causing the mouth to be open. "A blaring" in the last sentence deviates in two ways, hence is strongly foregrounded. The verb "occupy" requires a concrete subject but "blaring" is abstract. In addition, Crane's choice of a noun of action, specified by its preceding count article "a," deviates more than the gerund "blaring'' would have since abstrac tions can no more be counted than they can occupy. Inversions, especially those strikingly out of the ordinary, and deviant constructions of other types run two risks. First, they may call underserved attention to items that are better taken for granted, unduely distracting readers. Second, they may mystify before they enlighten. Crane takes these risks and sometimes loses, but he loses less in The Red Badge than the Sullivan County tales and Maggie, for, on the whole, Crane's syntactic choices in The Red Badge project a way of seeing--disjunctive, multiple, immediate, intense--that is appro priate for young Fleming as he strives to become a man. Summary Crane's early style is characterized by its contrived quality and extreme parataxis. It depends primarily upon eccestric word choice and hyperbaton to create intensity and texture rather subtly manipu lated syntax. It strikes us as coming from the pen of a man strug gling to gain control of language for his fictional purposes. Syntax is fragmented with frequent, swift changes of focus. In its brevity and abruptness it echoes the abbreviated nature of the 137 Sullivan County tales and scenes within the novels Maggie and The Red Badge. Connective devices and transitions are conspicuous by their absence. Crane relies upon exact repetition of key words, equivalence chains, but mainly association, the weakest connective device, to establish coherence. He places a heavy burden on readers to establish relationships, and, in addition, to fill in descriptive details. This latter is true because short sentences and T-units tend to create threadbare narrative-description. Sentence expansion occurs primarily through bound modifiers, simple adjectives and adverbs (often more suggestive than precisely descriptive), and minimally expanded pr~positional phrases, which are also instrumental in establishing Crane's characteristic prose rhythm, a pseudo-iambic beat created by one or more three part prepositional ph~ases placed in sentence final position. Crane also expands his sentences with free modifiers but less often in the early style, and those he uses tend to cluster in consecutive sentences, or even one sentence. An important reason for the failure of the Sullivan County tales and the uneven quality of Maggie is Crane's inability to divorce his narrators from his protagonists; they speak the same language. The failure is much more significant in the Sullivan County tales because readers are constantly being misled by their unreliable guide. The most notably successful achievements in these two works are "Killing His Bear" and Chapter XVII of Maggie, both of which separate the nar rator from the protagonist and reveal other facets that foreshadow Crane's later stylistic mastery. 138 Narrator and protagonist also merge in The Red Badge, but in this case the result is providential. Crane's syntactic choices optimally suit his psychological portrayal of Fleming's fearful and confused mental processes during his first battlefield experience. 139 Notes 1 Edwin H. Cady, Introd., Tales, Sketches and Reports, Vol. VIII of The Works, p. xxix. 2 Numerous references by those who knew Crane testify to his spon taneous production of finished work, but subsequently discovered manu scripts deny this claim. With particular reference to parallel excerpts from "The Fishermen" and "The Octopush," Cady in his Introduc tion (pp. xxx-xxxii) assesses the process and impact of Crane's revi sions: "Crane bore down on the surfaces, not the structure .... He ground upon polishing up the textures of diction and syntax, and he smoothed the run of his tale's progression .... In revision he worked to sharpen eye and ear." Cady selectively supports his claim, zeroing in on the metaphor of "the flare," which is shifted in the final ver sion to form an apt objective correlative for a psychological moment, and is only partly correct. Crane sharpens "eye and ear" in ways other than rearrangement and polishing in the particular section of the draft discussed by Cady, one way involving structural change (although the larger structure of the piece remains substantially the same). Besides adding and changing simple and bound modifiers ("a black bottle" ) "a great yellow-brown bottle"), Crane attaches three verb clusters to main clauses. One of them heightens the impact of "the flare" metaphor on which Cady comments in terms of its repositioning. The draft's "When the sun had slid down until it only threw a red flare among the trees. . . . " ) the final version's "The sun slid down and threw a flare upon the silence, coloring it red." He also adds three conjunc tive adverbs, "smoothing the run" of his tale. These revisions are not simply polishing as Cady maintains, but adding, a process typical as Crane revises, whether minimally as in the Sullivan County tales or extensively as in parts of The Red Badge or the later work. 3 In letters to Nellie Crouse (Dec. 31st [1895]) and Lily Brandon Munroe [March, 1894?], Letters, pp. 86 and 31. 4 "The moon rested for a moment in the top of a tall pine on a hill. "The little man was standing in front of the camp-fire making oration to his companions. '"We can tell a great tale when we get back to the city, if we investigate this thing,' said he, in conclusion. "They were won. "The little man was determined to explore a cave, because its olack mouth had gaped at him. The four men took lighted pine-knots and :lambered over boulders down a hill. In a thicket on the mountain-side lay a little tilted hole. At its side they halted" (225). 140 5 See Appendix E for Crane's use of conjunctive adverbs, an important type of connector, which in number and variety are least in the early work. 6 The paragraph also illustrates Crane's excessively paratactic style. 7 "It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it .... And after this devotion to the commander of the boat there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, knew even at the time was the best experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it'' (73). 8 Corwin K. Linson, My Stephen Crane, ed. Edwin H. Cady (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1958), p. 59. 9 Level one refers to the base, which may be single or coordinate. See Appendix E for Crane's use of free modifiers. lO Or even momentary confusion along with awkwardness: "The maddened four men followed frantically, for it is better to be in the presence of the awful than only within hearing. Their ears still quivering with the shriek, they bounded through the hole in the ceiling, and into the sick room" ("The Black Dog," 246). 11 "Killing His Bear," 249; "The Mesmeric Mountain," 271; "The Black Dog," 242; "The Octopush," 231. 12 Introd., Tales, Sketches, and Reports, Vol. VIII of The Works, p. xxvii. 13 In a letter to an editor of Leslie's Weekly [about November, 1895], Letters, p. 79. 14 In a letter to Lily Brandon Munroe [March, 1894?], Letters, p. 32. 15 In a review in Arena, June 1893, rpt. in Weatherford, pp. 37-38. Weatherford also reprints portions of a handful of other critics' reviews: Edward Marshall from an interview with W. D. Howells, Phila delphia Press, April 1894; William Dean Howells from Harper's Weekly, June 1895; and Rupert Hughes from Godey's Magazine, October 1895, pp. 39-41. 16 Richard Bridgman, The Colloquial Style 1n America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. 17 "A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at ~owling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him. 141 "His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery uf g~eat, crimson oaths. "Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats. Tat tered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap. On their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus. "The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut on his head. His wan features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon. "On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles" (3-4). (Dialogue omitted.) 18 In comparison to Maggie time phrase adverbials are more numerous in The Red Badge, setting the scene and revealing attendant actions and circumstances; this emphasis on time dovetails with theme and focus, the mutability of Fleming's perceptions. 19 For example: "The inexperienced fibres of the boy's eyes were hardened at an early age. He became a young man of leather. He lived some red years without laboring. During that time his sneer became chronic. He studied human nature in the gutter, and found it no worse than he thought he had reason to believe it" (31). 20 The former doom is the most commonly accepted reading, but in "The Virginia Edition of Stephen Crane's Maggie" Parker and Higgins plausibly advance the latter possibility in view of the squalid nature of the fat man, Maggie's last customer. 21 It appears only in the "Sullivan County Sketches," Maggie, and The Red Badge data. 22 All sentences with verbal openers in the Maggie data, four, occur in Chapter XVII. 23 Introd., The Red Badge, Vol. II of The Works, p. xiv. 24 To an editor of Leslie's Weekly [about November, 1895], Letters, p. 78. 25 And in one sentence at least we find a distinct echo of the cleverness of the Sullivan County tales: "The swirling mass went some twenty feet and lit upon a level dry place in a strong, yellow light of candles. It dissolved and became eyes" ("Four Men in a Cave," 227); "A sketch in grey and red dissolved into a mob-like body of men who galloped like wild-horses" (The Red Badge, 219). 142 26 The Red Badge much less often presents the regiment's point of view than Fleming's; when it does,the reader through habit assigns the viewpoint as still representative of Fleming. 27 In this regard it is interesting to note that despite its con tributing to the effect of the sentence, the second set of enclosing commas was deleted in the 1895 Red Badge, and only the second comma of the set restored in The Works, reverting to Crane's Red Badge draft manuscript punctuation and ignoring his own later choice. At other times Crane punctuates for particular effect, twice in the data to emphasize right-branching structures that otherwise would flow with the sentence: "The cold passed reluctantly from the earth and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting" (3) and "They struck savagely and powerfully at each other for a period of minutes and then the lighter-hued regiments faltered and drew back, leaving the dark, blue lines, shouting" (159). Risks inhere in non standard punctuation for effect, of course. Each breaking of the code calls attention to itself, and, like crying wolf too often, may work against the very effects that an author seeks to impose. (Although cri tics mention Crane's unique punctuation "system," an in-depth study of its rationale and effects remains to be done.) 28 See Appendix E for Crane's use of conjunctive adverbs. 29 I borrow these last two terms from Max Westbrook's appl i cation of them to Crane's poetry in "Stephen Crane's Poetry: Perspectives and Arrogance," Stephen Crane's Career: Perspectives and Evaluations, ed. Thomas A. Gullason (New York: New York University Press, 1972), pp. 295-305 . 30 That Crane was intent upon establishing both coherence and an aspect of Fleming's character is apparent in his adding seven conjunc tive adverbs to his final manuscript in the comparable passages examined for this study. These include those appearing in newly formed sentences where no draft pages are missing and those added to already existing sentences. No conjunctive adverbs were deleted from the draft. Crane also added a number of coordinating conjunctions, many clearly for the sake of coherence. See Appendix F. 31 For details of Crane's changes in syntax between the draft and final manuscript, see Appendix F. 32 "Howells Discussed at A ·von-hy-the-Sea. Aug. 18, 1891, Tales, Sketches, and Reports, Vol. VIII of The Works, p. 507. 33 Sergio Perosa, "Stephen Crane fra naturalismo e impressionismo," trans. and rpt. in Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Maurice Bassan (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1967), pp. 80- 94. 143 34 The verb cluster is Crane's favorite type of free modifier in all the works examined. The verb clusters in the second sentence are two of the seven that Crane added during his revision of The Red Badge draft portions that were examined, showing his desire to increase the kinetic force of his novel. He deleted only one, changing it to a free prepositional phrase. See Appendix F. 35 The adjective clusters in the second example are both additions to the manuscript. 36 No sentences or T-units in The Red Badge data go beyond the third level of increasing specificity.See Appendix E. 37 Critics have previously been struck by Crane's adoption of Homeric epithet modification ("He of the injured fingers swore bitterly and aloud" [23]) and substandard or non-idiomatic usage ("He bended forward, scarce breathing" [22], "The dimensions of their howls was extraordinary" [47], "In the other end [of the room], cracker boxes were made to serve as furniture" [6]). One could also add split infin itives. Early critics castigated Crane for this grammatical solecism, a sin which seems less than horrendous today, and, as the data show, occurs far less often than we might expect given the intense criticism. There are ten instances, some of which would be awkward if not split ("to be well known," "to long endure"). Crane, in fact, avoids split infinitives where they would not raise an eyebrow ("to pace nervously to and fro," "to call out impatiently"). 144 CHAPTER V STAGE TWO: TRANSITION AND LATE MATURITY In The Red Badge Crane had developed his early style as far as he could. Ideally suited to its protagonist and theme, it made the novel an impressive and enduring success. But a style centered on short, sharp sentences that spatter like a random hail of bullets on readers, though dovetailed to the bewildered consciousness of a raw recruit in battle, is, finally, limited in scope, in the narrative voices, and hence the themes it can project. Crane needed to develop his style 1n other directions, to project other voices, or be forever doomed to re peat himself. It may have been this realization, conscious or subcon scious, that impelled him in a new stylistic direction. It may also have been in response to criticism of The Red Badge coming on the heels of critics' dissatisfaction with the eccentricities of Maggie and The Black Riders. Edward Marshall , Sunday editor of the New York Press criticized his "wrenched adjectives and coined adverbs. 111 Other re viewers bore down hard on the chaos and confusion of The Red Badge, its slipshod grammar, indeed, its "general butchery of the language. 112 Torn in his fiction and poetry between illusory ideals and concrete, albeit unpredictable, reality, he was similarly torn in his own life between his artistic convictions and desire for popular, critical, and f . . 1 3 1nanc1a success. Consequently, Crane may have deliberately changed his style to meet the expectations of critics and the public. One piece of supporting evidence lies in Crane's muting his high color palette and bizarre modifiers after The Red Badge. 145 But such changes in word choice lay under his conscious control whereas changes in his grammatical style largely did not. As modern linguists' studies of language acquisition and control of grammatical structures have shown, these processes are largely unconscious. Fur thermore, linguists have shown that acquisition and control proceed in the direction of variety and complexity. For example, expansions in the subject, the more complex embeddings, and reduced structures (ger unds, participles, appositives of various types, and so forth) are acquired late in the language acquisition process, and by some users of English only in terms of competence (understanding), not at all in terms of performance (using). 4 Hence, a plausible reason for Crane's changing grammatical style is that as he gained experience as a writer, he developed a more consistent and adept command of the syntactic op tions that make of English a richer expressive instrument. This is not to say that certain syntactic structures, the manipulation of whic characterizes maturer handling of language, never occur in the early work. Examples from the Sullivan County tales ("Killing His Bear") and Maggie (Chapter XVID have already been pinpointed. And we cer tainly could add the finely modulated opening of The Red Badge 1n which syntax finely melds with sense. 5 But as examination of Crane's syntactic choices reveals, it 1s in the later work that he depends more on modulated sy1:1: ax and less on outlandish diction and eccentric syntax to gain his effects. Just as Crane's grammatical choices justified grouping his "Sullivan County 146 Sketches," Maggie, and The Red Badge as representative of his early style so "The Open Boat," "The Monster" "The Blue Hotel," "The Price of the Harness," and "The Clan of No-Name" warrant grouping as representa tive of Crane's second stylistic phase . These stories forming Groups six and seven in the data warrant the label "expansive" in contrast to the abruptness of Crane's early work. 6 Forming a bridge between the early and later styles are the stories of Group five, "The Wise Men," "The Five White Mice," and "A Man and Some Others." However, although these stories form a transition, they lean more closely toward the style of the later work. Sentence and T-unit lengths increase in the late stories, and with this increase we find more sentence complexity, struc tures used earlier (such as free modifiers) used oftener and more effec tively, and other structures (such as the infinitive subject) used for the first time. With these changes come a new ability to project a mul tiplicity of voices and a generally more graceful style, not as star tling as the early style but a more powerful vehicle for Crane's ideas. We will first examine the stories of Group five and then those of Groups six and seven combined since, in terms of the categories examined, the two groups converge enough to be joined for purposes of discussion. "The Wise Men," "The Five White Mice," and "A Man and Some Others" The stories of Group five spring from Crane's own western and Mexican adventures. Ranging from seeming spontaneity of composition and lightness of tone to more considered seriousness, they nevertheless, as Levenson remarks, are, as a whole, strikingly youthful compared to the stories which Crane wrote the very next year. 7 In them Crane advances a step closer to the artistic mastery of his greatest work. 147 "The Wise Men" and "The Five White Mice" are cognate pieces fea turing the two Kids, one from New York and the other from San Fran cisco, who "wickedly" indulge the companion sins of drinking and gam bling in Mexico City far from their original, Puritan habitat. "A Man and Some Others" turns from city to open range and the conflict between a sheepherder named Bill and some Mexicans who threaten him off the range in southwestern Texas. In "The Wise Men" the Kids contrive a foot race between old Pop, / the bartender at the Cafe Colorado, who, portly and grayed, appears to be in less than his athletic prime, and Freddie, a much younger bar tender at the Casa Verde. Rashly unconcerned with old Pop's obvious physical disadvantages, the Kids accept his cocksure claim to be a "flier" and with cool insouciance take on all bets, bets that if called the Kids could not make good. Knowing how deeply in the Kids are, Pop wilts under theresponsibility and, backing away from his earlier su preme self-confidence, warns them he might lose. But the sibyllic Kids stick with Pop, who beats Freddie handily. As the sullen Benson, who had backed Freddie, pays off his bets, defiantly maintaining that he did not lose much, the Kids, in reply, quietly understate their . . w1nn1ngs. Understatement quietly yet powerfully also ends "The Five White Mice," whose concluding sentence reads: "Nothing had happened," the narrator's comment on the chance confrontation of the sober New York Kid and the drunken 'Frisco Kid and Benson with three hostile Mexicans whose knives flash at the ready in response to Benson's jostling and the 'Frisco Kid's acceptance of the Mexicans' challenge to fight. 148 Leading up to this cr1s1s 1s the following sequence of events. The New York Kid, gambling at the Casa Verde, loses at dice despite his poetic appeal to "the five white mice of change" (an appeal that he repeats during the midnight confrontation, making out of it a new, alth0ugh more deadly, game), the penalty for which is treating the winners to a circus performance. On his way home from the circus he seeks out the 'Frisco Kid and Benson as bidden to earlier and finds them both needing assistance home. It is as he and the 'Frisco Kid, automaton-like in response to the New York Kid's commands, steer Benson along the dark Mexico City streets that the clash with the Mexicans occurs. Pulling out his gun although quaking with fear, the New York Kid cows the Mex icans and they slink off into the darkness, both sides willing to end the confrontation without bloodshed. In this sense then and also 1n the sense that neither the 'Frisco Kid nor Benson are aware of the New York Kid's saving their lives "nothing has happened." Yet for the New York Kid something has happened; he has maintained grace under pressure and been awakened to the fact that "they were all human beings" and that he does not have "a complete monopoly of all possible trepida tions" (SO), no mean lesson. Even more important, this knowledge, rather than puffing him up, humbles him. In "A Man and Some Others" it is the stranger who learns the les sons. A naive and chance observer when he enters the scene, he earns his knowledge through active participation in Bill's stubborn resist ance against the Mexicans. Bill, basically a decent man (who warns to stranger to "hit the trail" (60) and not get entangled .in his trou ble), has landed in southwestern Texas at the end of a long downward 149 plunge that takes him from aristocratic Wyoming mineowner through stints as cowboy, railroad worker, bouncer, fighter, and once even a killer. Defying the villainous Jose and the others he represents, who threaten to kill him if he does not leave the range, Bill senses his impending doom but stays to fight nonetheless: "Don't see nothin' else to do" (60). The stranger stays with him, and through "certain lines" that stand out "strongly from the incoherence" (66) of the final at tack and endure, he comprehends the message carried 1n the "boom of the sea" and "the sliver of the wind" ashore: "the inconsequence of indi vidual tragedy" (60). During the fight the stranger kills a man and notes the ease of doing it; he sees the sheepherder in death and marks the dignity of it. And these truths become more important to him than his fear of dying. The narrative conception of the stories is slight, indicated by the subtitle of "The Wise Men: A Detail of American Life in Mexico." There is a hint here of the purpose of the "Sullivan County Sketches," sketches of life in Mexico and the southwest as those were sketches of life in the woods of Sullivan County. But beyond their attempting to reveal the ambiance of unfamiliar surroundings to newspaper readers, being in the short story mode, and told by a third person omniscient narrator, differences abound. The slightness is deceptive. These stories are organized around a serious, coherent purpose: exploring the relationship between man's inner world and his outer world, an exploration that also underlies the Sullivan County tales and crucially permeates The Red Badge. But in the Sullivan County tales the exploration is left unresolved as clever 150 endings avoid probing the meaning of experience and how it matters, and in The Red Badge, despite the sensitivity of Fleming's perceptions, any steps taken by him toward lasting self-knowledge about his inner and outer worlds are left shrouded in a mist of ambiguity. His dis coveries are as fragmented and unsure as his syntactic style. How ever, 1n these later stories resolution and illumination accompany ex ploration. The Kids may frequent a loose, vice-ridden world but they maintain admirable self-discipline; additionally, the New York Kid and the stranger acquire knowledge, that, without them claiming it--and in fact their not claiming it underscores it--makes them men. And Crane's sureness of purpose is accompanied by a growing sureness of style. Crane still uses color but although fighting and anger occur, no crimson, lurid oaths blaze skyward. Color is used more naturally, with description rather than shock its main purpose. The Kids, taking bets, have "much business with certain orange, red, blue, purple, and green bills" (34). The extended series (one might even say catalog), a structural option newly exploited by Crane, not only suggests dif fering amounts of money being wagered through the various colors but 1n its piling up of modifiers the vast amount of money being wagered, a cumulative effect also entailed in Crane's description of drinks: "Drinks of many kinds and colors, amber, green, mahogany, strong and mild, began to swarm upon the bar with all the attendants of lemon, sugar, mint and ice" (39). Slightly garish, the welter of adjectives creates an emotional charge that is light and humorous. Later Crane uses trip-hammer cataloguing emphasized by hyphenated modifiers to gen erate a weighty, serious emotional charge, expertly underscored and 151 released by the following sentences which wind down to terse irenic finale: One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb. 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. However, the Swede found a saloon. ("The Blue Hotel," 165) In "A Man and Some Others" deft color choice, intensifying the rhythmical cadence of the sentences, sets the physical and emotional scene of the night-time attack: "Long, smoldering clouds spread in the western sky, and to the east silver mists lay on the purple gloom of the wilderness. Finally, when the great moon climbed the heavens and cast its ghastly radiance upon the bushes, it made a new and more bril liant crimson of the camp-fire, ... " (60). Nature is animistic but less obtrusively and more quietly so: "The branches, the 1 eaves, that are fain to cry out when death ap proaches in the wilds, were frustrated by these uncanny bodies gliding with the finesse of the escaping serpent" (61). Sound continues to be important, but its impact is more natural and less .deafening than 1n the early work: messages are "clamorous" (26); the people watching Pop and Freddie race "howl" as the men come into view (36); men cheer and bitterly argue over dice (40); the sea booms and hemlock boughs clash (60). Formal and, more rarely, melodramatic diction still mixes with ordinary, and syntactic deviation marks Crane's sentences, but each less profusely. An afternoon shower "left the pave wet and glitter ing" (33), "a large circle of men that had been gesticulating near the 152 bar" greets the Kids with a roar (33), youths are "dressed vainly ac cording to supposititious fashions" (40), and Benson and the 'Frisco Kid throw "maledictions" after the New York Kid (44). 8 Mostly, though, Crane's eccentric word choices, especially verbs, are strikingly apt and vivid ["They semaphored to him eagerly " ( 3 0) , ". . . he lazily flirted the dice" (39), " ... they scummed Benson on past the door" (46)]. Syntactic deviation ranges from that resulting from Crane's uncer tain grammar : ,,,. The Cafe Colorado has a front of white and gold, 1n which is set larger plate-glass windows than are commonly to be found in Mexico. (26) They toppled on their way like three comedians playing at it on the stage. (46)9 and curious choices involving coordinating conjunctions: Benson refused to be corralled but spread his legs and twirled like a dervish, meanwhile under the evident impression that he was conducting himself most handsomely. (46)10 to prepositions: One hand, grown curiously thinner, had been flung out regardlessly to a cactus bush. (63)11 and verbs: The crowd swayed and jostled. (36) 12 Other of Crane's deviations serve an emphatic function, for ex ample a front-shifted adverb plus inversion: "Always could be heard the wild patter;" which occurs in the midst of the carefully regulated climax of "The Wise Men," the race between Pop and Freddie: 13 From the profonnd gloom came the noise of feet pattering furiously. Vague forms flashed into view for an instant. A hoarse roar broke from the crowd. Men bended and swayed and fought. The Kids back near the tape exchanged another stolid look. A white form shone forth. It grew like a spectre. Always could be heard the wild patter. A barbaric scream broke from the crowd. "By Gawd, it's Pop! Pop! Pop's ahead!" The old man spun toward the tape like a madman, his chin thrown back, his grey hair flying. His legs moved like maniac machinery. And as he shot forward a howl as from forty cages of wild animals went toward the imperturbable chieftains in bronze. The crowd flnng themselves forward. For an instant the whole great tragedy was in view. Freddie, desperate, his teeth shining, his face contorted, whirling along in deadly effort, was twenty feet behind the tall form of old Pop, who, dressed only in his--only in his underclothes--gained with each stride. One grand insane moment, and then Pop had hurled himself against the tape--victor! (36-37) 153 The short, choppy sentences and darting focus of paragraph one (adroitly relieved by the action slowing polysyndeton of "Men bended and swayed and fought") generate an atmosphere of tension and commo tion leading up to the appearance of the runners, upon whom the spot light then rests. Pop's frenzied, swift flight and Freddie's desper ate effort to overtake him are captured in a series of free modifier additions riding piggy-back on the main clauses, magnifying parts of their bodies in order to simulate their intense physical effort (flawed, however, by the fragmenting and motion stopping separate clause "His legs moved like maniac machinery"). Crane uses these syn tactic options, plus repetition and delay ("only in his--only in his underclothes") to augment suspense in paragraph three, suspense sharply released with the last sentence composed of a hurried fragment, a brief clause, and then an elliptical clause of which only the predicate ad- 154 jective "victor" remains. "Victor" like "only in his underclothes" is set off parenthetically, and with attention riveting dashes, to cir- 14 cumvent the natural linearity of sentence$. Crane counterpoints both asyndeton and polysyndeton in "The Five White Mice" to modulate the activity involved in the dice game. Even while the three paralleled and clustered gerunds maintain a sense of continuing activity, accleration is supplanted by retardation: They had passed beyond shaking for drinks for the crowd, for Mexican dollars, for dinner, for the wine at dinner. They had even gone to the trouble of separating the cigars and cigarettes from the dinner's bill and causing a distinct man to be responsible for them. Then all activities and listing of prizes are abruptly and humorously stopped by a hyperbolic, bare-bones sentence and its qualifier: Finally they were aghast. Nothing remained within sight of their minds which even remotely suggested further gambling. (40) Later in the story as the two Kids and Benson make their way down a dark street, the drunken Benson accidentally jostles some Mexicans, and when they immediately throw down the gauntlet, the drunken 'Frisco Kid as swiftly accepts the challenge. Crane marshals syntax so as to orchestrate the ebb and flow of this tense encounter, using climax pat tern asyndeton; free modifiers, especially non clusters that freeze the action as they describe its participants; and terse sentences that ac celerate the action alternated with elaborated ones that sustain focus. He also chooses past participles that add a covert threat to the overt one. 15 The effect of these tension ridden moments on the New York Kid is to generate views that are "perfectly stereopticon, flashing in and 155 away from his thought with an inconceivable rapidity until after all they were simply one quick dismal impression" (49). But Crane's nar rator reports them in far less stereopticon fashion than Fleming's views are rendered in The Red Badge, or those of the Sullivan County tales and Maggie are reported by their narrators. The difference is that this narrator is far more a detached, knowledgeable observer who orders the events and meaning of the story to make them more accessible to readers, filtering the scene that readers experience essentially from the New York Kid's point of view. The opening of "A Man and Some Others" (53), which portrays the isolated, dusty scene in which the drama will be enacted, also illus trates similarly filtered ordering. The last sentences of each of the two opening paragraphs especially encapsulate Crane's artistic render ing of the way a mind might perceive objects that slowly impinge them selves on the consciousness. Words ordered and punctuated as they are ("a blue shape, dim, of the substance of a specter's veil"; "at times a sheepherder could see, miles away, the long white streamers of dust") simulate a steady growth in awareness, new images being added to those already perceived, all shaped by the unfolding of informative details in left-, mid-, and right-branching modifiers that point forward and backward and coil in on themselves. Later in the story the turmoil of the. final attack is recounted (66-67). 16 But rather than present the immediacy of a welter of aural, visual, and kinetic perceptions in fragmented, disjunctive sentences as in The Red Badge, Crane's narrator filters and orders the stranger's chaotic inner and outer perceptions for readers. The "lightning ac- 156 tion" of the climactic moment is organized into swift moving asyndeton, but the narrator lingers on the s_ ignificance of the events for the stranger. Crane judiciously places free modifiers (prepositional phrases and noun clusters) so as to retard the movement of the stran ger's "lesson" and emphasize it, the double realization that although in the larger scheme of things individual death is inconsequential, the 17 dignity and nobility of man 1n death is not . Through the narrator's report and interpretive comments readers contemplate the drama and its meaning steadily, economically, and clearly. As the quoted passages from these Group five stories reveal, Crane's sentences and T-units lengthen, and not primarily through com pounding but through embedding and attaching structures that elaborate his thoughts more complexly as Crane extends his syntactic resources. The longest T-unit in the data, and one of only two sentences with six structural layers occurs in "A Man and Some Others," 18 Analyzed into free modifiers and levels it is: 2 Finally, when the great moon climbed the heavens and cast its ghastly radiance upon the bushes, (SC) 1 it made a new and more brilliant crimson of the camp-fire, 2 where the flames capered merrily through its mesquit branches, (RC) 3 filling the silence with the fire chorus, (VC) 4 an ancient melody (NC) 5 which surely bears a message of the inconsequence of individual tragedy-- (RC) 6 a message that is in the boom of the sea, the sliver of the wind through the grass blades, the silken clash of hemlock boughs. (NC) ( 60) Two notable attributes of this type of syntactic interweaving are 157 first, that its complexity is appropr'ate to the profoundness of the thought it conveys, and second, that its complexity and rhythmic ca dence insure that readers will attend to it; they simply cannot "skip the details." Each structure thrusts the reader forward to the next until the message is complete and all pieces fall together. The voice, philosophical and prophetic, the style verging on the lyric are not entire new in Crane's fiction, but they are given only fleeting utter ance in the early work. In the later work the voice makes itself heard more clearly either in a single lengthened, complex syntactic line as in the sentence immediately cited or in carefully interwoven and balanced shorter sentences and T-units. But in either case its function is to interpret as well as present, unlike the earlier work where presentation alone is its purpose. Crane's growing willingness to interpret reveals a growing realization that through interpretation he can better control his readers' responses. Crane modulates syntax to express other voices too. For example, in the flashback description of the sheepherder Bill's past, sentences march briskly in straightforward procession with frequent short, par allel clauses contributing to the headlong rush that matches the rush of events. This pace, plus an arch tone, denies readers an opportunity to assimilate fully or dwell on Bill's violent record, including the killing of a foreman, so as not to damage their sympathy for him in his conflict with the Mexicans, sympathy previously established when the murderous Jose threatens Bill with death if he does not leave the land. The following illustrates briefly: Bill, with his kingly frown and his long night-stick, appeared at precisely that moment in the doorway. He stood like a statue of victory; his pride was at its zenith; and in the same second this atrocious piece of scantling punched him in the bulwarks of his stomach, and he vanished like a mist. Opinions differed as to where the end of the scantling landed him, but it was ultimately clear that it landed him in southwestern Texas, where he became a sheep-herder. (57) 158 Crane~s increased syntactic control, which allows him to extend his narrative descriptive power and project a variety of voices, is important to the success of these stories as is his ability to maintain adequate distance between his narrators and protagonists. These sig nificant features form the underpinning of Crane's late style. Indeed, Crane's increasing command of syntactic options coincides with and is crucial to the flood of imaginative fiction that flows from his pen at the height of his career. "The Open Boat," "The Monster," "The Blue Hotel," "The Price of the Harness," "The Clan of No-Name" The dynamic activation of desc~iption and complex ideas in the newly understated, expansive style that buds in the stories of Group five blossoms in those of Groups six and seven. These stories do not have the unified background that those of Group five have, except for the two war tales, but are unified in their comprising some of Crane's best work. In fact one story, "The Open Boat" is often judged Crane's most perfect fiction. "The Open Boat" directly recreates Crane's ol'm escape from the ship Commodore, which sank at sea on its way to Cuba where Crane was to report on the revolution. After two grueling nights at sea in a small 159 dinghy off the Florida coast, Captain Murphy, the cook Montgomery, the oiler Billy Higgins, and Crane made a desperate run for shore through the breaking surf, only to have, that close to safety, Billy Higgins drown, exhausted, in the surf. "The Open Boat" recreates these events, but its further and more significant purpose is to review the events in order to elicit their meaning for the participants, which include not only the correspondent through whose consciousness much of the story is filtered, but the narrator and, therefore, readers who at tempt to order and understand the meaning of the whole. In a sort of syllogistic progression, at the start of their ordeal none of the men understand their situation ("know the color of the sky") beyond the immediacy of survival in the small dinghy. But the experiences of the two days and nights expand their understanding, represented in the cor respondent, of man's relation to man and the universe and life and death. Therefore, at the start of the last section, "when the corre spondent again opened his eyes," he sees an enlarged horizon infused with color. This does not mean that the correspondent assumes an unwarranted optimism, simply that he can see, that is, understand, more if he adopts multiple views: not only the view from the boat im prisoned by a wall of waves but a detached view (one the narrator has from the start) of the scene from the vantage point of a balcony, where it might seem merely picturesque. Only then can he achieve the capacity for interpretation. (The story itself is Crane's interprea tion of his experience for readers.) In "The Monster" Crane moves from sea to shore, from trial by water to trial by fire, from individual growth to social satire. A 160 fire that sweeps through Dr. Trescott's house is the means through which small town tensions, provincialism, and hypocrisy are exposed. Dr. Trescott, charter member of the established community and adherent to its professed Christian values, acts on those values when he saves the life of Henry Johnson, his Negro servant, a moral obligation since Johnson has saved Dr. Trescott's son Jimmie from burning to death in the fire. Dr. Trescott ignores the warning that he may be committing "one of the blunders of virtue" (31) by preserving the life of a man whose face and mind are destroyed, thereby sealing both their fates in the community: ostracism. Irony permeates the tale as it does most of Crane's fiction. Johnson, a saint to the townsfolk when he is as sumed to have died from his heroic act is to them a monster and an out cast alive. Dr. Trescott, who ranks Christian virtue over social pru dence, a ranking that society only superficially approves, also becomes an outcast, a social "monster" in the eyes of the townsfolk. The story ends with an understated account of the price to be paid for stubborn morality. Dr. Trescott, holding his sobbing wife in his arms, can only count the empty teacups of the women who did not come to visit her. In "The Blue Hotel" the Swede, like Dr. Trescott, largely brings his fate upon himself, not through advertent action, but rather through blind illusion. His head full of wild west tales of violence, he is convinced that he will be killed at Fort Romper despite the ho telkeeper Scully's and the other guests' attempts to assuage his fears. With Scully's liquor enflaming his courage so that it consumes his earlier fear, the Swede participates in a friendly game of cards during which he turns on Scully's son Johnnie and accuses him of 161 cheating. After fighting with Johnnie and soundly whipping him, the Swede leaves the Palace Hotel, and takes refuge from the storm in a Fort Romper saloon. There character, fate, and chance collide as they do in "The Five White Mice" but without its auspicious outcome. The Swede is killed by a gambler when he billigerantly insists upon the gambler and the rest of the customers in a saloon drinking with him in celebration of his victory over Johnnie. But the gambler's knife seems to act on its own, and the cash register announces "This registers the amount of your purchase" (169) to the staring eyes of the dead Swede. Further, in the epilogue, the Easterner reveals to the cowboy that he knew Johnnie had been cheating at cards but kept silent and that this abdication of responsibility along with the others spoiling for a fight made all of then1 collaborators in the Swede's death. The cowboy's re sponse is that he "didn't do anythin'" (170), a hollow disclaimer, for Crane points the moral lesson of mutual responsibility, as much for sins of omission as comission. "The Price of the Harness" and "The Clan of No-Name" offer much the same lesson though in a different context, that of war. The lesson is responsibility, this time individual responsibility to a code of behavior whose main ingredient is quiet, stoical devotion to duty. "The Price of the Harness" and "The Clan of No-Name" are war tales, but they strike out in new directions from The Red Badge, shifting their focus from exploration of the individual inner experience of war in relation to outer experience, to exploration of war in relation to so ciety. The soldiers celebrated in these stories, combat-hardened or newly recruited, are professionals who lack egotistical, romantic illusions about war: A man of this kind might be stupid; it is conceivable that in remote cases certain bumps on his head might be composed entire of wood; but those traditions of fidelity and courage which have been handed to him from generation to generation, and which he has tenaciously preserved despite the persecution of legislators and the indifference of his country, make it incredible that in battle he should ever fail to give his best blood and his best thought for his general, for his men and for himself. ("The Price of the Harness," 101-102) 162 Even the horses are guided by this idea of duty, surveying the men they serve with eyes deep as wells, serene, mournful, generous eyes, lit heart-breakingly with something that was akin to a philosophy, a religion of self-sacrifice--oh, gallant, gallant horses! ("The Price of the Harness," 102) 19 The ideal of duty, in fact, constitutes a code, the "Prince of Conduct" (127), which, although sketchy,is similar in its essentials to that worked out in detail by Hemingway: fortitude in the face of catas- 20 trophe, honor, courage, grace under pressure, rational responsi- bility in an irrational world. In "The Price of the Harness" Nolan is the particular protagonist through whom the code is expressed. A simple, regular soldier, who even so has a sense of the historic and his place in it, he works and fights in Cuba. Modestly considering himself unworthy among his com rades in the regiment and the army, his life and love, he nevertheless quietly and competently does what he was trained to do. Nolan was not, however, trained how to die; yet he does that with grace too. Not re alizing that he is mortally wounded in the stomach, he mistakes the pool of blood he lies in for the dampness of the ground, and debates this condition with his fellow soldiers. Two simple, understated 163 sentences evoke the full emotion of the scene: "He did not know he was dying. He thought he was holding an argument on the condition of the turf" (112). Their effect is enhanced by the section they conclude being composed (aside from dialogue and the sharply worded "Somebody punched him violently in the stomach" (111) to describe Nolan's being hit by a bulet) primarily of longer, more complex sentences, replete with action structures and detail. In "The Clan of No-Name" it is Manolo Prat, the young lieutenant, whose turn it is to die under the laws of the code. "Clan" is an in tricately constructed story, a structural feat one cannot imagine Crane being capable of controlling in his early fiction. In it Crane catches and unifies the cross rhythms of the frame love story and both sides of the battle, with Manolo touching all points of reference. Loved by Margharita, he leaves Tampa for combat in Cuba, his first, and last, fight. Ordered by the general to take a message to the practicos who are valiantly but futilely beseiging the enemy block house he runs through a hail of bullets because it is his duty, whose sufficient reward is "to be called a brave man by established brave men" (127). Also because it is his duty, he deliberately rolls into a saucer-like hollow flanked by guerillas even though "he knew that he was thrusting himself into a trap whose door, once closed, opened only when the black hand knocked" (130). Shot and partially paralyzed, Manolo tries but fails to remove Margharita's photograph from his pocket for a last look before the guerilla's machete ends his life. Margharita' s code of fidelity is inscribed on the back: "One 1 es son in English I will give you--this: I love you." But, in the act of 164 burning Manolo's photograph two months after his death when she ac cepts the proposal of Manolo's rival suitor, she weakly abdicates her duty to her code. Her repudiation accentuates through a sharp con trast,Manolo's strength and devotion to his code. There is a seriousness about these later works, one might almost say grimness, imbued as they are with suffering and death. 21 Problems and answers are not simple, and neither is the grammatical style in which Crane's ideas are conveyed. Berryman sums up Crane's style of "The Open Boat" as "supple majesty," further labels the style of "The Monster" as "closed, circumstantial, 'normal' in feeling and syntax," and detects a new syntactic complexity in "The Clan of No-Name." 22 Actually, as far as his subjective judgments go, they could in general apply to the grammatical style of all Crane's late work, in which his syntax is more normal, with a balance and fluidity that produces not only a supple majesty but an effect of inevitability. One change we can detect is in Crane's comparisons, a favored means of adding descriptive details through analogy that spans his fic tion, floating a nimbus of fancy over the concrete core of his prose. Often, at least in the early fiction, comparisons are compressed into prenominal modifiers, some with like, others with like deleted: Group 1: the altar-like stone, a ghost-like mist, mummy-like bundles Group 2: blood-red dreams, ghoul-like grins Group 4: animal-like eyes, dagger-pointed gaze Group 5: parrot-like cries of distant vendors, owl-faced clock Group 6: the iron-nerved master of the ceremony, a ruby-red snakelike thing Group 7: a pagoda-like house Group 8: small ashy-faced ancient-eyed youths, an owl-faced parson. 165 This compressed form of comparison tapers off in the stories of Group 5 and then becomes rare in his later work, as do Crane's other compresse modifiers: "blunt-ended boat," "dirt-stained cheeks"; epithets ("deep ly-engaged one") disappear. This syntactic change contributes to the expansiveness of the later prose. Comparisons continue but the inherently expandable types predomi nate over non-expandable, for example prepositional phrases with like, both bound and free: Group 1: the slate colored man ... looked like a hideous Chinese idol the little man ... remained ... like a fantastic bronze figure Group 2: he looked like a pictured devil on a Japanese kite his whole body ... shook like that of a dead jelly fish Group 4: they [the armies] were like two serpents the bugles called ... like brazen game-cocks Group 5: his legs moved like maniac machinery he stood like a statue of victory Group 6: one light gleamed like a tiny jewel the two combatants ... crashed together like bullocks Group 7: rifle bullets ... like the noise of so many lamp chimneys to make it [the blockhouse] fume and spit and rave like the tomcat when the glad, free-band foxhound pups catch him in the lane Group 8: castles which were like churches stuck on end Paddy and Jem to be sleeping ... like big dogs The familiar as comparison is a frequent form throughout: Then it [the cry of the hound] grew mournful as the wailing of a lost thing, as, perhaps, the dog gained on a fleeing bear. ("Killing His Bear," 249) When an engine would strike a mass of blocked trucks, splitting it into fragments, as a blow annihilates a cake of ice, Jimmie's team could usually be observed high and safe, with whole wheels, on the sidewalk. (Maggie, 38) Staring, once, at the red eyes across the river, he conceived them to be growing larger, as the orbs of a row of dragons, advancing. (The Red Badge, 22) At midnight a little Mexican street burrowing among the wruls of the city is as dark as a whale's throat at deep sea. ("The Five White Mice," 46) There was another perplexity of flying arms, and Johnnie's body again swung away and fell, even as a bundle might fall from a roof. ("The Blue Hotel," 161) And so this young officer in the shapeless hat and the torn and dirty shirt failed to heed the wails of the wounded man, even as the pilgrim fails to heed the world as he raises his illumined face toward his purpose--rightly or wrongly his purpose--his sky of the ideal of duty; and the wonderful part of it is that he is guided by an ideal which he has himself created, and has alone protected from attack. ("The Price of the Harness," 102) I soon learned to enter an inn as a drunken soldier goes through the breach into a surrendering city. (The O'Ruddy, 5) but Crane is more likely to vary his comparative forms in the later work, using, for instance, litotes and "resemble." A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and, by the same token, a broncho is not much smal 1 er. ("The Open Boat, " 69) Trees arched from a field of guinea-grass which resembled young wild corn. ("The Price of the Harness," 97) 166 These examples reveal several significant factors about Crane's style. One is that his comparisons are often keenly, appropriately imagina tive, some, like the example from "The Open Boat " radiating through 167 an entire sentence, adding to its intensity. Another is that occa sionally in the later work Crane expands his comparisons extensively. A third is that throughout his career Crane's comparisons spotlight animalistic, mysterious, ferocious, and grotesque elements. However, in the later work extremes abate, and Crane relies more on familiar comparison~ yet ones still appropriate to the action or object and ones more descriptive than suggestive. For example, 1n Maggie dreams are red like blood; in "A Man and Some Others" fire is red like blood. In "The Clan of No-Name' Crane uses his first and only carefully balanced double antithetical comparison: "One of his stars was bright, like his hopes; the other was pale, like death" (123), sharpening the sense of foreboding through contrast. This complex construction, one that suggests authorial control as it gives pleasure in its grace, points to another change in Crane's style, further development of his ability to project a variety of voices that was heralded in the stories of Group five. The sentence comes from the detached point of view of the narrator as do serious statements about moral obligation: Men could have gone drunken in all this flashing and flying and snarling and din, but at this time he was very deliberate. He knew that he was thrusting himself into a trap whose door, once closed, opened only when the black hand knocked, and every part of him seemed to be in panic-stricken revolt. But something controlled him; something moved him inexorably in one direction; he perfectly understood, but he was only sad, sad with a serene dignity, with the countenance of a mournful young prince. He was of a kind--that seemed to be it--and the men of his kind, on peak or plain, from the dark northern ice-fields to the hot wet jungles, through all wine and want, through all lies and unfamiliar truth, dark or light, the men of his kind were governed by their gods, and each man knew the law and yet could not give tongue to it; but it was 168 the law, and if the spirits of the men of his kind were all sitting in critical judgment upon him even then in the sky, he could not have bettered his conduct; he needs must obey the law, and always with the law there is only one way. But from peak and plain, from dark northern ice-fields and hot wet jungles, through wine and want, through all lies and unfamiliar truth, dark or light, he heard breathed to him the approval and the benediction of his breathren. ("The Clan of No-Name," 130-131) In similar fashion to the sentence quoted earlier from "A Man and Some Others" (and the complementary sentences of its context not quoted), Crane establishes a rhythmic cadence that draws readers along, particularly relying on repetition, not only of words but structures, especially prepositional phrases (which also contrast)("on peak .. . , from the dark ... , to the wet ... , through all ... ,through all ... "), and even repetitive sounds (alliterative s's and b's: "sad" , "serene," "breathed," "benediction," "breathren"). Stylistic stress falls on deliberate, clear ordering of ideas in measured units. Par ticularly emphasized through repetition is the "refrain" describing "the men of his kind," a refrain which also ends the story and points its moral: "for the word is clear only to the kind who on peak or plain, ... " (136), that is, clear to those who fulfill their moral ohligations like Manolo but not to those who default like Margharita. We have also seen that a refrain is deliberately repeated in "The Five White Mice" to accent life and death being as much a game of chance as dice is. A refrain-like lament also keys "The Open Boat": "If I'm going to be drowned . . . " (77, 81, 84, 91). The captain, as leader of the group, appropriately sets the theme of this refrain with his mirror version: "If we don't all get ashore. . . . If we don't all get ashore, .. " (76). Stylized as the other refrains 169 are, it too gains its full meaning through repetition in different con texts, the last an unstylized echo ("I am going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be possible? Can it be possible?") in which drown ing has become not hypothetical for the correspondent but real. Gripped by the deadly current after abandoning the protection, however flimsy, of the dinghy to swim for shore through the surf, he considers the individual meaning of drowning: death as the final phenomenon of nature. Although syntax often borders on the lyrical in the expression of important messages, it need not, even though it employs syntactic structures that balance, modulate, repeat, and contrast. For example, the key message of "The Open Boat," the futility of self-love and ne cessity for comradeship in a cold and indifferent universe, is ex pressed more prosaically in keeping with the detached narrator's voice blending imperceptibly into the correspondent's consciousness. 23 In the later work, shifts in the narrator's voice from detached point of view to that close to a character's tend to be much more sub tle and varied than in the early work and better motivated. The Sullivan County tales really project only one voice, which, as ex plained earlier, causes problems with reader response. In Maggie there is little shifting and what occurs is abrupt: The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles. From a window of an apartment house that upreared its form from amid squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman. Some laborors, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and regarded the fight. The engineer of a passive tugboat hung lazily to a railing and watched. Over on the Island, a worm of yellow convicts came from the shadow of a grey ominous building and crawled slowly along the river's bank. A stone has smashed into Jimmie's mouth .. . . (45) 170 In The Red Badge there are really only two voices (with, as in Maggie, abrupt shift between the two), the detached, mature voice of the nar rator heard rarely, represented in the opening paragraph of the novel, and the blended voice of narrator and Henry Fleming heard throughout, often so close that although immediacy results so too does ambiguity. For instance, at the start of Chapter VII we read: "By heavens (direct speech), they had won after all (indirect speech). The imbecile line (Henry's judgment) had remained and become victors (either narrator or Henry)" (59). It is largely because a reflective narrative voice to guide readers' judgments is missing in The Red Badge that its overall message is also ambiguous. One result is that the question of whether Fleming becomes a man is still a crux for literary critics. Crane projects a variety of voices in the later work, not only that of a detached perspective, through his greater syntactic control; hence he is able to more reliably guide readers' responses. Although shifts from one voice to another often are smooth and create an im- mediacy similar to that of The Red Badge, ambiguity does not result. For example, in "The Price of the Harness" Crane duplicates Martin's confused mental state when, wounded in the arm, dizzy and sick, he struggles rearward to find a dressing station: "Such was his mental condition that he brought up at a rigid halt before this fence and stared stupidly at it. It did not seem possible that this obstacle could be defended by any means. The fence was there and it stopped 171 his progress. He could not go in that direction" (106). Readers easily separate reflective narrator from immediate perceiver even though one voice blends into the other mid-sentence; Martin may be be wildered but the narrator is not. Nor is the reader except momentar ily. Because Martin's confusion is brief, readers can make the imagi native leap and project themselves into Martin's mental state for the length of time required, a process far more difficult for readers to sustain in The Red Badge, where Fleming's bewildered, searching mind is the novel's raison d'etre. Connected with the matter of projected voices are "asides," an obtrusive stylistic feature than spans Crane's work, anomalously in view of Crane's seeming desire not to comment, not to preach, but rather to interpose as little as possible between his fiction and his 24 readers. Asides consist of interpolated comments and are marked by a change in verb tense (usually from past to present indicative or sub junctive moods, the latter past in form but present or future in func tion), syntactic structure, and tone, all tending to emphasize the interpolation. Comments tend to be superficially clever generaliza tions, not only in the early but late work, and are often of a social nature: Two girls, on the bill as sisters, came forth and sang a duet that is heard occasionally at concerts given under church auspices. They supplemented it with a dance which of course can never be seen at concerts given under church auspices. (Maggie, 61) Such attempt at wit do little more than distract, although this aside from "The Open Boat" does provide momentary comic relief for readers t . 11 b b d. h ' 1· h 25 emo iona ya sore int e mens pig t: The human back can become the seat of more aches and pains than are registered in books for the composite anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the theatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots, and other comforts. (78) 172 Other asides, equally distracting but valuable in a scholarly sense for what they reveal about Crane's artistic creed, are more serious than slick. Such is the case in this aside from "A Man and Some Oth ers," which sheds light on Crane's composing aims: But let a man adopt fighting as his business, and the thought grows constantly within him that it is his business to fight. These phrases became mixed in Bill's mind precisely as they are here mixed; ... " (56) Those asides that occur in fiction with closely merged narrator and protagonist are the ones best integrated with the flow of the story. This from The Red Badge conveys a descriptive detail signifi cant in portraying Fleming's psychological state: Into the youth's eyes there came a look that one can see in the orbs of a jaded horse. (53) A long aside in "The Open Boat" (84-85) merges the narrator's perspec tive with the correspondent's (and, indeed, the probable perspectives of all the men in the dinghy). Expressing a major thematic line of the story, it reveals the correspondent's outrage over mistreatment at the hands of an indifferent universe. Longing for bricks to throw at temples, he rues the fact that there are no bricks and no temples and that supplicating pleas addressed to "a personification" elicit from nature only "a high cold star on a winter's night" in response. Be cause this message occurs in the aside form, readers are led to extend the notions expressed from the correspondent's perspective of his 173 experience to life in general outside the immediate fictional context. Therefore, each reader too is drawn into "thereafter" knowing "the pathos of his situation." 26 Asides in The O'Ruddy are the most closely merged with character. In fact, since point of view is first person, they reveal character, always O'Ruddy's,but sometimes they reflect Crane's opinions as well, for example in the long aside mixed with narrative in Chapter XX (134- 135) describing people's motives behind their fashionable parading in Kensington Park. O'Ruddy asserts that the women come to show off their frocks and see others' frocks and "never have a really good time but of this fact they are not aware since women are so constituted that they are able to misinterpret almost every one of their emotions." The men, of course, avoid such social events unless there are special rea sons, all presumably stemming from the one mentioned, "display of fem inine beauty." O'Ruddy reveals his sensuality and stereotypical male view of women in general as empty-headed sexual objects, Lady Mary, his particular object of adoration, being only partially exempt from this ' view; that is, she is a sexual object but not an empty-headed one. Only his arch tone and adherence to conventional mores of the eigh teenth and nineteenth centuries save O'Ruddy (and Crane) from readers', certainly female readers', disapprobation. 27 Crane's phase two fiction reveals a finer mastery of syntactic manipulation for particular effects in addition to the changes in his style that have been noted. To illustrate, let us look at a paragraph from "The Open Boat": It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow, spoke always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command a more ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dinghy. It was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the common safety. There was surely in it a quality that was personal and heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to be synical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. (73) 174 As in the paragraph from "The Clan of No-Name" (131) quoted earlier, a key word is repeated and expanded in appositive free modifiers, each narrowing to a more specific level of description ["sad, sad with a se rene dignity (AC), with the countenance of a mournful young prince" (PP); "friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common" (NC}] setting the tone of one paragraph, the theme of the other. 28 Crane exerts control over syntax in other ways 1n the paragraph. For example, initial coordinator "but" in each instance functions not only to introduce an opposition and qualify what precedes but to em phasize, as does repetition and parallel wording, ideas of key thematic significance: the notion of brotherhood and the superlative quality of experience that promotes fraternal spirit. Sentence initial "and," syntactically unnecessary but rhetorically advantageous, conveys a sense of carefully deliberated afterthought, underscored by the delib erated afterthought, underscored by the deliberately complex syntax 175 that holds off the sentence's key phrase until its very end. This too has the effect of focusing readers' attention on the theme of comrade ship. Crane is not simply adding coordinators at juncture points for the sake of coherence. He is creating junctures and using coordina tors to highlight what precedes and follows. Crane also controls syntax to expand descriptions of situations and people. We have seen an example of this increased ability to elab orate description and make it more accessible to readers in the over view of a passage from "The Price of the Harness" in Chapter III. Nu merous other instances occur, two of which are concentrated descrip tions of particular people important to Crane's satirization of small town provincialism and hypocrisy. One of these is the lengthy descrip tion of the gambler in "The Blue Hotel" (166-167),his position in Fort Romper and his relationship to the townsfolk, which creates a complex web of sympathy overladen with criticism for the gambler, townsfolk, and farmers alike. The gambler 1s "a man so delicate in manner, when among people of fair class, and so judicious in his choice of victims, that in the strictly masculine part of the town's life he had come to be explicitly trusted and admired." He is partly to be admired since in matters outside gambling his morality outshines the townfolks', but he is chiefly to be condemned because of the victims he chooses, unwary travelers and farmers, as are the townsfolk for condoning the gambler's choice of victims and defending him, as long as he knows his place. Similarly, Martha Goodwin comes under extensive scrutiny in "The Monster" (49-51, 59-61). She is partially an object of sympathy for 176 two reasons. One is her undeserved penance imposed by her sister and townsfolk. In her sister's household "she performed nearly all the house-work in exchange for the privilege of existence," and "every one tacitly recognized her labor as a form of penance for the early end of her betrothed, who had died of small-pox, which he had not caught from her." The other is her siding with Dr. Trescott when Jake Winter re fuses to allow the doctor to treat his daughter. But for several rea sons she is mostly an object of scorn. She defends Dr. Trescott and defies the townsfolk out of sheer obstinacy rather than moral courage; she harbors opinions on matters entirely out of her control ranging from one extreme, the exotic ("the condition of women in China"), to another extreme, the mundane ("the flirtation between Mrs. Minster of Niagara Avenue and young Griscom"); and she argues for a creed of "illimitable ferocity." The voice in both descriptions 1s authoritatively reportorial through logical development (a marshalling of examples, cause and ef fect relationships, comparisons, and so forth), unity (a sustained and coherent focus), and emphasis, all couched 1n a syntax more complex than simple but characterized by a variety of sentence patterns, lengths, and embeddings. Each description builds to a final climatic statement. That from "The Blue Hotel" coils into one complex sentence: It is irrefutable that in all affairs outside of his business, in all matters that occur eternally and commonly between man and man, this thieving card player was so generous, so just, so moral, that, in a contest, he could have put to flight the consciences of nine-tenths of the citizens of Fort Romper. (167) That from "The Monster" depends upon antithetical balance and repeti- tion plus a less complex final sentence: She was an engine, and the fact that she did not know that she was an engine contributed largely to the effect. One reason that she was formidable was that she did not even imagine that she was formidable. She remained a weak, innocent, and pig-headed creature, who alone would defy the universe if she thought the universe merited this proceeding. (51) 177 At the end of each description cumulative emotional force is quickly and effectively dissipated by a flat, simple sentence returning readers to the story's narrative line, in "The Blue Hotel": "And so it happened that he was seated in this saloon with the two prominent local merchants and the district-attorney" and in "The Monster": One day Carrie Dungen came across from her kitchen with speed." Crane colors his later work more selectively as his purpose changes. In contrast to the earlier work into which he frequently splashes color to evoke the psychological states of his characters and intensify his style, 29 in the later work his aim is to amplify objec tive description. Hence, lavish as the color extravaganza in "The Monster" (24) is, the riot of color approximates a chemical fire even though its being "like a garden in the region where might be burning flowers," fairy ladies, and writhing snakes--a satanic garden compared to the Edenic one at the story's outset--is fancy. Not depending pri marily upon a high color palette for effect, Crane's description is chronologically, spatially, and climactically arranged, paradoxically through its tight control evoking the wildness of the fire. Crane immediately initiates an emotional charge through cataloging of colors, then zeroes in on specific areas of the room ("one blaze . . . a delicate coral," "in another place . . . pile of emeralds"), 178 building intensity with climactic pattern asyndeton ("But all these marvels were to be seen dimly through clouds of heaving, turning> deadly smoke") as John reaches the threshold of the laboratory. John son's dash through the blaze is chronicled in sentences that are fairly short and direct, yet varied in length and pattern to simulate his fast but tortuous passage: "Then he rushed across the room. An orange-colored flame leaped like a panther at the lavender trousers. This animal bit deeply into Johnson. There was an explosion at one side, and suddenly before him there reared a delicate, trembling sap phire shape like a fairy lady." The pace quickens through added verb clusters framing the main clause and compressing Johnson's frantic movements ("Bowing his head as if his neck had been struck, Johnson lurched forward, twisting this way and that way"), then halts abrupt ly: "He fell on his back." After the pause Crane generates suspense through needless redundancy ("Johnson had fallen with his head at the base of an old-fashioned desk. There was a row of jars upon the top of this desk"), lengthened clauses, various modificational structures, and retarding punctuation that withhold the outcome of Johnson's heroic act: "At the angle it waved its sizzling molten head to and fro over the closed eyes of the man beneath it. Then, in a moment, with mystic impulse, it moved again, and the red snake flowed directly down into Johnson's upturned face." Masterly syntactic modulation and contrast, not syntactic or semantic eccentricity, emphasizes the disastrous out come. Crane still embellishes his prose with formal and melodramatic diction, especially eccentric verbs and adverbs ("the crowd immediately 179 vociferated descriptions," "implacably mysterious forests and hills," "Nolan interpolated a drink of water," "commercially excited," "fizzed like a fire-wheel"). He continues to rely on sound as a means of cre ating atmosphere, sometimes with affective superfluity, particularly in the war tales ("the snarling of crests," "wailing flake:;," "a great grand s.teel loom, clinking, clanking, plunking," "the poppety-pop of a small volley," shrapnel ... swirling and swishing in supernatural velocity"). But, overall, semantic dissonance lessens. Verbal inten sity wanes as Crane's style becomes syntactically more densely tex tured. Although inversion 1s no longer his chief means of varying his syntax, Crane continues to exploit this device for emphasis, of, for instance, a dreaded predator: Ahead or astern, on one side or the other, at intervals long or short, fled the long sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whiroo of the dark fin. ("The Open Boat," 84) a crucial event: He seemed very happy; he laughed at all their jests although his eye roved continually over the sunny grass-lands where was going to happen his first fight. ("The Clan of No-Name," 123) a foreboding cessation of sound: The bugles had in the west ceased, and that was more ominous than bugling. ("The Clan of No-Name," 126) the violent action of a fight: For a time the encounter in the darkness was such a perplexity of flying arms that it presented no more detail than would a swiftly revolving wheel. ("The Blue Hotel," 160) But he frequently and effectively capitalizes on other emphatic de- 180 vices, a number mentioned previously in our discussion of these late works: appositional repetition of key words, judicious use of sen tence initial coordinators, asides, kernel sentences in the context of longer ones. Crane also much more frequently parenthesizes words, phrases, and clauses, impelled not only by the desire to stress some particular item but to circumvent the linearity, the sequential nature of sentences. All parenthetical elements are syntactically divorced from the rest of the sentence; they are appositional structures which for the most part could be simply set off with commas but which Crane chooses to additionally stress by dashes. Crane parenthesizes a vari ety of free modifiers, all of whose content would suffer diminished emotional charge if structured any other way, as indicated in this par enthetical relative clause: The covered land was blue with the sheen of an unearthly satin, and there was no other hue save where at the low black railway station--which seemed incredibly distant (RC)--one light gleamed like a tiny jewel. ("The Blue Hotel," 159)30 "The Clan of No-Name," Crane's last work of those considered in this chapter reveals the most extensive use of this device, often placed mid-sentence, which, as explained earlier, creates anticipation, a for ward thrust toward the sentence's grammatical conclusion, and a partic ular kind of density. In other ways too these last works reveal Crane's greater boldness in packing his sentences with a variety of free modifiers, often lib erally expanded, documenting Berryman's subjective judgment about the growing syntactic complexity of one of the late works, "The Clan of No-Name." In every free modifier category counted, Crane's use in- 181 creases in Group seven over that of Group six, although sentence and T-unit length remain virtually identical, except for relative clauses, and this lessening is balanced by a greater number of subordinate clauses. In only one category, absolutes, does Crane use less free modifiers than Group five, and this figure is largely explained by ab solutes, often clustering not only in a section of a story but in a paragraph or sentence. Although the works were not scrutinized micro scopically for "missed" absolutes--or verb clusters, which also tend to flock--a quick perusal revealed six "missed" absolutes on one page of "The Price of a Harness," three in one sentence alone: "These marksman had been lying for nearly an hour in stony silence, their sights ad justed, their fingers fondling their rifles, their eyes staring at the intrenchments of the euemy" (109). According to Christensen's schema, free modifiers form structural layers, an increase of which increases density of prose style. Theo retically, there is no limit to the number of structural layers that an author can fonn although Christensen shows no sentences having more than seven levels. Crane favors one or two-level sentences throughout his prose fiction. However, he is more likely in the work following The Red Badge to increase the number of second level additions per sen tence. Moreover, as a definite sign of the increasing syntactic den sity of his style, during phase two he adds more structures at the third level of specification, more at the fourth level, and occasion ally enriches his sentences with five and six structural layers through free modifier additions. Only three times in phase one does Crane fonn four-level sentences, once in "Killing His Bear," twice in 182 Maggie. Looking ahead to The O'Ruddy, we can point out that as with other structures studied, The O'Ruddy reverts toward Crane's early practice 1n tenns of free modificational depth, but does not repeat it. Although no five- or six-level sentences appear and only two four- level three-level sentences occur frequently. (See Appendix E.) Free modifiers, those reduced structures that paradoxically expand and enrich sentences, are not the only structures that contribute to Crane's lengthening sentences and T-units, although these are the com menting types that add structural density to his prose through increased levels of specificity. Bound subordinate clauses increase in these phase two stories, and Crane continues to compound and add in cidental details to his sentences with bound prepositional phrases and other modifiers. We can see these processes at work in the selections previously quoted in this chapter. The final sentence in the description of the gambler can provide one illustration. Upon the grammatically simple core, the subject-postponed expletive-it base, are superimposed multi ple bound subordinate that-clauses (some with that deleted), preposi tional phrases, and predicate adjectives. Subordinate bound that clauses also expand the first sentence of the long aside quoted from "The Open Boat" mentioned earlier. 31 Multiple prepositional phrases, although in this instance free ones, compounded intra-phrase as well as inter-phrase, spark the long paragraph from "The Clan of No-Name." Here also is another sentence that depends upon bound and compounded prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses, for its development and, particularly, final compounded adverbs, polysyndeton stressing 183 the effect of inevitability: "The mind of the master of a vessel 1.s rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he command for a day or a decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of a scene 1.n the grays of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump of a top mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the waves, went low and lower, and down" (68-69). Sentences and T-units not only lengthen generally but are more variable in length, allowing Crane to create particular effects (for example irony and emphasis) with exceptionally short, simple sentences and also to achieve a more varied and fluid prose style. Fragmented sentences limited in structural variety and at times sequentially re dundant disappear for the most part except when used selectively to portray a numbed, confused mental state. Such is the case with Crane's imitation of Martin's bewilderment in "The Price of the Harness" dis cussed earlier and also of the correspondent's in "The Open Boat" dur ing his endless stints at the oars: "The brown mats of sea-weed that appeared from time to time were like islands, bits of earth. They were travelling, apparently, neither one way nor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary. They informed the men 1.n the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land" (72). (But we still read awkward, choppy sequences that could clearly benefit from some sentence combining such as these from "The Blue Hotel": "The Swede said noth ing. He seemed to be making furtive estimates of each man in the room. One might have thought that he had the sense of silly suspicion which comes to guilt. He resembled a badly frightened man" (144). As in the early work, the narrator stands too close to a character.) 184 Paragraphs lengthen consonant with sentences and T-units length ening, and they too become more variabl~, short ones generally coin ciding with increased activity, longer ones with narrative descriptions of ideas or objects. Focus is more sustained, and when it swiftly turns from one point to another, framing pictures instead of splicing them together, it creates effects peculiar and suitable to a particular situation as we have seen in the description of the crowd awaiting the great race in "The Wise Men." Cohesion grows noticeably stronger. Equivalence chains, including pronoun reference, become the major means to bind sentences together rather than the more tenuous connectors, association and mood. A strong indication of Crane's desire to make his prose more coherent is his increasing use of conjunctive adverbs throughout his career, those connectors whose primary function is to establish coherency, relating in various ways propositions to other propositions. His increased use of subordinate clauses and front-shifted verb clusters also contributes to inter-sentence and inter-paragraph coherency. He is more conscious of intra-sentence coherency too, as evidenced in repetitive and expan sive appositional structures. Noun and adjective clusters were illus trated earlier; Crane also repeats verbs to hold together longer, more complex sentences: But despite the fact that there was always in the way of this crowd a wistful melancholy, one must know that there were plenty of men who laughed, laughed at their wounds whimsically, quaintly inventing odd humors con cerning bicycles and cabs, extracting from this shedding of their blood a wonderful amount of material for cheer ful badinage, and with their faces twisted from pain as they stepped, they often joked like music-hall stars. ("The Price of the Harness," 107) 185 Parallel structure also aids cohesion in this sentence, and elsewhere, of complementary ideas, and also contrasting ideas: "The horizon nar rowed and widened, and dipped and rose, ... " ("The Open Boat," 68). And Crane often uses parallel structure to unite various aspects of a scene: "The sunshine sprinkled through the lilac-bushes and poured great coins on the boards. The sparrows disputed in the trees that lined the pavements. The judge mused deeply, while his hands gently caressed the ivory head of his cane" ("The Monster," 31). This is not to say that Crane does not at times still place the burden of formulating transitions, making connections, and filling in the details upon the reader. Note, for example, the first few sen tences of paragraph one and the first few independent clauses of par agraph two from the scene setting initial paragraphs of "A Man and Some Others" (53) mentioned above, 32 or the sequence of sentences de scribing the Swede's alienation from the rest of the men awaiting thei noon meal at the Blue Hotel (144) quoted above. But, by and large, we witness in these stories a dynamic activation of complex thought, en riched description, and a multiplicity of voices through Crane's wider and more judicious choice of the syntactic options of English than is present in the earlier work. Summary The adventure stories forming a transition between Crane's early and late work display a youthful lightness not characteristic of the stories of his full maturity. Yet, at the same time, they incorporate an underlying seriousness that heralds the seriousness permeating the 186 later stories, and also reveal budding mastery of syntactic options that blossom in the stories produced by Crane at the height of his career. It is increased use of these syntactic options that allows us to label Crane's phase two style as expansive in contrast to the abruptness of phase one; the later style gains hypotactic qualities at the expense of paratactic ones, even though elements of Crane's early style continue throughout his work. Crane's sentences and T-units generally lengthen because of in creased use of free modifiers and more sophisticated embeddings. Sen tences and T-units also vary more in length and patterning, greatly re ducing the often monotonously repetitive structures of the early work. Cohesion and coherence increase with Crane's consciously adopting syn tactic devices such as conjunctive adverbs and organically motivated parallel structure to integrate sentences and clauses one with another. Syntactic structures that Crane uses earlier, such as free modifiers and, much more rarely, parenthetical insertions, are used in the late stories more often and more skillfully to enliven and expand his nar rative description. Other structures added to his repertoire, such as the extended series, balanced antithesis, and apostrophe, show Crane to be striving not only for variety but for a subtler, more elegantly expressive instrument for his ideas. He marshals syntax so as to elaborate his thought with more com plexity, hence is able to project not only the naive, untutored voice of the early work but other voices as well, including that of a ma ture, detached perspective expressing firmly held moral values, and move from one to another voice more subtly. Crane learns how to main- 187 tain his narrators' distance from the protagonists unless merger is appropriate, thereby enchancing the narrators' ability to guide author itatively readers' responses. Adoption of a wider variety of syntactic options also enables Crane to sustain focus on ideas, people, scenes, and events, and enliven and clarify his description of them. While nothing absolutely good inheres in use of any particular syntactic structure (since structures must always be appropriate and effective in given situations), effectiveness does inhere in a writ er's ability to use a variety of structures. For Crane this ability means the opportunity to accompany exploration of the relationships between man's inner and outer worlds with what is missing in the early work, resolution and illumination. The protagonists of his late sto ries either achieve a reconstructed image of the world (for example, the New York Kid, the correspondent, and the Easterner) or are already men whose experience reaffirms their values (for example, Trescott, Nolan, and Manolo). They and the themes they embody are made possible as Crane's syntactic skill expands, for exploration and illumination of mature ideas and their consequences demands an equally mature syntax. 188 Notes 1 Stallman, A Biography, p. 84. 2 See, for example, reprints of early reviews in Weatherford: H. G. Wells from the Saturday Review, pp. 54-55; Harry Thurston Peck from Bookman, pp. 63-65; J. L. Onderdonk from Dial, pp. 142-143; C. D. Warner from Harper's Magazine, pp. 148-150; Rupert Hughes from Godey's Maga zine, pp. 158-164. 3 His correspondence reveals all these facets. See in Letters, for instance, those concerning editing, indeed bowdlerizing, the 1896 Maggie for the genteel reading public: to Ripley Hitchcock [February 4- 6? 1896] and [February 10, 1896], pp. 112-114; the statement of his literary creed: to Lily Brandon Munroe [March, 1894?], pp. 31-33; his desire for success: to an Editor of Leslie's Weekly [About November, 1895], pp. 78-79; his financial plight, a problem spanning his career: to Acton Davies [May 26, 1892] and to James B. Pinker [March 31, 1900], pp. 11 and 266-267. 4 The literature on this subject is vast. Noam Chomsky's work is basic; his Syntactic Structures and Aspects have been catalysts for extensive research, both in support of and in opposition to his theorie~ See also Frank Smith and George A. Miller, eds. The Genesis of Language (Cambridge, Mass.: The M. I. T. Press, 1966); Lois Bloom, Language Development: Fonn and Function in Emerging Grammars (Cambridge, Mass.: The M. I. T. Press, 1970); John R. Hayes, ed., Cognition and The Devel opment of Language (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1970);Carol Chomsky, The Acquisition of Syntax in Children from~ to 10 (Cambridge, Mass.: The M. I. T. Press, 1969); Courtney B. Cazden, Child Language and Education (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1972); Roger --- Brown, A First Language: The Early Stages (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Un~yersity Press, 1973); Timothy E. Moore, ed., Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language (New York: Academic Press, 1973). For studies with a more pedagogical approach, see a number of NCTE publica tions: Donald R. Bateman and Frank J. Zidonis, The Effect of a Study of Transfonnational Grammar on the Writing of Ninth and TenthGraders - (1966); John C. Mellon, TransforrnationalSentence-=-Eombining: A Method for Enhancing the Development of Syntactic Fluency in English-Composi tion (1969); Frank O'Hare, Sentence Combining: Improving Student Writing without Formal Grammar Instruction (1973); Walter Loban, Language Development: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve (1976). The structura lists too had some words on the subject: Charles Carpenter rries, The Structure of English (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, ·Inc., 1952), pp. 288-293; Carl A. Lefevre, "A Concise Structural Grammar," Linguis tics for Teachers, ed. John F. Savage (Chicago: Science Research Associates, Inc. 1973), pp. 152-159. 5 "The cold passed reluctantly from the earth and the retiring fogs revealed an anny stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green the anny awakened and began to tremble with ...___ 189 eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads which were growing from long troughs of liquid mu<l to proper thorough fares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadows of its banks, purled at the anny's feet and at night when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness one could see, across, the red eye-like gleam of hostile camp fires set in the low brows of distant hills" (3). 6 "The Open Boat," "The Monster," and "The Blue Hotel" comprise Group six; "The Price of the Harness" and "The Clan of No-Name," Group seven. 7 J.C. Levenson, Introd., Tales of Adventure, Vol. V of The Works, p. xlii. 8 Crane's tendency to repeat himself and cluster elements both are indicated in these samples. Echoing the start of Chapter XVII of Maggie are the sentences surrounding the first quotation: "An electric light sputtered and fumed over the throng. The afternoon shower had left the pave wet and glittering. The air was still laden with the odor of rain on flowers, grass, leaves." "Gesticulating" occurs only twice in all the data, both times in "The Wise Menn and within three pages. 9 Faulty subject-verb agreement and no referent for "it." 10 One would expect "and" not "but." 11 "To a cactus bush," considering Crane's typical search for pre cise prepositions, seems not only consciously but advantageously moti vated. That is, whereas "toward," the expected preposition, entails only direction, "to" connotes a gesture of friendliness and, approppri ately, the dead man merging back into nature. 12 A transitive verb, "jostled" requires an object. One would expect "jostied each other," not simply "jostled." 13 All dialogue except that demanded for sense is omitted. 14 Crane uses the syntactic device of parenthesis as effectively and even more frequently in his later work. 15 "There was no sound nor light in the world. The wall at the left happened to be of the common prison-like construction--no door, no window, no opening at all (NC in climactic asyndeton pattern). Humanity was enclosed (past participle) and asleep. Into the mouth of the sober Kid came a wretched bitter taste as if it had filled with blood. He was transfixed (past participle) as if he was already seeing the lighning ripples on the knife-blade. "But the Mexican's hand did not move at that time. His face went still further forward and he whispered: "So?" The sober Kid saw this face as if he and it were alone in space--a yellow mask (NC) smiling 1n ___J 19ol eager cruelty (VC), in satisfaction (PP), and above all (PP) it was lit I (past participle) with sinister decision. As for the features they wer~ reminiscent of an unplaced, a forgotten (past participle) type (NC) which really resembled with precision those of a man who had shaved him , three times in Boston in 1888. But the expression burned his mind as 1 sealing-wax burns the palm and fascinated (past participle VC), stupe- 1 1 fied (past participle VC), he actually watched the progress of the man's! thought toward the point where a knife would be wrenched from its sheath. The emotion, a sort of mechanical fury (NC), a breeze made by electric fans (NC), a rage made by vanity (NC), smote the dark counte nance 1n wave after wave. "Then the New York Kid took a sudden step forward. His hand was: also at his hip. He was gripping there a revolver of robust size ... " ( 4 7) • 16 "The lightning action of the next few moments was of the fabric of dreams to the stranger. The muscular struggle may not be real to the drowning man. His mind may be fixed on the far, straight shadows back of the stars, and the terror of them. And so the fight, and his part in 'it, had to the stranger only the quality of a picture half drawn. The rush of feet, the spatter of shots, the cries, the swollen faces seen like masks on the smoke, resembled a happening of the night" (66). 17 "And yet afterward certain lines, forms, lived out so strongly from the incoherence that they were always in his memory. " He killed a man, and the thought went swiftly by him, like the 1 feather on the gale, that it was easy to kill a man. "Moreover, he suddenly felt for Bill, this grimy sheep-herder, some deep form of idolatry. Bill was dying, and the dignity of last defeat, the superiority of him who stands in his grave, was in the pose of the lost sheep-herder" (66-67). 18 See Appendix E. In terms of levels, it makes no difference whether we talk about T-units or sentences since by designating coor dinate base units each as level one, Christensen's system in effect recognizes T-units. This sentence from "The Monster," a two-level sentence with two, two-level T-units, illustrates: 2 After a moment (PP) 1 the window brightened 2 as if the four panes of it had been stained with blood, (SC) 1 and a quick ear might have been led to imagine the fire-imps 2 calling and calling, (VC) 2 clan joining clan, (Abs) 2 gathering to the colors. (VC) (20) 19 Use of the apostrophe is new for Crane. 191 2 0 Foreshadowing fictional statement of his ideal are Crane's 1 newspaper dispatches reporting the nightmare abandonment of the Commo dore, during which what impressed Crane the most was the silent forti- ltude of the men on the ship and rafts: "And all this time, mind you, there were no shrieks, no groans, but silence, silence and silence." From "Stephen Crane's Own Story," in The Portable Stephen Crane, ed. Joseph Katz (New York: The Viking Press, 1969), p. 341. 21 0 .. 1· d ne is inc 1ne to difficulties, but, on the on his deathbed. attribute this to Crane's financial and healtH other hand, he wrote the rollicking O'Ruddy 22 Stephen Crane, p. 284. 23 Narrator and protagonist are closer in "The Open Boat" than else- where except The Red Badge and The O'Ruddy. j 24 However, that Crane was drawn to comment whether he approved of 1 the practice in fiction or not is also borne out by his frequent compar isons, especially as/as if types, that connnent as well as describe, although less obtrusivelythan asides. 25 Some other asides: "It is not well to quarrel upon a slippery incline, when the unknown is below" ("Four Men in a Cave," 227); "One was from San Francisco and one was from New York but they resembled each other in appearance. This is an idiosyncrasy of geography" ("The Wise Men," 26); "Reifsnyder was very garrulous--a fact which made him rather remarkable among barbers, who, as a class, are austerely speech less, having been taught silence by the hammering reiteration of a tradition. It is the customers who talk in the ordinary event" ("The Monster," 39). Proportionately fewer asides occur in Maggie and "The Monster," undoubtedly influenced by their being social satire with comments integrated into the body of the stories themselves. 26 Although no accurate count was ma1e, it i~ apparent that Crane uses many more and longer asides in "The Open Boat" than 1n any other of his fictions. 27 That O'Ruddy's opinion on women generally matches Crane's is evident in Crane's correspondence. Speaking of his overriding aim in composition, he says, "And my chiefest desire was to write plainly and unmistakably, so that all men (and some women) might rE:ad and under stand." In a letter to John Northern Hilliard [January, 1896?], Letters, p. 109. 28 Also, as in the paragraph from "The Clan of No-Name," we have in this paragraph from "The Open Boat," though less lyrical, an example of Crane's use of complex syntactic structures to establish a serious, authoritative narrative voice to express a significant message. 192 29 For example, the emotionally suggestive "At last, however, he had made firm rebellion against this yellow light thrown upon the color of his ambitions" from The Red Badge (8). Crane's color imagery was not a point of this study, but the data reveal progressively less color images in successive works, although red is scattered through all the prose fiction, and certain colors appear more frequently in particular works: yellow 1n Maggie and brown in "The Clan of No-Name," for in stance. 3 0 Some other examples of parenthetical structures are: "It was no longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet, mean while drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was an actual ity--stern, ~ uournful, and fine (A+A)" ("The Open Boat," 85); "Ultimately he appeared with a companion--a man who walked slowly and carefully (NC), as if he were learning" ("The Monster," 33); and from "The Clan o No-Name": "Their linen clothing was notable from being distinctly whiter than those of the men who, one hundred and fifty in number, lay on the ground in a long brown fringe, ragged--indeed, bare in many places (AC) --but singularly reposeful, unworried, veteran-like" (122); "It was not an easy task, but it was a familiar task--checking the advance of a greatly superior force by a very hard fire from concealment (VC)" (123); "A hundred men carrying precious burdens--besides their own equipment (PP)--were t0 pass in as much of a rush as possible between these two wings, cross the road and skip for the hills, their retreat being covered by a combination of the two firing parties" (123). Occasionally Crane interpolates a clause: "He was of a kind--that seemed to be it- and the men of his kind ... " (The Clan of No-Name," 131). 31 "When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard hiM :lS important, and that she feels she would not main the universe by dis posing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples" (84-85). 32 "Dark mesquit spread from horizon to horizon. There was no house or horseman from which a mind could evolve a city or a crowd. The world as declared to be a desert and unpeopled .... In the silence of these lains the sudden and childish banging of a tin pan could have made an ·ron-nerved man leap into the air. The sky was ever flawless; the anoeuvering of clouds was an unknown pageant." 193 CHAPTER VI STAGE THREE: NEW HORIZONS The O'Ruddy A. J. Liebling said of Crane that, had he lived, he might have written long novels of an originality as hard to imagine, in retrospec½ As Maggie and The Red Badge would have been to anticipate." 1 Crane's The O'Ruddy attests to this prediction. Begun when he was ill and continued even on his deathbead, the twenty-five chapters of The O'Ruddy that Crane managed to complete reveal no slackening of imagi native powers nor lack of readiness to strike in new directions. The novel is not his best work, but had Crane been given life and time to finish, revise, and rework, The O'Ruddy could perhaps have become a major work. If not, it could well have laid the foundation for other artistic successes, just as has early attempts in the realistic mode did for the stories produced at the height of his career. Yet even though the novel is not his best work, it nonetheless can only amaze us with its craft, energy, and exuberance, emerging as it did from the most desperate of conditions: lack of money, lack of health, and lack of time. None of the early work prepares us for Crane's turning his crea tive talents from high seriousness to comedy, from realistic novels and stories to romance, a g~nre that in his hands dissolves into the picaresque, revealing his lifetime affinity for episodic rather than 2 carefully plotted structure. That he shifted from the realistic mode 194 stems from at least three reasons. The first, the crass one, is that he did so for money. Crane labored under the constant hope and despair of ever freeing himself from debt and knew that novels, long novels, commanded more money than short stories, and that a historical romance with possibilities for later dramatization would, of course, have 3 promised even greater financial return eventually. The second is that although his early work was realistic and he pledged allegiance to that creed, he had no strong theoretical com mitment to any particular form, only an ironclad commitment to telling the truth as he saw it; 4 therefore, a historical romance presented no ideological obstacles for him to overcome. It did, however, present practical obstacles. Crane's forte was not plot and character shaping, nor had he the inclination and time for the research demanded by a his torical romance. These factors undoubtedly led Crane to shift The O'Ruddy's form from romance to picaresque, although its episodic nature was planned not accidental, and to incorporate in its atmosphere no definitive historical perspective and setting. Readers know the novel takes place in England in the early Georgian period, but the knowledge 1s certainly not overriding, only barely conscious. What is overriding 1s the presence of O'Ruddy, Crane's adventuring Irish hero. A third reason originates in Crane's growing fictional capabili ties, not the least of which concerns his ability to manipulate lan guage for wider purposes. Having stretched his command of syntactic options so as to more fully elaborate description and project a variety of voices, Crane, we can legitimately conjecture, felt ready to move on to new horizons, whether his assurance was conscious or unconscious. 195 Such assurance undoubtedly underlay his attempting for the first time a first person narrative. His task was no easy one. Although Crane pro jects a variety of voices in his late stories, each voice conceivably reflects an essential aspect of Crane himself. Presumably he could have developed his craft further in this direction, but, having fairly well mastered a complex syntax adequate to express his mature ideas (and, one might conjecture, under the pressure of time running out for him), 5 he was to build on that assurance and attempt a portrayal of a hero-narrator who would be divorced from him in time, place, and cir cumstance. This chapter will explore the ways in which Crane newly exploits his syntactic options to create such a hero-narrator of for Crane, a new genre, the picaresque romance. A maJor difficulty for Crane lay in rendering the O'Ruddy's voice in a convincing manner. In Maggie Crane's depiction of Irish dialect borders on the parodic, as we can see in Mary Johnson's diatribe against Maggie, which in part reads: "An' den when dat Sadie MacMal lister next door to us was sent teh deh devil by dat feller what worked in deh soap-factory, didn't I tell our Mag dat if she--" (87). Crane's trying to authentically reproduce natural speech patterns 6 ironically results in caricatured, stereotyped speech. By the time he wrote The O'Ruddy Crane no longer felt compelled to absolute realism in rendering dialect; rather he felt free to capture more simply and nat urally the essence of the Irish cadence and idiom not only in narra- 7 tive description, which is our prime concern, but in dialogue also. This decision to suggest rather than duplicate is important because it allows Crane to tell his story in first person which, had he insisted 196 upon transliterated dialect would have been unreadable. Even with sug- gestion rather than exact renderi~g his intent, the chall~nge to Crane's syntactic manipulative skills was formidable . He had, indeed, to pro ject virtually a new voice to characterize O'Ruddy thr~ugh suitable syn tax and tone, not for a paragraph or two but with sustained consistency throughout an entire novel . 8 Any identification Crane made with his narrator had to be imaginative, and he arose to the challenge with verv and dash . It is the way the story is told its volubility and exuberance, that chiefly makes the story and O'Ruddy captivating. Texture rather than story line invests the novel with meaning. Crane immediately establishes the basis of the tale at its start. The senior O'Ruddy's deathbed bequest to his son of "only enough money to last a gentleman two years , " two swords, and some mysterious papers (mysterious because neither father nor son have time for reading) to be delivered to their owner, the Earl of Westport, is an inheritance that leads to O'Ruddy's quest for fortune and marriage to a beautiful woman. Once this basic line is set in motion, Crane promptly and freely ricochets his hero from adventure to adventure: the recruitment of a fellow Irishman, the flaming haired Paddy, and a highwayman Jem Bottles as his Sancho Panzas (except that they, unlike their forebearer, do not steal the novel from O'Ruddy); duels, one with the nefarious Forrister, O'Ruddy's rival for Lady Mary's hand; lost, stolen, and regained papers; and so forth, all leading up to the central dramatic scene, the fight at Brede. Crane, however, only aimed at this dramatic moment . That task fell to Robert Barr, who picked up the story's thread at Chapter XXVI and unwound it, not with Crane's masterly touch but in workmanlike fashion. 197 The mosaic of episodes has one common base. Each reveals the chief obstacle to O'Ruddy's succeeding in his quest: his need to pene trate the various masks that people assume, for example, the in-name only nobility of the Earl and Countess of Westport, the deceptive friendship of Dr. Chord, the false bravado of Jem Bottles, the basic good sense and magnanimity of Colonel Royale and Lord Strepp despite their being of the duelling gentry. The episodes also provide O'Ruddy opportunities for criticizi11g society, puncturing absurd romantic con ventions, and commenting on his own behavior, the latter two generally comic and/or self-deprecating, the former generally serious under cam ouflaging comedy. His well-honed barbs provide important guidance for readers' responses not only to O'Ruddy but to his "message," a message that has to do with the foibles of mankind, both within and beyond the boundaries of tne novel. Although told from first person point of view, The O'Ruddy avoids the claustrophobic vision of Henry Fleming. O'Ruddy ranges outside of himself, and as he does so style and tone shift, rounding out O'Ruddy's character. Always he is honest and candid, but he can in turn also be bold, brash, or blundering, antagonistic or sympathetic, obtuse or perceptive, proud or humble. Hence, the voice created for O'Ruddy has to be and is capable of subtle variation. In Chapter XX, after briefly establishing his place in the Sunday promenade at Kensington Gardens> O'Ruddy shifts into his serious, straightforward voice to detail the scene . Myriad colors dazzle his eyes, but whereas earlier Crane's color sensitivity would have called forth his high palette, in The O'Ruddy his social sensitivity comes to 198 the fore. In his objective observer role O'Ruddy guides readers' re actions as he describes the rigorous social pecking order in which the "altogether too well-bred" snub in turn those lower on the scale. Icy stares are all one particular pair, a mother and her beautiful, reluc tant daughter, receive as they approach one social lion after another in Kensington Gardens. 1. But as they were leaving the Gardens they received attention from members of the very best society. One lordling nudged another lordling and they stared into the face of the girl as if she had been a creature of the street. Then they leisurely looked her up and down from head to toe. No tailor could have taken her measurements so completely. Afterward they grinned at each other and one spoke behind his hand, his insolent speculative eyes fixed on the retiring form of the girl. This was the social reward of the ambitious mother. (134} Neither snubbers nor snubbed nor the notion of the fashion parade it self emerge unscathed. Women, however, bear the brunt of O'Ruddy's criticism. It is the empty-headed women who come to see and be seen, unaware that they are having no fun, whereas the men, quite sensibly, come to see the women in their low cut dresses and clinging skirts, obviously knowing exactly what fun is. Crane finds frequent opportunities for poking fun at romantic chiches, somewhat extensively in Chapter VIII when O'Ruddy, apprehen sive about his upcoming duel with the renowned swordsman Forrister, wan ders into the garden of the inn at which he and the Earl of Westport and family are staying. O'Ruddy settles himself in a summer-house, a secluded vantage point from which to watch Lady Mary and her mother stroll, engaged in animated conversation, only to lament in serio- . . comic vein: 2. But did I over-hear anything? I over-heard nothing. From what I knew of the proper conduct of the really thrilling episodes of life, I judged that I should have been able to over-hear almost every word of this conversation. Instead, I could only see the Countess making irritated speech to Lady Mary. Moreover, it was legitimate that I should have been undetected in the summer-house. On the contrary, they were perfectly aware that there was somebody in the summer-house and so in their promenade they presented it with a distinguished isolation .... Almost every important conversation ever held had been over-heard from a position of this kind. It seemed unfair that I of all men in literature should be denied this casual and usual privilege. (59-60) 199 Having ridiculed the device of coincidentally overheard highly reveal ing conversations, O'Ruddy next mocks the behavior of courtly lovers. The Countess sweeps out of the garden, leaving only O'Ruddy and Lady Mary, and again nothing proceeds according to romantic conventions: 3. Now, I could see plainly that here fate had arranged for some kind of interview. The whole thing was set like a scene in the theatre. I was undoubtedly to emerge suddenly from the summer-house; the lovely maid would startle, blush, cast down her eyes, turn away. Then when it came my turn I would doff my hat to the earth and beg pardon for continuing a comparatively futile existence. Then she would shyly murmur a disclaimer of any ability to criticise my continuation of a comparatively futile existence, adding that she was but an inexperienced girl. The ice thus being broken, we would travel by easy stages into more intimate talk. (61) The glow of the romance genre (and in the twentieth century a hundred celluloid dreams) fades in the glare of reality. Straightforward rather than shy, Lady Mary immediately announces, "'Tis the very gentleman I wished to see." It is O'Ruddy who becomes confused, Lady Mary who remains cool. Occasionally O'Ruddy's comments on his behavior are serious. See- 200 ing Forister stretched out on a pallet after the duel subdues O'Ruddy into a sharp realization of the evil effects of violence: 4. I turned away with a new impression of the pastime of duelling. Forister's pallor, the show of bloody cloth, his g~oan, the dark stares of the men made me see my victory in a different way and I even wondered if it had been absolutely necessary to work this mischief upon a fellow-being. (72) His grimly belated awareness stands in contrast to his earlier venge ance, thrown into sharp relief with short, terse sentences: 5. I decided upon one thing. I would kill Forister. (67) and his pride in his swordsmanship: 6. It is only necessary to remark that Forister dropped almost immediately to defensive tactics before an assault which was not only impetuous but exceedingly brilliant, if I may be allowed to say so. (67-68) Often, though, his remarks on his behavior are comic, as when he admits his confusion before Lady Mary's coolness, or ruefully describes his reaction to Lady Mary's "God spare you" before he duels with Forister: "And so I marched in a tumult of joy to a duel wherein I expected to be killed" (65). Relishing somewhat his new renown as a swordsman after he wins the duel, O'Ruddy nonetheless recognizes that if he lives up to the image he will be a "great blustering over-powering pre posterous ass" (69). (As this phrase reveals, Crane continues to rely upon alliteration to emphasize, but with far more selectivity than in the early work, here gaining exactly the right comic effect. The same can be said of his rare use of rhyme in The O 'Ruddy._ "To sit and gloom 1n my room ... " (59) is already foregrounded by its being an infini tive subject; its humor is additionally emphasized by the rhyme. Gloom 201 for O'Ruddy is nothing if not emphemeral.) In any case his bravery is not without its limits; he frankly admits to cowardice before the Countess of Westport's wrath. Inadvertently meeting her in the dining room of the inn and unable to appease her anger, O'Ruddy makes a timely escape from her attack when the old harridan pauses to abuse verbally the spectators. In a bit of self-directed irony, he re counts: "As her eye fixed upon them, The O'Ruddy, illustrious fighting man, saw his chance and bolted like a hare" (71). As is obvious from the selections quoted thus far, O'Ruddy's nar rative-descriptive voice distinguishes itself more by its light con versational quality, which, as we shall see, Crane strove to convey, than distinctively Irish idiom. Indeed, Crane reserves most Irish or simply anachronistic nuances for dialogue: the past subjunctive to state a wish extra politely ("'Tis only that I would be making a pre sent to the fair Lady Mary which I pray her to receive"), the pro gressive aspect substituted for terminate ("My father was knowing all about it . . . , " "I am seeing you are a true theologian"), and various other locutions ("She was after recognizing you then?" "I bethought me " "Look you '' ''Is he so?'' ''I never doubt me '' ''Paddy do , , . , , you take care of this poor horse" (command, not interrogative). "'Tis," "'Twas," '"Twould," "'Twill"), some restricted to O'Ruddy and Paddy, others used by the English characters also. 9 But some Irish idiom creeps into narrative description at times, enough to endow it with O'Ruddy's distinct voice. The following is illustrative (distinctive locutions are italicized): 7. I remember my father saying that the most aggravating creature in life was one who would be keeping back the best part of a story through mere reasons of trickery although I have seen himself dawdle over a tale until his friends wished to hurl the decanters at him. However there can be no doubting of the wisdom of my father's remark. Indeed there can be little doubting of the wisdom of anything that my father said in life for he was a very learned man. The fact that my father did not invariably defer to his opinions does not alter the truth of those opinions, in my judgment, since even the greatest of philosophers is more likely to be living a life based on the temper of his wife and the advice of his physician than on the rules laid down in his books .... And my father was going on with Mickey only that he looked about him at this time and discovered his guests all upon their feet, one with the tongs, one with the poker, others with decanters ready to throw .... By this time, they were so angry that Mickey, seeing how things were going, and I being a mere lad, took me from the room. (63-64) 202 Not evident in this passage is Crane's dropping of articles, an other subtle syntactic device to evoke O'Ruddy's distinctive voice: 8. Every man in the dining-room took oath he had never said a word and they all spoke truth. But the women clamoured on without pausing for wind and refusing to take word of the men-folk, who were gifted with the power of reason. (140) Although Crane deletes articles elsewhere, these three deletions fol- lowing in close succession illustrate Crane's continuing propensity to cluster structures. Other of the various locutions listed above could as easily have been cited. Such deviations from standard English in The O'Ruddy, though, are not used to create intensity and emphasis as in the early work (not always meaningfully) by violating readers' expectations but are inter posed to characterize. It is because O'Ruddy's linguistic style is what it is that he emerges as the kind of character he does. Hence, the unusual syntactic structures do not distract readers from the con tent of the novel because such structures fulfill their expectations. 10 A historical Irish figu e is not expected to talk like a modern En glishman or American. 203 Nor, equally, do Crane's syntactic choices that create the con versational quality eminently suitable to O'Ruddy's character distract. Even at his most serious and objective, represented in passage one and four, O'Ruddy's style leans toward the informal more than the formal. Yet this is not to say that Crane does not call upon sophisticated syntactic structures. In fact, such structures are a subtle way of revealing and emphasizing O'Ruddy's essential intellectual superiority over all the other characters and marking him as a worthy guide for the reader. That is, his innocence and naivete are more assumed than real; he asserts more power over others than they over him. One type of sophisticated structure has previously been men tioned, infinitive subjects, which do not appear in the data until Crane's last two works, once in "The Clan of No-Name" (starting the second clause of a compound sentence), twice in The O'Ruddy (both times ... 1) 11 sentence 1n1t1a . Nothing absolutely good inheres in the infini- tive as subject. However, it does add one more structural possibility to Crane's repertoire which can function to promote cohesion, sentence pattern variety, a change in rhythmic pace, and, because it is a so phisticated structure (one of those acquired late, and never in terms of performance for many people) an admiring response for the reader. Another is parallel structure, not the standard kind based simply on two or more coordinate constructions but the kind exceeding this minimum requirement that achieves rhythm, emphasis, and balance, and simultaneously suggests words being weighed since the pattern must be seen before the construction is written. Some examples from The 0'Ruddy are: 9 He might swing the ten arms of an Indian god; he might yell like a gale at sea; he might be more terrible in appearance than a volcano in its passions; still I would meet him. (52) 10 But I could hear nothing but a murmur of angry argument from the Countess and a murmur of gentle objection from Lady Mary. (60) 11 And my father was going on with Mickey only that he looked about him at this time and discovered his guests all upon their feet, one with the tongs, one with the poker, others with decanters ready to throw. (63-64) 12 The morning of the duel dawned softly warm, softly wet, softly foggy. (64) 13 It is only necessary to remark that Forister dropped almost immediately to defensive tactics before an assault which was not only impetuous but exceedingly brilliant, if I may be allowed to say so. (67-68) 204 These, which occur in fairly close proximity, are indicative of a wide - spread phenomenon that contributes to the unique rhythm of The 0'Ruddy, the "Irish lilt" critics have noted. The structures create other ef fects too, one of which is climactic surge. Both nine and eleven illustrate climactic order, nine through ever more ferocious compari sons, which are abruptly halted by the tersely defiant "still I wouJd meet him," eleven through each noun cluster being successively longer. A graceful "not only ... but" structure anchors thirteen. Also marking 0'Ruddy's sophistication is his rather frequent and varied use of conjunctive adverbs. (See Appendix E.) Crane employs conjunctive adverbs increasingly often in the later work and continues to do so 1n The 0'Ruddy; in addition, he chooses a wider variety. Con junctive adverbs aid coherence (and 0'Ruddy is eminently coherent), and 205 they also suggest a flexible mind that focuses on relationships be tween ideas and events. Passages two, three, and seven abov~ in which logical contrasts and time relationships are clearly spelled out for readers, illustrate these effects. Something of the same effects inhere in introductory coordinating conjunctions, adding to O'Ruddy's impressing the reader as clear headed and logical. However, while conjunctive adverbs impose a for mal quality, coordinating conjunctions lend a colloquial quality. This latter quality in part contributes to the more relaxed and "natu ral" style of The O'Ruddy. When people talk in informal situations, they are more likely to use short, simple sentences, stringing them together with coordinating conjunctions, especially when recounting actions. The O'Ruddy reveals the greatest use of this stylistic de- vice, and although Crane was undoubtedly motivated by a desire for coherence, he achieves the more significant effect of simulating con versational speech even in narrative description. (The effect of easy conversational speech is, of CvuL~v,~more pronounced in dialogue.) At times O'Ruddy's use of coordinators borders on semantic superfluity ("So finally I was obliged . . . , " "And so this old woman . . . , " "And so I walked abroad ... "), but they are important rhetorically, suggesting to readers the youthful, naive aspects of O'Ruddy's char acter and drawing them into intimate, informal relationships with h . 12 1m. A sample of Crane's manipulation of initial coordinating con- junctions occurs during O'Ruddy's recounting his duel with Colonel Royale: 14. And now as to the duel .... Colonel Royale came at me in a somewhat leisurely manner and, as I said, my mind was so full of rage at Paddy that I met the first of my opponent's thrusts through sheer force of habit. But my head was clear a moment later and I knew that I was fighting my first duel in England and for my father's honour. It was no time to think of Paddy. And at another moment later, I knew that I was the Colonel's master. I could reach him where I chose. But he did not know it. He went on prodding away with a serious countenance, evidently under the impression that he had me hard put to it. He was grave as an owl-faced parson. And now here I did a sorry thing. I became the victim of another of my mad impulses. I was seized with an ungovernable desire to laugh. It was hideous. But laugh I did and, of necessity, square in the Colonel's face. And to this day I regret it. (17) 206 Crane achieves not only conversational idiom with frequent coordina tors, both sentence initial and medial, but coherence (in passage fourteen, "And now . . . , " "And at another moment . . . "), qual i- fication (in passage fourteen, "But my head . . . , " "But he did not ... "), and emphasis (in passage fourteen, "But laugh I did " doubly emphasized with inversion, "And to this day ... "). What we see is deliberate extension of a well-established stylistic trait of Crane's, compounding, a penchant which he indulges even more conspic uously in dialogue. As one of O'Ruddy's outbursts shows, Crane occa sionally lets the excessive compounding typical of oral story-telling run riot: "'Twas on his death-bed that he told me of lending you the breeches and that 1s why I kicked the man into the yard and if your lordship had arrived sooner I could have avoided this duel at day break and, anyhow, I wonder at his breeches fitting you" (11), all of which comes to an abrupt halt with "He was a small man," evoking vividly O'Ruddy's literally running out of breath. Also resulting 207 from frequent compounding are shorter T-units and these, along with shorter average sentence length, also contribute to the novel's con- versational style. In neither T-unit nor sentence length, however, does Crane revert to his earliest style. Both units are longer, though not as long as the other late work, and varied for emphasis and to avoid monotony. Additionally, because of other connective tissue such as sustained focus within episodes themselves, characters appear ing intermittently throughout the novel, and cohesion, shorter T-units and sentences do not mean a return to fragmented prose. Some other grannnatical devices that Crane calls upon to forge O'Ruddy's friendly, breezy intimacy, triggering close reader involve ment with him, are direct address to the reader, rhetorical questions, exclamations, interjections, and parenthetical interruptions, the first f . 1 1 b. 1 1 . d. Th O'Ruddy. 13 our particu ar y eing new y exp oite in _e_ ---~ O'Ruddy's direct appeals to readers through asides, though infre quent, additionally guarantee reader involvement in his tale: "I only give you this incident to show that if later I came to bellow like a bull with the best of them it was only through the necessity of prov ing to strangers that I was a gentleman" (5). In this instance read ers are led to adopt O'Ruddy's viewpoint, mild displeasure over the ungentlemanly behavior of "gentlemen" and amused tolerance for O'Ruddy's similar behavior. Nowhere else in the data do rhetorical questions appear, but Crane adopts them frequently and effectively in The O'Ruddy. Passage two above has a rhetorical question expressing O'Ruddy's incredulity tinged with mild indignation. Indeed, O'Ruddy's uncertainty at times, 208 especially in the form of incredulity or bafflemen½ is often the ef fect of his rhetorical questions, as in this series: 15. I stared at my image in a mirror. Could I be The O'Ruddy? Perhaps my name was Paddy or Jem Bottles? Could I pick myself out in a crowd? Could I establish an identification? I little knew .... I fight the best swordsman in England? As an amusement, a show? I began to see reasons for returning to Ireland. (51) With these questions, clustered as they ar~ we see an additional ef fect. Resolution is postponed, arousing the reader's impatience and inparting an urgency to the narrative, elevating its dramatic contour. Heightening also results from O'Ruddy's occasional exclamations. In fiction exclamations are usually restricted to dialogue, a practice true of The O'Ruddy, but at times words alone fail O'Ruddy and he re sorts to the exclamation's added emotional impact in narrative-descrip tion, for instance to express his astonishment at Paddy's flaming coro na: "Ye saints! What hair!" (14), his dismay at the Earl's pronounce ment that the mysterious papers are worthless: "And this was my inher itance!" (41), his fury at Forister: "This little villain!" (49), his joy at catching Lady Mary's eye: "But she saw me!" (145). Interjections simulate th phatic element of conversation and em phasize in gesture-like fashion, directing the reader's attention to the content of whatever structure follow the interjection. Both func tions are evident in these passages: 16. After all, I reflected, Mickey Clancy could take care quite well of that estate at Glandore and, if he didn't, Father Donovan would soon bring him to trouble and, if Father Donovan couldn't, why, the place was worth very little anyhow. Beside~'tis a very weak man who cannot throw an estate into the air for a pair of bright eyes--I mean, eyes like Lady Mary's eyes. Aye, and Lady Mary's bright eyes. (52) 17. Well my father palavered on for a long time telling her that he would take away the pension of twenty-five shillings a year which he had given her because he by accident had shot her second cousin in the leg twelve years before that time. (141) 209 O'Ruddy's sentences are replete with expressions of the kind in tended to achieve closeness with the reader. His first person "I" con tinually asserts his presence in the normal telling of the story, but O'Ruddy also parenthetically interpolates independent clauses into sen tences, emphasizing his comment on the matrix sentence. The first and last sentences of paragraph one of passage sixteen above illustrate this phenomenon. Crane can, of course, and more frequently does, com bine propositions by nominalizing the matrix sentence, which then func tions as direct object of what was the parenthetical clause. Such em bedding subdues the personal force of O'Ruddy's comment somewhat as can be seen in this revision of the first sentence of passage sixteen: "I reflected that, after all, Mickey Clancy .. " But Crane often chooses parenthetical emphasis. Some other instances are: " our family name was on men's tongues in half the sea-ports of Europe, I dare say" (3), "Bristol I confess, frightened me greatly" (4), " ... but, as I have said, I was possessed of a remarkabi~ clearness of vi sion and strength of arm" (67). (The last example illustrates another strategy to simulate conversational style: repetitive paraphrase to make sure an audience has not missed a particular point.) Crane also casts O'Ruddy's parenthetical comments into the expletive-it struc ture: "All the highly fashionable folk knew each other intimately, it appeared, .. . " (133). Parenthetical prepositional phrases such as "for my part," "in my judgment," and "upon my word" also engender con- L ____________________ ___. 210 versational intimacy with readers. One type of parenthetical structure that decreases in quantity in The O'Ruddy is the free modifier. Despite Crane's generally increasing his use of the various types of economical free modifier structures in phase two fiction, the quantity of these structures in The O'Ruddy more nearly resembles the early work. The question arises as to why, after Crane began to exploit their potential, he returned to his earlier practice. The chief explanation for this reversal is that O'Ruddy's conversational style simply does not lend itself to free modifiers, ex cept for the more common free prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, and relative clauses. As Curme claims of the absolute (an assertion that could almost as easily apply to verb clusters, noun clusters, and adjective clusters), it is better established in literary 14 language than in colloquial or popular speech. In line with this statement, most of The O'Ruddy's absolutes occur when O'Ruddy is being "literary": standing aside to observe a scene (the aristocracy gath ered at Kensington Gardens), a place (his first view of London), or to reminisce about his father. (Noun clusters and verb clusters are also prominently represented in such objective description, too.) But Curme does recognize one colloquial use of the absolute that has bearing on The O'Ruddy, the Irish colloquial introduced by and. Crane uses this form, for example, in: By this time, they were so angry that Mickey, seeing how things were going, and I being a mere lad, took me from the room. (64) As Curme explains this use, in the less choice Irish colloquial the accusative me would more likely occur than I 15 b~t Crane shows his 211 I finely tuned ear by catching exactly the right phrasing for his young I gentleman hero. Wh ·1 C ' f 1 . 16 f h 1 e rane sear may a ter at time~ or t e most part it re- mains true to not only the essential Irish cadence but to the jaunty conversational idiom so appropriate for The O'Ruddy's hero and subject matter . Crane flexibly and realisti~ally manipulates O'Ruddy's style to shade from the formal at one end to the informal at the other, from balanced phrasing and studied coherence to the syntax of careless on rushing speech . He, indeed, find in The O'Ruddy a new ability to step beyond his own voice, artistically rendered for his fiction though it is, and assume the voice of his hero, to enter his mind and duplicate his thought process. Summary In The O'Ruddy we see Crane striking out in new directions. The understatement pervading the stories of his maturity is exchanged for hyperbole and exuberance. The late tales' seriousness gives way to The O'Ruddy's refusal to take itself seriously even though often the hook of gravity is barely camouflaged by the bait of comedy . Although it is mostly in his short stores that Crane, as Joseph Katz argues, I }7 I achieves a breadth and depth that leaves him few peers, it would seem 1 that The O'Ruddy holds the promise of Crane's having discovered the key l to a new mode in which he could possibly have found a n~w metier, the picaresque novel . And within it he may well have developed his concern for social problems that emerges strongly in "The Monster" and under lies the comic spirit of "The O'Ruddy." Much would depend upon how well Crane would have been able to 212 extend the mastery of his craft. But if The O'Ruddy can stand as an example, there is reason to believe that he could. Crane is still es sentially the same Crane that wrote the "Sullivan County Sketches." Throughout his work he tends to produce the short, simple sentences, not the long, complex one. Bound, limited modification continues to predominate. But superimposed on such basic stylistic traits is Crane's continued adoption of new structures to vary and complicate his prose. In The O'Ruddy structures Crane has used are adapted to the special needs of forming his young, Irish hero-narrator, and he uses others for the first time to good effect. In The O'Ruddy Crane also, for the first time, creates a narrative voice divorced from his own. Crane no longer strikes us as a man struggling with language to try to get it to say what he wants it to say, nor even a man simply at ease with language, but as a man now able to play with language, to experiment with structures so as to open up fictional worlds that had been closed to him before. 213 Notes I p. 1 Quoted in Tales, Sketches, and Reports, Vol. VIII of The Works, . . XX11. I 2 Except, as previously noted, the tightly structured "The Clan of No-Name." 3 The background circumstances leading to Crane's writing The O'Ruddy, including its commercial aspects, are doctnnented in the Intro duction to The O'Ruddy, Vol. IV of The Works. 4 For these two portions of Crane's artistic views see his state ments in a letter to Lily Brandon Munroe [March, 1894?] in which he identifies his creed as that of Howells and Garland even though he claims to have arrived at it by independent means, and another to John Northern Hilliard [January, 1896?], in which Crane asserts: "I under stand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all responsible for his vision--he is merely responsible for his quality of personal honesty." In Letters, pp. 31 and 110. 5 Crane seems to have had premonitions of an early death even before the onset of tuberculosis. He once predicted to Lily Brandon Munroe that he would not live long, and also remarked to Nellie Crouse that he was "minded to die in [his] thirty-fifth year," a generous fore cast as it turned out. In Letters, as reported by Stallman and Gilkes, p. 20, and letter of January 12th. [1896], p. 99. 6 Such a phenomenon is not unexpected. As William Labov remarks, verbal behavior which is variable in actual speech becomes stereotyped in literature so that forms which occur 30-40 percent of the time will occur 100 percent of the time in a writer's treatment. The main reason for this discrepancy lies in people perceiving speech categorically; if certain features occur often enough to register, they will be perceived as occurring all the time when in fact they do not. In The Study of Nonstandard English (Champaign, Ill.: NCTE, 1970), p. 62. 7 This is not to suggest that Crane's realization was a sudden one. The enlisted men of "The Price of the . .Harness," one of whom, Nolan, is surely Irish, reveal none of the grotesqueries of Maggie's characters. Nolan's speech conforms to that of the other enlisted men ("git," "goin' ," "it don't hurt any," and so forth), who as a group contrast with the officers ("get," "going," "They're all going high," and so forth). Crane thus subtly distinguishes the two groups of men who are nonetheless united in their competence and common fidelity to the "regular" soldiers' code: duty, obedience, and mutual responsibility. 8 The reason for the qualifier "virtually" is that no matter what voices Crane assumes, certain syntactic predilictions identify Crane's writing as Crane's, the same holding true, of course, for other writers. Indeed, such factors make possible authorship attribution. Before The J 214 O'Ruddy manuscript was discovered in 1969, as mentioned earlier, Bernard O'Donnell examined this novel to detennine which chapters were Crane's, which Robert Barr's. Using syntactic variables based on attributable samples of each author's work, O'Donnell designated Chapters I-XXIV as Crane's, the remainder as Barr's. The discovered manuscript proved him wrong by one chapter, but this chapter was borderline in the assigning I of authorship. 9 As mentioned earlier, dialogue was not included in the data base, but from sampling The O'Ruddy's dialogue to note its most ohvious dif ferences from narrative description, it would appear that a study of the dialogue would be rewarding, particularly in tenns of the charac ters' ideolects and the consistency with which Crane maintains them. For example, O'Ruddy and Paddy, both being Irish, share some structures, but not all; Jem Bottles, who is English, shares at least one structure that is idiomatic Irish with both O'Ruddy and Paddy; Dr. Chord's syntax tends to be more complex and formal than anyone else's. lO In passage three above we can note another deviation, an instance of Crane's converting transitive to intransitive verbs ("the lovely maid would startle"). Whereas in previous work such deviation would call attention to itself, here the fonn shift blends into the general archaic flavor--as does "beg pardon." 11 From "Clan": "As far as the heavily patrolled and guarded mili tary road was concerned, the insurgents had been in the habit of dashing across it in small bodies whenever they pleased, but to safely scoot over it with a valuable convoy of arms was decidedly a more important · I thing" (122); from The O'Ruddy: "To sit and gloom in my room until the time of the great affair would do me no good in any case" (59) and "To have speech of a boor is well enough if he would not first study you over to find, if he can, why you want the information and after a pro longed pause, tell you wrong entirely" (115). 12 It is interesting to note that the obversative relationship, primarily marked by "but," continues to be the one Crane emphasizes. We are reminded that regardless of O'Ruddy's "newness" in Crane's roster of characters, Crane's perception of the world is, like that of the earlier third person narrators, largely contrastive. Despite the reign ing comic spirit in The O'Ruddy, the seriousness of O'Ruddy's having to penetrate appearances to get at reality, as mentioned earlier, remains. 13 One might argue that The O'Ruddy's first person narrative lends itself to some of these devices, but Crane notably does not rely on their effects in the earlier The Red Badge and "The Open Boat," in which narrator and protagonist merg"e:--- 14 s yntax, p. 154. 15 Cunne quotes several examples, one of which is from Kate Douglas Wiggin's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm: "It is strange he hasn't married I with all his money, and him (instead of the choicer he) so fond of children," p. 154. 215 16 No particular instance emerged in the data, but the dialogue between Paddy and O'Ruddy as they amble out of Bath (Chapter XV) clearl)'1 overdoes Irish dialect features. 1 7 In his Introduction to The Portable Stephen Crane, p. xvi. 216 CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION The analytic method used in this dissertation was not intended to make final and definitive statements about Crane's prose fiction style, but to answer certain questions about his style, primarily those cen tering on whether or not it changes during the span of his career. The close grammatical analysis practiced in this dissertation has re vealed Crane's increasing mastery of the syntactic options offered by the English language, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and in doing so has formalized some sources of observed differences between his early and late work. It has also formalized some of Crane's re curring grammatical choices that mark his fiction as his at no matter what stage of his career. Characteristic of Crane's style throughout his career are short, terse sentences, framed in simple syntax, with resulting stress on individual verbal units, not on cohesive joining of units. His pri mary means of amplifying basic sentences to picture scenes, charac ters, actions, and ideas are bound modifiers, which define more than comment, particularly simple adjectives and adverbs and prepositional phrases. Since bound modifiers are limited in the amount of expansion they accommodate, they do not appreciably lengthen his sentences. And because Crane relies heavily upon bound modifiers and often locates three part prepositional phrases in sentence final position, his char acteristic prose rhythm moves straightforwardly in quick, sharp thrusts 217 that wind down with a pseudo-iambic beat. 1 Crane also attaches all types of free modifiers to his base clauses, but his favored free modifier type is the verb cluster (headed by a present rather than past participle headword). This particular choice contributes to the active force typical of his fiction. Free modifiers comment more than define and can comment on ever narrower levels of specification. Crane, however, rarely downshifts more than three levels to explicate and exemplify the main clause and higher level free modifiers (in fact, he often stays at the second level no matter how many free modifiers he adds to a base clause). Yet even without exploiting the depth possible with free modifiers, Crane uses them effectively to sustain a broad perspective while simultaneously zooming in on specific details important to readers understanding characters, actions, or ideas. Free modification, with the ebbing and flowing movement that it creates as sentences leap and linger on structures, varies Crane's basic prose rhythm. Other syntactic elements also vary his prose rhythm and, like attached free modifiers, alleviate monotonous sequences of similarly patterned structures. Crane favors inversions, with expletive there a frequently used type. Inversions function, as do free modifiers, to emphasize but whereas free modifiers focus on particular features of referents in the main clause, inversions simply emphasize particular elements, in Crane's case, very often nouns. This emphasis contrib utes, along with sentence final prepositional phrases, to the con creteness of Crane's fiction. Throughout his fiction,types of structures often cluster. Take, 218 for instance, absolutes, which seem to breed absolutes. If one occurs, another occurs in near proximity, frequently in the same sentence. Another example is the introductory dependent clause; one dependent clause may generate a spate of them, as occurs in Chapter IV of Maggie. In The O'Ruddy a particular Irish idiom repeats in close succession only to halt and then reappear later. Subject matter seems not to be the determining force for clustering. Crane is as likely to load sen tences with absolutes and verb clusters in one descriptive paragraph of an action as omit them from another. These are some important recurring choices of Crane's, the "what" of his unique style, a question easier to answer than the "why." But we can conjecture. The reason for Crane's short fictions (even the longer works are erected upon the framework of short episodes), abbreviated, direct sentences, and lack of transitional devices may lie in his outspoken rejection of conventional literary style, which to him represented "bad" writing. Certainly he objected to what he deemed wordiness. Although he admired Tolstoy above other writers, he condemned the length of both Anna Karenina and War and Peace, saying of the latter that Tolstoy "could have done the whole business in one-third the time and made it just as wonderful." 2 Crane also comments on contemporary methods in his fiction itself. As the American, Richardson, in "One Dash--Horses" escapes from some pursuing Mexican bandits, Crane has him remember "all the tales of such races for life," and think "them badly written." In the same story he also criticizes conven tional use of color (unconventional use being a hallmark 9f his style, 219 especillay in his early work): "Above them, the sky was of that mar velous tone of green--like still, sun-shot water--which people de nounce in pictures. 113 Crane may also have rebelled against conventional novel style with its longer, complex sentences carefully integrated one with another because he believed that they interfered with the reader's direct apprehension of the scenes, actions, and ideas being presented. Additionally, he may have believed that explicitly stating connections imposed too much authorial guidance on the reader. Here we are only conjecturing since Crane does not specifically tell us why he judged contemporary writing "bad," but both factors may underlie his stylistic choices, how he chose to say what he had to say. However, it is equally probably, if not more so, that Crane's lack of traditional literary training, his journalistic background, and, perhaps more importantly, his limited syntactic abilities did not allow him to style his fiction conventionally. That is, youthful re bellion and natural ability worked hand-in-hand as Crane made the best of what he had within his literary convictions to produce his unique style. Yet Crane's style, unique though it remains, does change, and it changes in the direction of conventionally styled fiction during the span of his career. This turning of an angular, disjunctive prose style into flexibility and smoothness could have been no easy task. 4 That Crane succeeded as well as he did is remarkable. Although in some ways the changes occur gradually, there is, nonetheless, on the basis of Crane's syntactic choices justification for establishing two 220 main stylistic stages or phases for him and one minor one. The first of the main stages which I have referred to as Crane's provenience and early maturity, encompasses the "Sullivan County Sketches," Maggie, and The Red Badge. The second of the main stages, which I have re ferred to as transition and late maturity, encompasses Crane's early and late adventure stories, his socially oriented "The Monster," and 5 late war tales. The O'Ruddy by itself constitutes Crane's third stage, aborted by his untimely death, and reveals Crane searching out new horizons in fictional mode and style. In contrast to the first stage's extremely abbreviated, frag mented style dependent upon bizarre diction and syntax to gain its effects, stage two's fiction becomes less abrupt, elliptical, and de viant, and more expansive, inclusive, and conventional (though never ordinarily so). Sentences grow generally longer and at the same time are more varied in length, lessening the juvenile quality of Crane's early style. T-units also lengthen, proving that increased sentence length results not from simple compounding but from embedded (depend ent) and attached (free) modificational structures. Addition of these structures, particularly free modifiers, produces a more densely tex tured style. As regards free modifiers, even though Crane still fa vors sentences with one and two structural layers, in stage two fic tion the second structural layer is more likely to be extended. Fur thermore, sentences that downshift to a third structural layer of specificity increase sharply, and Crane, though rarely, even forms sen tences with fifth and sixth structural layers. The free modifiers forming these structural layers more frequently in Crane' later sto- 221 r1es are mid-branching and combinations of the three types. 6 Even though the right-branching or cumulative sentence remains the backbone of his style, these choices also contribute to the density of his prose. All of these choices inevitably result in more elaborate, inform ative narrative-description and a syntax that gains in complexity and variety. The changes also result in Crane's syntax forming a more varied, subtle, dynamically ebbing and flowing rhythm that undulates atop the basic cadence of his prose. The smoothness these syntactic changes create contrasts to the earlier choppy rhythm resulting from Crane's wrenching or ignoring syntactic structures. In stage two fie- . tion syntactic contrast and modulation become important to Crane's achieving his effects. Higher frequency of dependent clauses, more complex inversions with expletive it, parenthetical insertions, and finely tuned parallel structures all testify to increasing complexity and variety. This is true even though one might easily find sentences in stage one that are altogether more complex than sentences found in stage two. Further more, Crane adopts structures in stage two that do not appear in the data from the early work such as the apostrophe, antithesis, and cata logues. And he uses the newly adopted structures with a skill not always characteristic of his first use of sophisticated structures 1n the early work, such as the absolute in the Sullivan County tales which is left-branched heavy-handedly. Contrary to what we might expect, Crane's making his syntax more complex in stage two does not result in loss of clarity because he sustains perspective and strives 222 for syntactically realized coherence. Indeed, consciously applied cohesive devices coupled with expansiveness, the inclusion of more in formative details, more than compensates for added syntactic complex ity, enhancing information flow and clarity. Scenes, characters, actions, and ideas emerge with comprehensiveness and vividness not typical of the early work. Moreover, expansiveness and complexity allow for the increased effectiveness of Crane's short, terse sen tences through contrast. Although clustering of particular structures continues, the ef fect is not as pronounced as in stage one since more kinds of struc tures are used and used more frequently. There is a sense of Crane's creative powers being more sustained in stage two and his speaking wit more authority. Further evidence lies in his using repetition more judiciously, to emphasize, and, in forming echoic patterns, to organ ize. Repetition in stage one fiction at times means outright self plagiarism, suggesting a flagging of Crane's creative powers. 7 In stage two Crane makes of syntax not only a more expressive instrument for elaborated narrative description but for a variety of voices. The Sullivan County tales, Maggie, and The Red Badge project essentially only one voice, an immature one, which creates confusion for the reader, who, in order to make moral and intellectual judg ments, needs to separate narrators from egocentric, deluded protago nists. (In the data for this study in stage one fiction only Chapter XVII of Maggie reveals a sustained attempt on Crane's part to project a mature narrator.) Crane's early inability to maintain narrative distance contributes crucially to the failure of the Sullivan County tales, in which readers are continually led astray. It is also at least partially responsible for the inconsistency that critics have noted inheres in Maggie, confusing wary as well as unwary readers. 223 The Red Badge's blending of narrator and protagonist succeeds since Crane makes no pretense of an objective third person narrator, at times blending the perceptions of Fleming and the narrator within one sen tence. Disjunctive, fragmented syntax eloquently renders the bewil dered mind of Fleming facing his first battlefield experience, and in the process portrays war as it had never been portrayed before, as a psychological battle. The novel, however, because of its one voice, essentially that of young, naive (and confused) Fleming, fails to illuminate and resolve the conflicts it explores. Such illumination and resolution accompany exploration of conflict in stage two fiction because Crane's increasing syntactic ability allows him to project a multiplicity of voices, one of which is that of a philosophical, pro phetic narrator who guides the reader's moral and intellectual judg ments of characters and their actions. Mature ideas and their con sequences demand an equally mature syntax. In stage two fiction Crane achieves enough of the latter to make the former possible. Again, what Crane does is easier to describe than why he does it. His change in style is certainly not because he suddenly decided that contemporary fiction style was "good" writing. The evidence lies in his continued criticism of that fiction. On the other hand, it is possible that he shifted his style in the direction of contemporary fiction practices, despite his condemnation of them, in response to carping critics. Crane was always keenly mindful of the need to 224 satisfy popular demand since his livelihood depended upon th sale of his fiction. However, we can only ascribe changes in his style such as the muting of his high color palette and reduction of bizarre modifiers to his desire to satisfy critics and the buying public. Changes in syntactic style lie for the most part, beyond conscious control. What seems more likely is that Crane's fiction writing expe riences gradually developed his control of syntactic options in the direction of variety and complexity. As his syntactic maturity in creased he was able to produce the finely wrought stories character istic of the height of his career. In stage three Crane again moves in new directions, more sharply even than in stage two. Having mined the themes and his craft in the late stories to their fullest, Crane apparently felt confident, despite his severe financial plight and failing health, to attempt a new fic tional mode for him the picaresque romance. The basic characteristics of Crane's style continue in The O'Ruddy (episodic structure though this time clearly planned, short, simple sentences, and so forth), but he manipulates them in new ways and adds new structures to his reper toire in order to capture the essence of Irish idiom and the character istic volubility and exuberance of O'Ruddy. We see in Crane's novel a new willingness to play with language, to apply consciously his skill to create for the first time a first person narrator and not only first person but a person divorced from him in time, place, and circum stance, a young Irish adventurer off to early Georgian England to seek his fortune. Although some of Crane's opinions and attitudes surface in O'Ruddy, O'Ruddy's voice is not Crane's. O'Ruddy often speaks for 225 himself, and his garrulity contrasts with Crane's natural laconism. On the other hand, the multiple voices of stage two fiction can all reasonably be assigned to Crane even though some are more loquacious than others. Crane avoids the pitfall of transliterated dialect that he fell into with the stereotyped Irish speech of Maggie, and creates a believ able, though imagined, hero whose voice shades from the formal at the one end to breezy intimacy at the other. He forms a hero who can puncture romantic conventions and mankind's and his own foibles, all the while never taking himself too seriously. Crane did not live to build on the foundation erected in The O'Ruddy; indeed, he did not even live to finish it. Partly for this reason and partly, of course, because the novel refuses to take itself seriously, The O'Ruddy is no match for Crane's best work. It does not achieve the breadth and depth of his best short stories, nor their fine fusing of manner and matter, but in The O'Ruddy Crane shows that his energy and innovative powers were not exhausted but rather entering a new phase. Had he lived, he might well have gained control of this picaresque romance genre, and even, as we have seen he did before, have struck out for new horizons. Notes 1 Although rhythm is an aspect of Crane's style not investigated formally in this study, it is directly related to syntactic structures. 2 Stallman, Omnibus, p. 51. 3 Tales of Adventure, Vol. V of The Works, pp. 22 and 13. 4 Although Marston LaFrance does not probe Crane's grammatical choices that produce this change, he intuitively perceives the toil required, hence aptly labels Crane a "brutally hard working craftsman." In A Reading of Stephen Crane (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 248. 5 Specifically: "The Wise Men," "The Five White Mice," and "A Man and Some Others," transition pieces, are based upon Crane's adventures in Mexico and the American southwest; "The Open Boat," "The Monster," and "The Blue Hotel" are a mixture of adventure and social satire; "The Price of the Harness" and "The Clan of No-Name" are late war tales based upon Crane's Cuban experiences. 6 "And at the front (left) the battle-sound, as if it were simply music (mid), was beginning to swell and swell until the volleys rolled like surf (right)" ("The Price of the Harness," 103). 7 This is not to say that Crane's tendency to repeat himself non purposefully stops in phase two fiction. Although nothing so glaring as the passages in "The Cry of Huckleberry Pudding" (255) that virtually, repeat some in "A Ghoul's Accountant" (240) occur in the later work, the Swede's "fizz[ing] like a fire-wheel" (154) in "The Blue Hotel" distinctly recalls (though to no purpose) "wheels revolv[ing] in [the little man's] soul" in "A Ghoul's Accountant" (241). No unjustified repetitions of this sort appear in the data from the rest of Crane's late work al though one instance occurs in a transition story, "The Wise II Men" (33), which echoes the start of Chapter XVII of Maggie. I 227 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams Richard P. "Naturalistic Fiction: 'The Open Boat."' Tulane Studies in English, 4 (1954), 137-146. Ahnebrink, Lars. The Beginnings of Naturalism in American Fiction: A Study of The Works of Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane. , and Frank Norris. Uppsala, Sweden: A. B. Lundequistka Boklandelin 1950. Altick, Richard D. Preface to Critical Reading. 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Heath and Company, 1931. V Dolezel, Lubomir, and Richard W. Bailey, eds. Statistics and Style. New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., 1969. Findlater, Jane H. "The New Art of Description in Fiction." The National Review (January 1900); quoted in The Liberary Digest, 20 (February 10, 1900), p. 182. Ford, Ford Madox. "Stephen Crane." In Portraits from Life. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1937, pp. 28-49. Freeman, Donald C., ed. Linguistics and Literary Style. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970. Fries, Charles Carpenter. The Structure of English. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1952. Gibson, Donald B. The Fiction of Stephen Crane. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968. Golub, Lester S., and Carole Kidder. "Syntactic Density and the Com puter." Elementary English, 51 (November-December 1974), 1128- 1131. Gordon, Ian A. The Movement of English Prose. London: Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd., 1966. Griffith, Clark. 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Labov, William. The Study of Nonstandard English. Champaign Ill.: NCTE, 1970. La France, Marston. A Reading of Stephen Crane. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Lefevre, Carl A. "A Concise Structural Grammar." In Linguistics for Teachers. Ed. John F. Savage. Chicago: Science Research Associ ates, Inc., 1973. Linson, Corwin K. My Stephen Crane. Ed. with an Introd. by Edwin H. Cady. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1958. Loban, Walter. Language Development: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve. Research Rep. 18. Urbana, Ill.: 1976. Love, Glen A., and Michael Payne, eds. Contemporary Essays on Style. New York: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1969. Martin, Harold C. "The Development of Style in Nineteenth Century American Fiction." In Style in Prose Fiction. Ed. Harold C. Martin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959, pp. 116-131. McHaney, Thomas L. Stephen Crane. 91-97. Review of Bowery Tales, Vol. I, The Works of American Literary Realism, 4 (Winter 1971), Mellon, John C. Transformational Sentence-Combining: A Method for Enhancing the Development of Syntactic Fluency in English Com position. Research Rep. 10. Urbana, Ill.: 1969. 231 Milic, Louis Tonko. A Quantitative Apprach to the Style of Jonathan Swift. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1967. Moore, Timothy E., ed. Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language. New York: Academic Press, 1973. O'Donnell, Bernard. An Analysis of Prose Style to Determine Author ship: The O'Ruddy A Novel by Stephen Crane and Robert Barr. The Hague: Mouton, 1976. O'Donnell, Roy C., William J. Griffin, and Raymond C. Norris. Syntax of Kindergarten and Elementary School Children. Research Rep. 8. Champaign, Ill.: NCTE, 1967. O'Hare, Frank. Sentence Combining: Improving Student Writing Without Formal Grammar Instruction. Research Rep. 15. Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1973. Ohmann, Richard. "Generative Grammars and the Concept of Literary Style." Word, 22 (1964), 424-439. Parker, Hershel. Review of Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage: A Facsimile Edition of the Manuscript and Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, Vol. II, The Works of Stephen Crane. Nineteenth Century Fiction, 30 (March 1976), 558-562. Parker, Hershel, and Brian Higgins. "The Virginia Edition of Stephen Crane's Maggie: Mirror for Textual Scholars." Proof, 6 (in press). Pizer, Donald. Review of Bowery Tales, Vol. 1, The Works of Stephen Crane. American Literary Realism, 68 (November 1970), 212-214. Plimpton, George. "An Interview with Hemingway." In Hemingway and His Critics, ed. with an Introd. by Carlos Baker. New York: Hill and Wang, 1961, pp. 19-37. Ross, Donald. "Beyond the concordance: algorithms for description of English clauses and phrases." In The Computer and Literary Studies. Eds. A. J. Aitken, R. W. Bailey, and N. Hamilton-Smith. Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh Press, 1973, pp. 85-99. Simoneaux, Katherine G. "Color Imagery in Crane's George's Mother." CLA Journal, 14 (June 1971), 410-419. Slotkin, Robert. "A Study of the Use of Dialect and Diction in Selected Works of Stephen Crane: The Language of New York City and Its Rural Environs." Diss. University of South Carolina 1970. Smith, Frank, and George A. Miller, eds. The Genesis of Language. Cambridge, Mass.: The M. I. T. Press, 1966. Spiller, Robert E., et al., eds. Literary History of the United States. 3rd ed. rev. 2 vols. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963. [Crane - Vol. 1, 1020-1026]. Stallman, R. W. Stephen Crane: A Biography. New York: George Braziller, 1968. Stoppe, Eleanor. "A Transformational Analysis of Stephen Crane's Novels." Diss. St. Louis University 1973. 232 Tynan, Daniel Joseph. "A Computer Concordance to The Red Badge of Courage, 1895 Edition, with an Introductory Essay." Diss. Uni versity of Wisconsin 1972. Walcutt, Charles C. American Literary Naturalism: A Divided Stream. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956. Weatherford, Richard M., ed. Stephen Crane: The Critical Heritage. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. Wells, Rulon. "Nominal and Verbal Style." In Style in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok. Cambridge, Mass.: The M. I. T. Press, 1960, 213-220. Winterowd, W. Ross. "The Grammar of Coherence." College English, 31 (May 1970), 828-835. Wogan, Claudia C. "Crane's use of Color in The Red Badge of Courage." Modern Fiction Studies, 6 (Summer 1960), 168-172. 233 APPENDIX A THE COMPUTER PROGRAM AND PROCESS The computer program used for this study is HAWKEYE, an automatic parsing program that is an updated and improved version of the computer program EYEBALL formulated by Donall Ross and Robert Rasche 1n 1969. (Outlined by Ross in "Beyond the concordance: algorithms for descrip tion of English clauses and phrases," The Computer and Literary Studies [Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh Press, 1973], pp. 85-99.) Professor Robert Dilligan and Lucy Hawk of the University of Southern California are responsible for the refinements in HAWKEYE, a more com plete and accurate parsing program. The HAWKEYE program is specifically designed to describe, using an ordinarily typed text as input, the components of the language of liter ary texts: word, sentence, and clause lengths; vocabulary frequency statistics; word-class distributions; and other syntactic elements based on sentence parsing. Although additional human brain and hand work are necessary to obtain a complete and accurate parsing of a sub mitted text, still, the automatic parsing phase removes much of the tedium and chance for error resulting from that tedium, and allows crit ics to examine grammatical and lexical elements from an author's entire corpus rather than brief selections. The HAWKEYE program 1s written to run on an IBM 370 computer with a PL/I Optimizing Compiler. The first phase of concordance making and parsing is done in batch mode. Sorting is done using IBM's SORT/MERGE 234 system utility. The second and all subsequent stages are done in an interactive mode using IBM's TSO system. Only Phase One of the parsing can be considered a parsing program. Phase Two and Phase Three are editing programs which allow the output from Phase One to be corrected and updated. The programs after Phase Three are search procedures which enable the user to query the parsed text for the occurrence and frequency of any phrase structure or series of contiguous phrase struc tures in the text. The computer process begins after editions are decided upon, read through, and passages to be studied are selected. Actual interaction with the computer began with typing all the selections on a typewriter terminal connected to the computer. At the end of each session the data was transferred onto a tape, forming a cumulative record. When the typing was completed, I obtained a printout of the entire text, resem bling the following brief sample, for proofreading: 00015100 $$$$$$$$$$THE OPEN BOAT 00015110 %None of them knew the color of the sky-.* Their eyes 00015120 glanced level, and were fastend** upon the waves that 00015130 swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of (Lines are numbered by tens to allow for subsequent insertions, and since the same numbers appear on other subsequent printouts, are a means of cross-checking items; the ten $'sand% are among various symbols chosen to designate breaks in the text, in this case the start of a new work and start of a paragraph. Others chosen: @ ... # to enclose roaterial typed but not to be studied, such as interrupting dialogue, and five $'s to mark the start of chapters.) Transmission erros (*), typo- 235 graphical errors(**), or inadvertent omissions were noted, then cor rections submitted to the computer, following which another printout was obtained, proofread, and so forth until a final clean copy resulted. The next printout obtained was a concordance, of key-word-in context, listing all the words in their contexts in the same fashion as "waves," shown in Concordance Printout 1 on page 236. The next step was disambiguating the text, which means determining the function or functions of key words. For example, although "waves" can be both a noun and a verb, Crane uses it only as a noun, informa tion that the computer needed to know for the automatic parsing phase. However, Crane naturally does not always use a word in only one of its functions, and 1n these cases all except on function needed to be marke for the computer. "Can," shown in Concordance Printout 2 on page 236, serves as an example. With "can," its appearance as an adjective was marked "canl," by typing a "correction" on the terminal which was trans £erred to the tape, as a verb "can2"; auxiliaries, the most frequent form of "can," remained unmarked. The process was the same for other words having more than one function. Next a "Crane dictionary" was compiled describing Crane's function al use of all the words in the concordance except those stable forms such as "the" (determiner), which the automatic parsing program "knows,' and it was typed into the computer, following which the computer auto matically parsed the text 1n Phase One of the parsing. (Compounds were not analyzed eparately [the computer counted compounds as one word], and were simply marked in terms of their overall fonn. For example, 1n "haggard tree-trunks," "tree-trunks" was marked noun; in "a silver- • OPEN OOAT MJ}lSTER Rl3C }S MAGGIE A !~ !AN AND OPEN OOAT '"O'RIJIDY • LE VEL. ~ND WERE FASTENED UPON THE ~HF WAVF~ ~H~T ~ ~EP T TOW~RD THEM. THESE AT AlL TJ ~r~ fT S EDGE WAS JAGGED ~ITH \t/ H l (H Hrrir onne UPCN Tt--E SEA. THESE THF RF <; nuPrF-~ nr- f HE SEA IN THE LINE OF ~AS A TfOO I RLF. GRACE lN THE MOVE OF THE 00015130 00015140 00015180 000 15 200 00015400 00015450 00015570 00015610 00015680 , 000 16070 I 00016080 ; 00016120 00016170 00016700 00019860 00054700 00057830 ' OF THI S F. FFECT UFON THE COLOR OF THE PAST TH E~. THE CREST OF EACH OF THESE OF RnOWN ~E A-WEED THAT ROLLcD OVER THE WOPLO. OTH F. R~:SE THERE WAS NOTHING BUT VIOL~NCF OF THE SEA HAO CEASED. THE WHFN THE CRESTS RUShED PAST. THE BLACK ~IND HAD A ~OICE AS IT CAME OVER THE THE S0NLIGHT FLAMED ON THE TIPS OF THE FROM THE STREET• CREEPING IN SILVERY THE RAIL ANO FIRE A PARTING SHOT. THE CF THE OPPOSl~G ARMIES wEAE TWO LONG WAVES WAVES WAVES .WAVES WAVES WAVES WAVES WAVES WAVES llAVES WAVES WAVES \WAVES WAVES ~AVES WAVES WAVES WAVES Concordance Printout 1 0000 6 800 000135.JO 00015390 000~6~00 00026920 00029180 00031260 IT wITH A DANC[ WHICH OF COURSE HE HAD NOT ecnto Tt-'E FOR E ~AN OF TlN" BOATS. I~ A TE~-FGCT OtNGEY CNE THE DECANTERS AT HIM. HO~EVER THERE CF - MY FATHE~•S AEMA~K. INDLEC THERE ~OT FIRST STUDY YOU QVEH TO FIND, IF HE ~EVER SEEN HER BEFOAE _NOR SINCE. IF l CAN CAN CAN CAN CAN CAN CAN (.Al'+ Cbnoordance Printout 2 THAT SWEPT TOW~RD ThEM. THESE WAVES WERE OF THE HUE OF SLATE, SAVc FOA THAT SEEMED THRUST UP IN POINTS LIKE ~ERE MOST WRCNGFULLY A~D BARBAROUSLY THAT (SNOT P ROBABLE TO THE AVERAGE AND THEY CAME IN SILENCE, SAVE FOR THAT ROLLED TOWARO THEM. XAS THE WAS A HILL. FROM THE TOP OF WHICH THE ~ITH A MOVEMENT LIKE CARPETS ON A LINE XTHE PARTICULAR VIOLENCE OF THE SEA CAME wlTHUUT SNARLING. ThE *ERE SILENT ANO HARO TO BE SEEN lN AND IT WAS SADOER THAN THE END• XON DISTANT DUNES WERE SET MANY OVER THE GRASS, CA~SEO THE QOW OF HAO RECEDED, LEAVING BITS OF O~RK THAT PITCHED UPON EACH OTHER MAOLV AT NEVER BL SEEN AT CONCERTS GIVEN UNDER RANCH ~ITH ANY SUCH REQUEST, BUT HAO GET AN ID EA OF T~E RESOURCES OF THc SEA BE NO DOUBTING OF THE WISDOM OF ~y OE LlTTLt DOUBTING OF THE WISDOM OF WHY YOU ~ANT T~E INFORMATlON ANO TRACE A BAD WORD TO ANY MAN•S MOUTH N ~ °' 237 gleaming fish," "silver-gleaming was marked adjective.) Phase Two of the parsing is interactive, consisting of a reader viewing the results of Phase One on a cathode ray tenninal and insertin corrections. For example, in the sample below of what flashed onto the viewing creen (words, assigned fonns and functions, line notation, running count of words in the sentence), I particularly marked the con stituents headed by "the floor" and "the walls" as absolutes, a cate gory that I was interested in examining but which the automatic parsing program did not include, corrected the function of word nine (APRP), an inserted the functions of words fourteen and fifteen (COMP). (See Appendix B for the key to the computer code for forms and functions.) 1001001 A PASSAGE, THE FLOOR OF DAMP CLAY AND PEBBLES, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 · 8 9 DET NOUN DET NOUN PREP ADJ NOUN COOR NOUN SUBJ SUBJ SUBJ SUBJ APRP APRP APRP APRP SUBJ THE WALLS 10 11 DET NOUN SUBJ SUBJ DOWNWARD. 17 ADVB PRED SLIMY, 12 ADJ COMP GREEN-MOSSED AND DRIPPING, 13 14 15 ADJ COOR PPL COMP XXXX XXXX SLOPED 16 VERB PRED Depending upon an author's idiosyncratic structural choices and th extent of the submitted dictionary, Phase Two can be a major or minor undertaking. With Crane, it was somewhat midway. His sentences tend not to be complex nor long, but hiJ extensive compounding and inverted subject-verb sequences (both simple inversion and inversion with exple tive-there as subject postponer) provided problems for the automatic parsing program as indicated in these sentences: 2018001 THE FOUR MEN CLAMBERED INTO THE BEAUTIFUL BOAT 2005001 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 DET DET NOUN VERB PREP DET ADJ NOUN SUBJ SUBJ SUBJ PRED APRP APRP APRP APRP ~D THE 9 10 COOR DET APRP OBJ INDIVIDUAL MANOEUVERED HIS 11 12 13 NOUN VERB DET OBJ PRED OBJ CRAFT 14 NOUN OBJ UNTIL HE HAD DEALT OUTl TO FOUR LOW-SPREADING 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 SUBD PRON AUXV VERB PART PREP DET ADJ ADJT SUBJ PRED PRED PRED APRP APRP APRP STUMPS, 23 NOUN OBJ FOUR FISHERS. 24 25 DET NOUN OBJ OBJ IN CONSEQUENCE, 1 2 PREP NOUN APRP APRP THE FOUR MEN CONFRONTED A 3 4 5 6 7 DET DET NOUN VERB DET SUBJ SUBJ SUBJ PRED OBJ SHEET 8 NOUN OBJ OF WATER FROM WHICH THERE UP-REARED COUNTLESS GREY, 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 PREP NOUN PREP DETS ADJT VERB ADJ ADJ APRP APRP APRP ADJT THER PRED COMP COMP HAGGARD TREE-TRUNKS. 17 18 ADJ NOUN COMP OBJ 238 In the first sentence the functions of word nine through eleven and twenty-three needed correcting to CLAU, SUBJ, and APRP. In the second sentence the functions of words fifteen through eighteen needed correct ing to SUBJ. When Phase Two was completed, I obtained a printout of the data, proofread it, and inserted corrections during Phase Three by re-calling on the cathode ray terminal the line numbers of those sentences errone ously parsed. Appendix C contains the fir~t four sentences from each group as finally parsed before obtaining various types of printouts. 239 At this point, printouts of various typeJ based upon the corrected parsed text could be obtained, for example, all phrases grouped accord ing to function, all sentences in textual order, all sentences contain ing absolutes, and so forth upon which the analysis of Crane's grammat ical style could proceed. Appendix C contains representative samples of various printouts, whil~ could not be included in their entir~ty be cause of their bulk. Computer Code & &C &I &J &M &O &P &R &S &V Sk 0 # #I #P @ @C @l @O @P @R @S @V C D DC DI DO DR OS DV I N NC I NO NR NS NV 0 p PC 240 APPENDIX B COMPUTER CODE FOR FORMS AND FUNCTIONS Form and Function COOR COORCLAU COOR*INF COORSUBJ COORCOMP COOROBJ COORPRED COORAPRP COORSENT COORVOC PREPAPRP APRP PART PART*INF PARTPRED ADVB ADVBCOMP ADVB*INF ADVBOBJ ADVBPRED ADVBAPRP ADVBSUBJ ADVRVOC COMP DET DET COMP DET *INF DET OBJ DET APRP DET SUBJ DET voe *INF NOUN NOUNCOMP NOUN*INF OUNOBJ NOUNAPRP NOUNSUBJ NOUNVOC OBJ PPL PPL COMP Coordinator Coordinator of a clause Coordinator in an infinitive phrase Coordinator in a subject Coordinator 1n a complement Coordinator 1n an object Coordinator in a predicate Coordinator in a preposi tior,al phrase Coordinator sentence initial Coordinator in a vocative Preposition in a prepositional phrase Prepositional phrase Particle Particle 1n an infinitive phrase Partjcle in a predicate Adverb Adverb in a complement Adverb 1n an infjnitive phrase Adverb in an object Adverb 1n a predicate Adverb 1n a prepositional phrase Adverb in a subject Adverb in a vocative Complement Determiner Determiner 1n a complement Determiner 1n an infinitive phrase Determiner 1n an object Determiner 1n a prepositional phrase Determiner 1n a subject Determiner in a vocative Infinitive phrase Noun Noun in a complement Noun 1n an infinitive Noun 1n an object Noun in a prepositional phrase Noun in a subject Noun in a vocative Object Participle Participle in a complement PD PI PO pp PR PS PV R RC RI RO RR RS RV s SU T T* TH u UI UP V vc VI VP vv PRED PPL *INF PPL OBJ PPL PRED PPL APRP PPL SUBJ PPL voe PRON PRONCOMP PRON*INF PRONOBJ PRONAPRP PRONSUBJ PRONVOC SUBDADJT SUBJ PREPAPRP TO* *INF THERADJT AUXV AUXV*INF AUXVPRED VERB VERBCOMP VERB*INF VERBPRED voe ADJT SUBD DETS NOT 241 Predicate Participle in an infinitive phrase Participle in an object Participle in a predicate Participle in a prepositional phrase Participle in a subject Participle in a vocative Pronoun Pronoun in a complement Pronoun in an infinitive phrase Pronoun in an object Pronoun in a prepositional phrase Pronoun in a subject Pronoun in a vocative Subordinator in an adjunct Subject Preposition in a prepositional phrase Infinitive to in an infinitive phrase There adjunct Auxiliary verb Auxiliary verb in an infinitive phrase Auxiliary verb in a predicate Verb Verb in a complement Verb in an infinitive phrase Verb in a predicate Vocative Adjunct Subordinator Subordinator and relative pronoun Not New categories added for this study and not part of the HAWKEYE Automatic Parsing Program: INTJVOC ADVB@SEN ABSU ABC ABO GER Interjection in a vocative Sentence adverb Subject in an absolute Complement in an absolute Object in an absolute Gerund APPENDIX C REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLES OF PRINTOUTS BASED ON THE CORRECTED PARSED TEXT Sample Parsed Sentences Number Words Running in Sentence Word Count Line Group Reference Number Functions · r · 1 1001001 6 ABSU ABC PREO (Key applies throughout Appendix C.) 242 t1 SUBJ Ae~u APRP OET NOUN DET A PASS ACF.: • THE NGUN PREP ADJ NCU" COCR NOUN OET NOUN ADJ ACJ COOR PPL V~R8 ADYB FLOUI~ CF DAMP CLAY AND PEBBLES• THE '9ALL S SL I MY• GREEN-MOSSED ANO OAIPPINGe SLOP D OCWNWAAO. tl 115 l 1002001 !5 APRP SUBJ PRED COMP APRP PREP OET NOUN OET NCUN VERB NOUN PREP "OJ NCUN CCOR ADJ NOUN IN THE CAVE-ATMOSPHERE THE TORCHES BECAME STUDIES IN RED eLAZE ANO BLACK SMOKE. !5 31 l 1005001 J SUAJ PRED CCMP OF.T NOUN VERB "-'OT ACJ HIS COMPAN ICNS WERE! "OT 8RAV!. J 36 l 1006001 3 SUBJ PREO COMP PRON VF.RtJ AOJ THEY wERE 1 LASTle 16 3777 2 9001001 J SUBJ PREO APRP OET AOVB AOJ NOUN VERE PREP OET NCUN PREP NOUN PREP OET NCUN PREP ADJ NOU~ A VERY LITTLE OOY sroco UPON A HEAP OF GRAVELl FOR THE HONOR OF RUM ALLEY. 21 3193 SUBJ PRED OBJ APAP ACJT PRON AUXV VERB ~OUN PREP coo~ VEAU PREP PRC 2 QC0200I PREO APRP PRED APRP PPL NCUN PHEP OEr 9 NOUN DETS AlXV VERB AOVB PREP OET HE w4S1 THROWING 5TONES AT ~□•LING URCHINS MADLY AOOUT THE HEAP ANO PELTING AT HIM. FRCM DEVIL•s ~ow -~c WERE CIRCLING 7 3814 2 9003001 • SUBJ PRED CCMP •PRP OE T ADJ NOUN ~ERO ACJ PAEP NOUN HIS INFANTILE CCUNTEN•NCE WAS LIVID WITH FURYe 12 3821 2 900"001 J SUBJ PREO Aµpp DET ADJ ~OUN AUXV VERB PREP OET NOUN PREP ADJ ADJ NOUN HIS SMALL BODY ~A51 ~RtTHINGl IN THE D LIVERY OF GREAT• C~IMSCN OATHSe NCUt,, 243 18 33003 3 41022COI 8 SURJ APAP PAEO APAP CLAU SU~J PAEO APAP DET NOUN PREP DET PPL NUVN VERB PREP OET AD~ NCUN COOR OET NOUN AUXV VERS PAEP NOUN ' A PICTURE F~CM AN ILLUSTRATED WEE~LY •As UPON THE LOG WALL ANO THREE ~IFLes WERE PARALLELED ON PEGS. 10 33021 3 •U02300l 3 SUBJ PREO APRP DE T ADJ NCUN V~AB P~EP OET ADJ NOUN PREP NOUN SOME TIN DISHES LAV 0~ A SMALL PILE OF FIRE-wcoo. 6 33031 3 4102400 I SUAJ PREO APAP NOUN A~XV VERB PREP ACJ ~CUN EQUIPMENTS WERE HUNG CN HANDY PROJECTICNSe 15 SUBJ APRP PAED DET NC1UN P~EP THE SMOKE Ff.OM THE R00"4e 33037 3 41025001 7 CBJ CLAU PRfO A~~~ OET NCUN P~EP NOUN VEA~ OET ~cu~ coo~ VERe PREP OET NOUN THE FIRE AT Tl~ES NEGLECTED THE CLAY-CHIMNEY AND WREATHED INTO 45896 4 43001001 10 20 SUBJ PRED APRP DET NOUN VERB OET NCUN PPL CLAU S~BJ PREO OBJ CO~P APRP COMP AOVB PREP OET NOUN COCR DET PPL NOUN VERB OET NCUN PPL PART PREP THE COLDI PASSED RELUCTANTLY FAOM T~E EART~ ANO T~E RETIRING fCGS REVEALED AN ARMY STRETCHED CUTI ON THE HILLSe RESTINGe 22 4'591f 9 AOJT SUBJ PREO APRP SUBJ SUBD DET NOUN VERB P~EP PREP OET NCUN FAEP NOUN 4 4J002001 CLAU PRfC •INF AP~P NOUN PREP NOUN OET NOUN VERf COOR VERB TO• VERB PREP NOUN AS THE LANOSC PE CHANGED F~CM eACWN TO GREENl THE AAMY AWAKENEC ANO BEGAN T02 TREMBLE •ITH EAGERNE~S AT THE NOISE CF RUMORSe 459J8 4 43003001 7 APRP ACJT PREO APAP 19 SUBJ PREO CBJ PRON VERB OET ADJ NOUN ~CUN P~EP OET NOUN OETS AUXV VERB PREP AOJ NOUN PREP ADJ NOUN PREP [T CAST 115 EYES UPCN THE ROACS MUO TO PROPER THOPOUGHFARESe WHIC~ WERE GROWING FRGM LONG TROUGHS OF LIQUID 45 45957 4 43004001 14 suav APRP PREO APRP CLAU APRP ADJT SUBJ PREO APAP SUBJ PREO OEJ APRP DET NOUN ADJ PREP DET NCUN PREP OET NCUN VEAB PREP OET DET NOUN COOR PREP NOUN SUBO OtT NOUN AUXV vewe PAEP DET ADJ NCU~ P~CN AvXV VERe AOVB DET ADJ NOUN A AIVEAo A~ eEA-TINT EO IN T~E SHADOW OF ITS BANKSo PLRLEO AT T~f AR~Y•S FEET ANO AT NIGHT •~EN TH E STREAM HAC BECCME CF A SORROwFUL eLACKNESS ONE COULD SEE ACROSS T~t RED EYE-LIKE GLEA~ OF HCSTILE CA~P-FIRES SET IN T~E LO• B~OWS OF DISTA~T HILLS. 25 8898 5 18001001 ll *l"F ~PRP SUBJ PRED OBJ APRP AOJT PRED su~J AOJT PAFO DET ADJ NCUN VERU DET NOUN PR F.P NOUN coo~ SURO VEAB ADVB TO* ALXV VF RB PM P NOUN NOUN PREP OETS A~XV VERB ADJ THE CAFE COLORADO HA51 A FkCNl OF WHITEl A~D GCLDo IN r.HICH 1S1 SET PLATE-GLASS •INOOWS T~~Nl ARE CCMMONLV T02 BE1 FOUND IN ME~lco. 10 8923 5 18002001 6 SUBJ APRP SUBJ PRCO ACJT SUBJ DET AUJ NCUN PREP NCvN PPL AOVB VERB SUBO NOUN TWO LITTLE WINGS OF WILLOW FLIP-FLAPPl~G INCESSANTLY SERVE AS OOOASe LARGER ADJ NCUN 244 8933 5 18003001 9 20 APRP SUBJ PREO PREP PRON ADJ PREP DtT NOUN APRP CLAU PAEO AP~P PREO APRP ,DJ NCUN VERB AOVB PREP DET NOUN COOR AUXV VERB PREP DET NOUN AOVB UNDER THE~ S~ALL STRAY DOGS GO FURTIVELY INTO THE CAFEle ANO AREi SHIED INTO THE STREET AGAIN BY T~E WAITERS. 30 8953 s 1 a00•001 5 APRP AnJT PRED SUBJ APRP PREP o~r NOUN THFP Vc Rb ADVB DET ADJ NOUN PREP NOUN PPL PREP DET ADJ COOR ADJ NOUN P~EP DET ) DJ NCUN P~EP DET ADJ NCUN PPL PAEP ADJ NCUN ON THE SIDEWALK THERE I~ ~L•AYS A OECOAATIVE EFFECT lh LOUNGE~S. RANGING FROM. THE NEWLY-~RRIVEO ANC SUPERlCR TOURIST TO THE OLD VETERAN CF THE .SILVER MINES BRONZED BY VIOLE~T SUNS. 9 1so•1 6 21001001 SUBJ APRP PREO OBJ APRP PRON PHEP P~ON VfR8 DET NOUN PREP OET NOUN NONE OF THEM KNE• T~E CCLCR CF THE SKYe t 4 15050 6 21002001 e SUBJ PRED CLAU PREO APRP AOJT PREO APRP OET NOUN VERB ADVB COOR AUXV VERB PREP OET NOUN OETS VERB PREP PRON THEIR EYES GLANCED LEvELe ANO WERE FASTENED UPCN THE WAVES THAT SWEPT TOWARD THEMe 28 150~4 6 21003001 12 SUBJ PREO APRP ADJT P~EO APRP CLAU sueJ AP~P PREO OBJ" APRP . DET N0UN VERB PREP DET NCUN PR EP NOU N PR EP PREP OCT NOUN OETS VERB PREP PPL NOUN COOR PRCN PPEP DET NCUN VERA OET NOUN PMEP DET NCUN THESF WAVES WFREI OF THE HUE CF SLATE, SAV F. FCR T~E TOPSe WHICH WERE! OF FOAMING WHITEle ANO ALL2 OF THE MEN KNEW THE CCLCRS OF THE SEAe 27 15092 t 21004001 12 SUBJ PREO CLAU -PRP SUBJ PREC COMP APRP AOJT PRED COMP APRP OET NOUN VERB COOR VERE COC R VERB COOR VERB CCOR PREP OET NCUN OET NOUN VERB ADJ PREP NOUN OETS VERO PPL ADVB PREP NCLN PREP NCUN THE HORIZCN ~AH~OWED ANC WICEN EO , AND DIPPED ANO ROSEe ANO AT ALL TIMES ITS EDGE WAS JAGGED WITH •AVES THAT SEEMED THRUST UP lN POINTS LIKE ROCKSe IJ 20781 7 JOOOlOOl 4 SUBJ PREO OBJ ~PRP DET NUUN A~XV VERB DET NOUN PREP PREP DET NOUN PREP OET NCUN TWENTY-FIVE ~EN WERE ~AKING A RCAO CUT OF A PATH UP2 THE ~tLLSIDEe 27 20794 7 30002001 12 SUBJ APRP PREO COMP •INF CLAU PAEO SUBJ AOJT PAEO OBJ APRP DET ADJ NCUN PREP OET NOUN VERB ADJ TO• V£R8 COOR AOVB A~XV A~XV VERB OET OET NOUN COOR ~OUN OETS VERB OET PPL NOUN PREP NCUN THF LIGHT EATTEAlES IN THE REAR WEREl (~PATI EN T T02 AOVANCEle BUT FJASTl MUST BEl DONE ALL T~AT DIGGING ANC SMOOTHING . WHIC~ GAINS NO INCRUSTED MEDALS FROM WAR. IS SUAJ PREr> APAP DET NOUN VE~B THE MEN WORKED TRAIL• 2082 l 7 3000 300 l 7 CLAU SUBJ PRED AP~P PREP NCUN CCOR DET NOUN AUXV VERB PREP OET ACJ ,\OJ NOUN LIKE GARDENERS, AND A AOAO ~ASl G~OwlNG FRO~ T ►E OLD PACK-ANIMAL I 2 20636 7 3000400 l 6 SUBJ PREO APRP AOJT PREO CCMP NOUN VERB PREP OET NCUN PREP NOUN DETS VERB ADJ AOJ NCUN TREES AAC~ED FRCM A FIELD OF GUINEA-GRASS WHICH RESEMBLED YOUNG wlLO COANe 1• 2569• e 33001001 6 SUBJ PRED APRP CLAU PREC COMP OET ADJ NOUN AUXV VtRe PREF NOUN PREP OET NOUN COOR VERB ADVB AOJ MY CHIEFTAIN ANCtSTOR~ HAO LIVED AT GLANDCRE FCR MANY CE~TURIES ANO -E~EI VERY WELL-K,-_0111111• 40 2570e a 33002001 1• 245 PREO SUBJ PREO O~J AFRP •INF oeJ -PRP CLAU SUBJ PREO APRP SUBJ PREO .,,-, ✓ AOVB DET NOUN AUXV VERB OCT ADJ NOUN PREP ~CUN P~E OET NCUN PPL AOVe ro• VERe OET NOUN PREP ~CUN P~EP PRON CODA CET ADJ NCUN VERB PREP OET NOUN PREP VERB HARDLY A SHIP COULD P~SS T~ CLO HEAD OF KtNSALE WITHOUT SOME eoATS PUTTING OFF T02 EXCHANGE THE TIME 0~ DAY WITH HER1 A~D CUA FA~ILY NAME •AS CN MEh•S TONGUES IN HALF1 ThE SEA-PGRTS OF EUROP • I CAREi SAY. 27 25748 e 3 C0300I 11 SUBJ PAED AFRP AUJT PAEO AP~P CLAU SUEJ PAED OBJ APRP OET NOUN VERB FAEP NCUN OETS VERA PREP NCUN PPL FREP hOUN CCCR PRON VERB OET NOUN PREP PNCN PREP OT ACJ NOUN PREP OET PPL NOUN MY ANCESTORS LIV DIN CASTLES WHICH wEREl LIKE CHURCHES STUCKI ON ENO ANO THEY DRANK THE BEST2 OF EVERYTHING AMID THE JOYOUS CRIES OF A OEYOTEO PEASANTRYe 50 2577! ! 3300•001 23 &SEN SUBJ PREO CLAU ACJT SUBJ PRED OBJ APRP SUBJ PREO OBJ APRP AOJT PREO COMP CLAU SU J PREO •INF ~PRP AOJT APRP COOR OET ADJ NCUN VERE ACVB ACVB AOVB COOR SUBD PRON AlXV VERB DET ~OUN PREP NOUN PRON VERB PRON PREP DET NOUN COOR OET OET NOUN COOR ADJ NCUN NOUN DETS NCUN BUT THE G 00 Tl~ S PA SS~O AaAY SLO~ E~OUGH A~O •~NI ~AO REAC~fO T~E AGE OF EfGHTEENle WE ~ADI NCBCOY CN TH E L-NC BUT A FEW FISHER-FOLK ANO SMALL FARMERS. PEOPLE WHO • -~ C l AL~OST LAW-ABIOIN~ ANO ~y FATHER Cj~E TC2 DIE MORE2 FRO~ THE OJSAPPOJNTMENT THAN FRCM A~Y CAU (Note: When forms and words in a sentence exceed a specified number. the computer docs not print the excess.) Sentences Ordered by Group and Function t lt7• I h01900I 5 r,~FN ~U~J APPP PO~~ Qn J • cooq C T ADJ NrUN PA~P OFT NCUN PA p NOUN AUXV VEPR PRON '1UT A r Al.Sf N'JTF 1 .... TH E 5rJUNOS or NlGHT IUD (ONVULS 0 1 THEM. 21 l P4 2 9 ~~FM ~URJ APPP pµ En cn~P AOV 7 n~ T A~J NOUN P~F V µq T :1 • Al.,)(V VFlh\ 1 4022001 AP nr> CLAU r> CC •INF' CE T NUIIN MJXV VERB PPL Pn EP OCT ADJ NOUN COOR AUXV AOVB wJTH r"' lJTl ~ TH'1USAN SP IRITS OF THF alNOS OPANCHE A O W(~E LOWLY PLCAOINC. TO?. I MAD e~co~E ENTANGLED IN THE PINE LOn5E"NED• q 7lt.4 2 t~ l ZCC t 19 CO~P O~J Ar>RD SUAJ PRE COMP AOJT SUOJ PREO OBJ AOJT <;UOJ APRP PQEO nAJ ,, J PRCCD SU"'') PR nN p i;EP r>llO"I V i-fHi NC1lJN pp or T OFT ,_OJ NOUN P~EP NOUN COOR NOUN OET V r, i\ D V H /I "1J <;U91) l) F ~ N r)U v ro fl NrlJN C rnR V Rl3 ~,i.')(1N Anv~ tF nN~ or THC~ p~ .... F~~ - JNCS C ~T~INING THE MOST UTILE OISTINCTl0'4S AETWEEN Qf (;t➔ T A"I ') ..,i.;, N r. t. THC "j AU.f-O V wA<; l"'"" C (ATELY ,OIArH" t F rHC ACTOI< ~WANT wt · )~f.O N .55 . NO DEN C.VNC C: n Hf M A(CCRDINGLY. 11 4~76 2 1 04001 4 APO ~OJT pr~o r.URJ pq -:, 01: T ADJ NCUN T•i f: Q VCRf"\ Nl1UN NOUN NOUN COOR NOUN t .\LL U'4HAtJOY PLACt:, TH-= PF iffl1 F. l PUCKE TS , OAOO,..Se RAGS Al'.0 OOTTLESe NOUN 246 ~, 4 q 94 4 4 4 • l 2 CO 1 l C' PPF.D OBJ ~SEN ADJT SUBJ PREO O~J * 1 NF OBJ SURJ TO• V RA PI-C'-' C'10Q t>ET PQOI', PRON AUXV VER~ NOUN NOUN COOR NOUN AOVB SUAD OET NOUN VERB PRnN PRON Tfl? 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ON F- D ~Ft-. IN D TH C '3 A. Q . LOOl<FC OVFR2 AT THI S <iT OQM WITH A SHADOW OF A.Nl(J ET Y UP CN HIS FACE. 4A 1 5712 6 2 1 0 100C t 1 6 PRFP SUA J AP~P Pf.FD Cn M~ CLAU ~c:;FN APRP D~fD 5U~J ,\PQ P AA<;U A~~n AB$ U AOO OBJ APPP VERB NOUN OFT OFT N \Jll"I Pl?EP f;f- N n UN PQFW OFT NOUN PP,. I-' N OlJN V f-'.:P(l £) T ADJ N CU C'10P A OVR PREP or T N'lU"I P 1 1F 1"' PP(lN v r:n~ A. OVH f) ::; T OU N PPt:P Af) J N OU N DE T NOUN I PL ADV(] NOUN TH f MANN t=R r's: H E:R SCPAMµLr ll V[4 THl=<;J:' WALL<; nF \o/AT EP ( 5 A ~y c;rtc THIN G , ANO, MOPEn V~P , AT THE T O~ OF TH F ~ W ~PF I nROJN A~ tLY TH E~E PAOAL[MS IN WHITE •1'T n-? , TH FOAM R A (: (NG OO W"I Fl1t)~ TH - SUMM IT OF f ACH IIIAV F , nLOUIIHNG A ~ f: W L c AP, AND A L E AP FPO._. TH E AIAe ~o 16674 6 21oasoo1 16 &SEN A JT po~o 5UAJ •INF SUAJ PQ F OAJ •INF OAJ •INF APRP SUBJ APPP ABSU A8C A V9 Sll ' n TH E vrqR OET ADJ NClJN Tf1* VFRI=\ PRON V EQB Al')V=\ OFT NOUN TO• VERB DET NOU COQ~ VfR PAP NOUN PPL PEP OET NOUN COOR PPFP NOUN ADJ T~ ~ N IF TH CnE PF ~o TANGI L F THIN ~ Tn ? H~ OT Hf F~EL5. P ER ~aos. THE O F. SIRE T02 C ONFR ONT A o R5CNIFICATION AN~ INDULG ~ IN PLEAS. BOWEDl TO ONFl KNFEe ANO ~ITH HAND S SUPPLICANT. ~4 2 2f>6 7 ~ C740 0 1 ll PREO APnP PrED 5U J ABSU A80 CLAU AP P SUAJ PREO APPP vc 8 P 4fP l')E T N~UN cn~P pqfP Df T NOUN AUXV OFT NOUN cnoq NOUN OET NOUN PPL OET PPL NnU N C~QD PQEn n~T NOUN OET ADJ NCUN VE RA PREP DE T ADJ NOUN PP E P NOUN .\ W OAYEn ru:·L □w TH t HILL AN'1 f:'EH IN TH I:. ~ ATTFRY WF.AE I THF HOASFS A O LIMBF.~S. THE OIOCRS CHEC KING TH f lQ PAWING M OUNT S , AND P~HINO EACH RIDER A PEO BLANKET FLAM~O AGAIN S T THF EP VFNT C.PEENl OF TH F PUSHES . 51 22300 7 30075001 23 259 ADJT SUBJ PRFD APRP SUAJ APAP PRED APAP CLAU PREU OBJ APRP ABSU ABC AOJT SUBJ ABSU APPP ADJT PRED COMP APRP voe SUBD OE. T O JN Vf:.~ H 1•1-< P D T NCiUN PRCN PR EP DET ADJ NCUN V EI.B PREP CET NOUN PREP DET PPL NOUN COOR VERO OCT NCUN PREP NCUN A DJ su~o NnUN ADJ ADJ ADJ NOUN AS TH E INFA T~Y MDV ED AL O~ THE RO AD, SUMEl OF TH E HATT ER Y HU~SES TURNED AT THE NOI SE OF TH ~ T AMPLI~G FEE T AN D SUH VEYCD THE M EN •ITH E Y S DfEP AS WELLS• SEA ENFe MOURNFUL, GENFAOUS cYES , LIT HEART-BREAKINGLY WITH SC~ETHING THAT WAS AKIN TO A PHILOSOPHY, A RELIGION H ?5 277A7 A ~6027001 ,~ APRP 5UPJ PP~, CO~P 4nJT SU9J AOJT 5UPJ PPEO P4fD nET NCUN pon~ VEAR ADVR ADJ OFTS NOUN - , ~nJ NrU N VfQ~ PC N PQF~ nrT NOUN CLAU ABSU AAC P PED OAJ APRP Pt,L SU130 Nf'U N ALXV VER" CCOA PRON PPL 9Y THI S Tl~ ~ . TH~Y W EREl SO ANC.AY THAT ~ICKF.Y, SF.EINGl AN O I ~rlNG? A ~Eqt LAD, TO UK ~ [ rAQM THf ROOM. HOW THINGS WERE GnlNG• ?O 3U'lJ PQfD AP!-t. COOR ADVC3 ADJ COOR OET NOUN PREP OET ~F QCn ,uT UPON TMF ~RIOG~ . ALL? Nr.t~ E n~ TH E CIT Y WA~ TEQPIHLe . ~UCH2 INTERE5T EO RUT SOMEWHAT FEARFUL FOR THF r l t-\ • Phrases in Text as a Whole Ordered by Function APAP PnFP AOJ NO UN PRFP AOJ 4 "> O 1 NOUN PPL PRFP nET ADJ NOU N nF H~ S TfLF. C~MP-F(AF.S 5FT IN TH E Lnw ARO WS OF f)f';TA°"T HILL'; • APAP PREP AOJ NOU~ PPL PREP NOUN ??QQq OF n tn ~nLDtEP5 . HARDCNEO TO R ATTLE ADPP pn~p A0 J "I OU~ PAFP ~P1C OF H AVY V HICLES AT ?.? . .1 'I T•1 J:,QIJG l1 DE "ISF SH~tJARF.R Y FROM APRP PAFP ADJ NUN PRFP ADJ NOUN 1074 LIK~ BQAS51 NAILS IN CRUO ('A . l(rTc; • 53602 WITH LARGE FLASHES OF OPA"GE-Cn OREO FLAME. Ar>AP PPEP AOJ NOUN PREP ADJ NO.IN PREP ADJ NOUN 45948 FR0'4 L~NG TROUGHS OF Lt lJfO ~UD TO PROPER THOROUGHFARES• APAP PQFP ADJ NOUN PREP DET ADJ ADJ NOUN ,t~44 AT KEN tNGTON GARDENS ON A FINF 5UNOAY AFTERNOONe APAP PRF P ADJ Nf'lJ"4 PA E'P D":T U)J NOUN 7 341 AT QFGUL AA INT~RVALS ON TH C Ln~rA SHFLVES. 11~73 OF OUtFT M F ~H~AS OF THE AN LO- AX nN CnLONY ,1~?l TO l(FNSINGT N GARDENS ON A SUNDAY AFTF:RNCl0114e APPP P~ P AOJ NOU~ P~FP OET ADJ NOUN r>Rr:P ni=r N('JU"4 iA 57 OF OLD •OM NIN THE AEO GL OWI OF TH~ PCAT-FIRE APPP PRFP ADJ NOUN PQEP OET AOJ PPL ADJ NC1U N 11?~2 WITH ALUF FLASHFS FAOM A c,µ~ AT UllJNG ELECTRIC LAMPe AP PP PRFP Ar")J N U°"' P l~ O OFT OET NCIJN PPL AOVR PREP OFT OUN APRP PAEP 53191 ~F f)AOK nn~lr:~ WITH A FFW HEADS S T(rKtNG CUAi nU5LY nvrPl THE TnP. AOJ NOUN PPFP OFT "40UN 4 l 7 IN AP OAQ I" T r>F ';PFP AT I ON TO JTS FOUNOI\TJONe SA It w I TH WH OI.F 1111- ffF L 5 • ON THF S I DF.- WALK • 5Q78 IN f"IJFF R "IT PARTS OF THF CITYe A595 INT C.LnrJ'-1Y DISTRICTS NFAA THF RIVF'Re l 4 t 4 l L P <F -..n 5 T p LIZARDS TOWAPO TH C411APe l 7~06 AT vA~1 nus POINTS ON ITS SUPFAC'E l R 0 IN 11r Pc; ~K AUANOON AT HIS FOFe 1Qf>7l OF L . 4F <;t➔ADfJWS ON THE GRfJUNDe 20C ;> IN S ILV PY W4VF.S OVFR T1-4 E GJ;lASSe 2 2 0 ?f> OF p Fll"'lNARY P F. FL EC TI ON FnR THIS <;ITlJATI0"'-1• 2R461 T OFFt="4<; I VF TACTICS REFORF AN ASS AULT 4A27 OF "' C1 NOTONOU<; LIFE IN 4 C A"'P• 51 20 WITH SHE P-Lll<El FYES AT T11f LIEUTFNANT 260 51636 OF OAPK DEBPIS UPON THE GROUND. 53786 WITH D XTEROUS 1 HORSEMANSHIP PAST THE "4ANe APAP PP P AOJ NOU"" PlffP OET NOU"" COOR PREP PRON PREP OET PPL COOR PPL NOUN 5118Q WITHOUT APPARENT AIM INTO THE S~OKE OR AT ONE OF THE 8LUAAED ANO SHIFTJPl,G FORMS APAP PAFP ADJ NCUN PAFP DET NO~N PREP 0 T AUJ NCUN COOR PPEP OET PPL NOUN PAFP OET NCUN 46Q9~ WITH EAGFA EARS TO THE WOROS 0F THF TALL SOLOl[A ANO TO THE VARIED COMMFNTS OF HIS CCMRAO Se APRP PAP ADJ NOUN PR POET NCUN PREP OET NnUN 20979 OF SPAAE AMMUNITION AT THE TOP OF THE HILL APRP PAFP AOJ NOUN PREP OET NOUN PREP OFT Pl"L NOUN 20?~0 LIKE ALOODY SPECTRES AT Ttif •PFf?TUAES OF A HAUNTED HOUSEe APPP PREP ADJ NOUN PAEP OET NCUN PREP NOUN 20362 fPI, PHOSPHORFSCF.NT INACTION LIKE A PILE OF (MERALOSe APRP PREP ADJ NOUN PREP OET PPL ADJ NOUN 545?7 IN tiOUND-L IKE LFAPS T~WAAO THE WAVING RLUE LI NE Se APRP PPEP ADJ NOUN PREP OET PPL NOUN 4665~ OF WHtT(Q LIGHT UPON THE CLlJTTFPf[) Fl noA. 546~5 LIKF Ltr.HT TOYS BfTWEEN THE CONTFNDING FnRCESe APRP PREP AOJ NnUN PAF.P NOUN A9A5 WITH VAR(O~S SH,DFS OF INTERFST l43C5 WITH TF.NOFR OPEAM~ OF A$$AS51NATION• APRP PRFP ADJ NOUN PREP NUN PREP ADJ NOUN 55q •ITH V~LLnw FINtS~INGS. IN ACCOROANCF. WITH <;lJI L IVAN AFSTHET res. ~064 OF wrT WANOERtAS. IN ATTITUOf S OF CHRONIC o,:JECTIONe 261 Word Frequency Counts Group 1 146 A l A-GLITTER 1 ABANDOl'I.MENT 1 A~OUT t M,.OVE 1 ABRUPTLY 2 A!-iSENCF 1 ACCENTED t ACCENTEOl l ACCENTS Groue 4 2JQ A l A-BLAZE l A-FLA.RF 11 ABOUT l A~OUTl l ARSC:NCE l ACCEPT l ACCfJAOING l ACCOuNTS ' ACCUMULATE Group 6 192 A l A"UNOON 2 4qQM IN ABLE l Af3Qt,1f ATION l AI JO"INATIONS l A!30UT 1 .\HOVE ~ A AUPT 1 .\BSENCE 1 ABSOLUTE Group 8 lQO A • 1 o\-RL.AZE' l AUILITY 4 AnLE 5 AIJ UT 2 AOAOAO ? A. AUr>TLY 1 ABSOLUTE l AOSOLUTELY l ACC IDEfl.T Group 2 196 A l ABLE 8 ABOUT 4 ABOUTl 2 AAfJVF. l ACCf'IRDINGLY 2 ACCUQACY l ACHIEVED l ACl<.N□--LEDGMENT 2 ACROSS Group 5 lAl A l A ANnONEO l AntLITY l ABODE l Mrnur 3 AOr"VTl 2 AAOVE l A'3USEO l ABUSING l ACCORCING Group 7 164 A 4 .\BOUT 3 Af:'fJVE ? Ali SOLU TE'LY I An5UA () 1 ACC0"4Pl ISH 1 ACC OUNT D l ACCllUTAEMENTS 4 .\CJ10SS 1 o\CTION 262 A Comparable Passage from Chapter VII of The Red Badge of Courage 1anuscript and Draft Manuscript 5 51833 4 46018001 SUBJ PF.ED O J DET NUN VERB PRON NCUN THIS LANDSCAPE GAVE HIM ASSURANCE. 5 51838 COMP OBJ DET ADJ NOUN PPL NOUN A FAIR FIELD, HOLDING LIFEe 6 51843 4 46020001 5UBJ PAFD COMP AµRp PRON VERA DET NOUN PREP NOUN rr WAS THE RELl~ION OF p ACE. 3 2 12 51849 4 46021001 7 SUBJ P~EO AOJT SUBJ PRFD •INF OBJ PRON AUXV VERB SUUO DET ADJ NOUN AUXV VERB TO• VERB NOUN IT WOULD DIE IF ITS TIMIO EYES WERE COMPFLLED T02 SEE JLOOOe 13 ~1861 4 46022001 6 SURJ PRED OBJ •JN~ CC~P A~RP r>RnN V RH NOIJN T□• VERH Dl: T NOUN PREP DET AOJ NOUN PREP NCUN HE CONCEIVED NATURE T02 OE A WOMAN WITH A DEEP AVERSION TO TRAGEDY. 14 51874 4 46023001 8 SUBJ PRED OBJ APRP CLAU SUBJ PREO AP~P PRON VEAH DET NCUN PRFP DET AOJ NOUN COOR PRON VERe PREP PPL NOUN HE THREW A PINE-~ONE AT A JOVIAL SQUIPREL ANO H RAN WITH CHATTERING FEARe 22 51888 4 •~024001 9 APQP SUtlJ P~ D ~UUJ OBJ SUOJ APAD PPED APRP 263 ADJ P~EP O~T NOUN P~ON y - R8 COJR PPL DET NCUN AOVB PREP PREP DET NOUN VERB AOVB PRE D D T NOUN PPFP NCUN HIGH IN A TREE-TuP. HE STOPPED ANO, POKING HIS HEAD CAUTIOUSLY FROM OEHIND A BqA~CH, LOCKED DOWN •ITH AN AIR OF TP~P10AT10Ne 7 51910 4 46025001 SU J PRED COMP APRP OET NnUN VtR8 ADJ PRF.P OT NOUN THF YOUTH fELT T~IUMPHANT AT THIS EXHIOITIONe 6 51917 4 46026001 Af)J T PREO SUIJJ 1-'RED THEP VE~n DET NOUN PAON VERB THERE #AS THE LAW, Ht SAJO• 6 51923 4 46027001 SUl3 J PAED 0'3J Nnllt..J AUX V VERO PRON l')ET NOU"I ~ATURE HAU GIVEN HIM A SIGN. J 14 !1929 4 46028001 6 APRP SUBJ PREO APRP CBJ PREO DET NOUN ADVB PREP GER THE SQUIRREL IMNEOIATELY DET NOUN AU~V VERB PREP OET NCUN P~EP NCUN UPON RECOGNIZING A OANGERe HAO TAKEN TO HIS LEGSe WITHOUT ADOe 22 51 943 SUBJ PAED SUBJ 08J APRP PRON AUXV NOT VERB ADV8 NOUN PPEP DET ADJ NGUN 4 46029001 PREO I\PRP PPL DET ADJ 7 NOUN PREP OET NOUN COOR VERB PREP OET HF DI~ NOT STANO STOLIOLYe OARIN~ HIS FURAY BELLY TO THE MISSILE. ANO DIE WITH AN UPWAROl GLANCE AT THE SYMPATHETIC HEAVENS• 14 51965 4 46030001 7 APAP SUBJ PAED ADJT sueJ p~ D OOJ PREP DET NCUN PRON A~XV VER~ AOVB ADVB SUBD DET NOU ON THE CONT~ARYe HE HAO FLED •s1 FAST AS HlS N AUXV VERB PRON ~ LEGS C~ULD CARRY HI~. 14 51979 4 46031001 8 &SEN SUBJ PAEO COMP PREO ~SEN COMP •PAP COOR PRON VER AOVO DET ADJ NOU~ AOVB ACVB OEf NOUN PREP DET NCUN A~c~: •AS BUTI AN OHOl~ARY SGUIRREL TOOi DOUBTLESS. NO PHILOSCPHER OF HIS 10 51993 4 46032001 7 SUAJ PREU SURJ AOJT ~UBJ PREO APRP D T NOUN V R~ µpL DETS NOUN VE~ PMFP DEf NOUN THE YOUTH WENDED, FEELING THAT NATURE W4S OF HIS M(NOe 12 52003 4 46033001 9 SUBJ PR D OBJ APRP AOJT PRED AnJT SUOJ PREO PRON VFRtl OcT ~CUN ~Pf~ NC'UN D~TS v Enu SUUD OET NOUN VERB SHE REINFORCED HIS ARGUMENTS WITH PROOFS THAT LIVED WHERE THE SUN SHONEe Draft 5 39512 3 41553 001 SUAJ PRFD OOJ OEr NUUN VERB PRON NCUN THIS LAND5CAPE GAVE HIM ASSURANCEe 6 39517 3 41554001 SUOJ PR~D CCMP APRP PRON VER~ DET NOUN PRr.P NOUN IT W.4S TliE RELIGION OF PEACEe 3 12 9523 ~ 41~55001 7 SUBJ PRED ADJT SUBJ PREO ♦INF OBJ PR ON AUXV VERH SUOD D T A J NOU~ AUXV VERB TO• VERB NOUN IT WOULD DIE IF ITS TIMID EYES W RE CCMPELLED T02 SE BLOOD• 264 ADJ 13 39535 3 41556001 6 SUBJ PREO OJ •INF COMP APRP PRON VERB NOUN TO• VERB OCT NOUN PREP OET ADJ NOUN PREP NOUN HE CONCEIVED NATURE T02 Be A WOMAN WITH A DEEP AV RSlON TO TRAGEOYe 16 3954e ~ •1557001 a SUBJ PRED OBJ APRP CLAU SUBJ PRED APRP PRON VtHB OFT NOUN PREP D T ADJ COOR ADJ NOUN COOP PRON VERA PREP PPL NOUN HE THQ F w A PIN~-CONE AT A JOVIAL ANO PUT-VALIANT SQUIRREL AND IT RAN WlTH CHATTERING ~EARe 6 39564 3 41558001 AOJT PRED SUBJ PRED THER VERB DtT NOUN PRON VER8 THE~E WAS TrE LAW. HE TrOUGHT. 6 39570 3 41559001 SUBJ PRED OBJ NOUN AUXV VERA PPON DET NOUN NATURE HAD GIVEN HIM A SIGNe 3 . 8 39576 3 41560001 7 SUBJ PRED SUBJ ADJT SU~J PREO APRP PRON VFRH PPL DETS NCUN VtAA PREP PRON HE wCNDED FEELING THAT NATUME AGREED W(TH HIMe 12 q5 4 3 41561001 9 5UBJ PRED OBJ APAP ADJT PR EO ADJT SUAJ PREO PRON VLA l1 OFT NOUN PRfP NCUN DETS VCR~ suno OET NOUN VFRB IT RtlNFORCED HIS ARGUM~NTS wlTH PROOFS THAT LIVED WHERE THE SUN S►ONEe 265 . 266 APPENDIX D THE T-UNIT AS A MEASURE OF SYNTACTIC MATURITY In the past, scholars have used sentence length as a criterion for studies of style and authorship identification. Recently some statisticians, notably C. B. Williams, who defines sentence length as the "number of words between successive full stops," have argued that sentence length defined this way provides a legitimate measure of sty listic variation. However, a number of critics disagree with sentence length as a reliable indicator, one of them, Kai Rander Buch, maintain ing that over a period of years an author's sentence length may alter so radically that "no proof can with any certainty :.,e established to the effect that two samples [of an author's sentences] can belong to the same category."1 Crane's average sentence length: Number Number of Average Group 2 of Words Sentences Sentence Length 1 3678 274 13.42 2 5022 287 17.50 4 6780 455 14.90 5 5269 281 18.75 6 5727 282 20.31 7 4862 226 20.51 8 6616 359 18.43 except for the anomalous Maggie (Group two) and The O'Ruddy (Group eight) progressively increases through time with a fair difference be tween the earliest and lastest work. The turn to shorter sentences in The O'Ruddy is the most easily explained. First person narration by a 267 young, exuberant narrator-hero obviously called for Crane's projecting a light-hearted, conversational style, to which shorter sentences con tribute . Yet, even so, The O'Ruddy's sentences still are longer than the earlier work . The anomaly of Maggie is less easily explained. However, critics have often noted the uneven quality of Maggie; hence the answer may simply lie in the passages chosen. That this seems to be true 1s indicated by an individual count of words and sentences 1n Chapter I and Chapter XVII of Maggie. The average sentence length in Chapter I, 14.62, is more in keeping with Crane's "Sullivan County Sketches" and The Red Badge, whereas Chapter XVII's average sentence length of 17.98 approaches that of the later work. However; although the number of words Crane places between full stops at different times in his career may be a stylistic feature of his writing, it need not indicate his loading sentences with structures that provide both variety and the means to insert narrative-descriptive details. Increased sentence length may simply result from increased compounding, which scholars universally concede increases in inverse proportion to the development of mature, effective writing. It 1s because of this fact that scholars, particularly those whose goal it is to ascertain ·the parameters of syntactic maturity and how to enhance its growth, have searched for more accurate and reliable mea surements of syntactic complexity. In 1965 Hunt proposed some new indices for assessing language development, the most important being the T-unit, a syntactic entity consisting of a main clause and any sub ordinate clauses or phrases attached to it. Such a unit, Hunt claims, has the advantage of being objectively segregated and preserving a 268 writer's subordination while eliminating coordination of main clauses, that is, compounding. 3 Although other researchers have added other indices such as the number of sentence-combining transformations per T unit and other syntactic strategies which contribute to a syntactically 4 mature style, the number of words per T-unit has turned out to be the most reliable single index. Hence, a new computer program was devised to count only T-units, none to count other measures which sometimes stray into semantics (for example, the number of adjective or adverb clauses per T-unit) or are otherwise not amenable to marking within the parsing program used . In the analysis of Crane's prose the following rules were used to segment sentences into T-units: one main clause with subject and pred icate plus any subordinate structures attached to or embedded within the clause, or a main clause with subject deleted if that clause had a different predicate pattern than the preceding main clause. "In the streets infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly 1n the way of vehicles" was tallyed as one T-unit since the predicate pattern (Subject - Verbintransitive) remains the same. "Then in other moments, he flouted these theories and assured himself that his fellows were all privately wondering and quaking" was tallyed as two T-units (Subject - Verbtransitive - Direct Object and Subject - Verbtransitive - Indirect Object - Direct Object). "But let a man adopt fighting as his business, and the thought grows constantly within him that it is his business to fight" was tallyed as two T-units (two main clauses, each with a subject and predicate). "These latter were careering madly through the crowd, precipitating minor accidents from time to time, but 269 usually fleeing like mist swept by the wind before retribution could lay its hands upon them" was tallyed as one T-unit (compound verb clus ters attached to a main clause) . The one fragment that occurs in the data (in The Red Badge: "A fair field, holding life") was counted as a single T-unit with no words added to make it a complete sentence. As for words, compounds written as two words counted as two words, those written as one counted as one word, and hyphenated compounds count ed as one word. Each item in a phrasal proper name counted as one word. Contractions (extremely rare) counted as one word. In addition, the traditional procedure of counting the coordinating conjunction with the second main clause seemed not totally justified. As simply a connector like the comma or semicolon it really belongs to neither clause, as the transformational-generative grammarians show diagrammatically in their phrase markers: s and s The computer was instructed to omit the separator in its count of T unit lengths whether a mark of punctuation or coordinating conjunction. This outlined procedure does not exactly match that of any of the researchers (whose procedures in turn do not precisely match each others). The most important difference is determination of what con stitutes a T-unit. Most researchers accept Hunt's criterion that only those main clauses with a subject count as separate T-units. Mellon is one exception since he counts as T-units what other researchers count as dependent clauses: clauses of condition, concession, reason, and 270 purpose; reasoning that conjunctive adverbs function much as coordinat- ing conjunctions do. -His reasoning was no more convincing to me than to the other researchers, so his method was not followed. Loban is another exception but his criterion unliJ·e Mellon's, results in longe1 T-units, not shorter ones. As shown by his examples of T-units counts, for some reason main clauses with postponed subjects do not count as separate T-units. A single T-unit example is: "The next day the girls looked in the paper and sure enough there was a picture of their shoes. 115 Loban does not explain his rationale for not tallying main clauses with postponed subjects as separate T-units; in any case, with or without explanation, the choice was unconvincing, hence was not adopted. Under Hunt's criterion, the one most generally accepted, the following would constitute two T-units: 1. The man stood in the hall, and he tossed his hat on the table. This would count as one T-unit: 2. The man stood in the hall and tossed his hat on the table. So also would this: 3. The man stood in the hall and tossed his hat on the table and then gave the dog a bone and after all this walked upstairs. Under the criteria adopted for the Crane study, sentence one would stil] be tallyed as two T-units, but sentence two would be tallyed also as two, and sentence three as four since predicate patterns change. A series of conjuncts with only the subject deleted when identical with the subject of the first conjunct results in no more mature writing than a series of conjuncts with the subject included. Thus, the pro cedure adopted here has the advantage of discriminating excessive 271 compounding more exactly, and although it is certainly harder and more time consuming to analyze predicate patterns than simply mark main clauses with subjects, it 1s an equally objective method. Less significant deviation from the usual procedures comes 1n counting words . Whereas O'Hare, for example, counts hyphenated com pounds as two words and phrasal propers names as one word, the opposite holds here since the computer is programmed to count words as outlined above . (The opposite ways of counting do not balance; Crane uses hyphenated compounds far more extensively than phrasal proper names.) Also, all the reearchers count coordinating conjunctions joining main clauses and count them as part of the subsequent clause. With these differences, there is no way of comparing Crane's T-unit length with those of students at various grade levels that the research ers have investigated. As a result of the methodology employed, Crane's T-unit lengths are inevitably shorter. But what we are interested in is how Crane compares with Crane, what T-unit length reveals on the con sistent basis adopted here, than external comparisons. Generally speaking, scholars have found that writing judged more mature, more effective by both lay persons and experts alike is accom panied by lengthening T-units. This is because added length mostly comes from subordinated modificational structures attached to and embedded in main clauses. Such writing, again speaking generally, is more expressive and detailed, and more precise in establishing rela tionships and hierarchies between propositions _ Additionally, the rhythm created by longer T-units flows more smoothly, is less distract ing. Because of all these factors, writers whose T-units are longer 272 command more respect for their views since both writers and views are judged more mature . Whether readers can or cannot parse a text or name all the various structures that appear in writing, they nonetheless rat writers as "better" when writing shows the more versatile manipulation of language that usually accompanies longer T-units. Therefore, even though longer T-units and what they entail are not absolutely more versatile or mature (a writer can simply add many prepositional phrases to main clauses, for example) nor an absolute requirement for all writing situations and contexts, still, the ability to produce them skillfully is important if a writer is to make choices that create various effects and project multiple voices. The value of counting T unit lengths, then, is not absolute, but it is potentially significant. Crane's T-unit lengths based on the table that follows are, by group: Group 1 2 4 5 6 7 8 Mean T-Unit Length 9.64 13.75 6 11.91 13.39 14.41 14.88 12.85 273 TABLE OFT-UNIT LENGTHS Group 1 Group 2 Number Number Number Number of T-Units of Words of T-Units of Words 1 1 2 2 14 2 7 3 19 3 13 4 30 4 13 5 31 5 15 6 36 6 29 7 34 7 21 8 26 8 26 9 31 9 22 10 20 10 18 11 21 11 20 12 12 12 24 13 19 13 17 14 13 14 13 15 9 15 8 16 11 16 12 17 9 17 10 18 6 18 8 19 5 19 9 20 5 20 5 21 2 21 7 22 3 22 8 23 2 23 8 24 5 24 3 25 2 25 4 26 2 26 4 27 1 27 4 28 1 29 1 29 1 36 2 30 1 40 2 32 2 33 2 34 2 36 5 37 1 38 2 39 1 40 3 43 274 Group 4 Group 5 8 Number Number Number Number of T-Units of Words of T-Units of Words 1 2 4 2 8 3 7 3 19 4 15 4 33 5 29 5 42 6 31 6 36 7 29 7 51 8 21 8 41 9 28 9 47 10 30 10 41 11 11 11 40 12 14 12 21 13 17 13 31 14 18 14 23 15 15 15 16 16 12 16 26 17 10 17 8 18 13 18 14 19 12 19 9 20 4 20 8 21 10 21 10 22 6 22 4 23 6 23 6 24 2 24 4 25 12 25 2 26 3 26 2 27 2 27 1 28 4 28 5 29 2 29 2 30 4 30 2 32 2 31 1 33 2 32 1 34 1 33 2 35 2 34 2 37 1 35 1 42 3 36 1 37 2 43 1 45 1 62 1 81 275 Group 6 Group 7 Number Number Number Number of T-Units of Words of T-Units of Words 2 2 1 2 6 3 7 3 19 4 5 4 15 5 20 5 20 6 23 6 19 7 23 7 27 8 16 8 24 9 18 9 23 10 22 10 19 11 18 11 19 12 11 12 23 13 12 13 16 14 18 14 11 15 12 15 16 16 12 16 10 17 12 17 18 18 11 18 11 19 8 19 11 20 2 20 11 21 8 21 9 22 2 22 10 23 7 23 6 24 11 24 4 25 9 25 5 26 5 26 4 27 4 27 5 28 1 28 2 29 3 29 6 30 2 30 1 31 3 32 3 32 2 33 4 33 1 35 1 34 1 36 2 35 2 37 3 36 1 38 1 38 2 39 -· 1 39 3 40 1 40 1 42 1 42 2 43 1 46 1 49 1 48 1 53 1 60 1 73 276 Group 8 Number Number of T-Units of Words 1 1 2 2 15 3 20 4 35 5 29 6 35 7 40 8 29 9 30 10 34 11 34 12 20 13 23 14 15 15 17 16 14 17 12 19 14 20 7 21 6 22 9 23 6 24 7 25 6 26 2 27 6 28 3 29 3 30 1 31 2 32 4 33 1 36 2 38 1 39 1 45 1 49 1 so 1 59 277 Notes 1 Williams, "A Note on Sentence-Length," and Buch, "A Note on Sentence-Length as Random Variable," both in Statistics and Style, eds. Lubomir Dolezel and Richard W. Bailey (New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, pp. 69 and 79. 2 Group 1 : The "Sullivan County Sketches." Group 2 : Maggie. Group 4: The Red Badge. Group 5: "The Wise Men," "The Five White Mice " "A , Man and Others." Group 6: "The Open Boat," "The Monster," "The Blue Hotel. fl Group 7: "The Price of the Harness," "The Clan of No-Name." Group 8: The O'Ruddy. 3 K. W. Hunt, Grammatical Structures Written at Three Grade Levels (Champaign: Ill.: NCTE, 1965). Some 4 See, for example, Roy C. O'Donnell, William J. Griffin, and Raymond C. Norris, Syntax of Kindergarten and Elementary School Chil dren (Champaign, Ill.: NCTE, 1967); LesterS. Golub and Carole Kidder, "Syntactic Density and the Computer," Elementary English, 51 (November December 1974), 1128-1131; John C. Mellon, Transformational Sentence Combining (Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1969); Walter Loban, Language Develop ment: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve (Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1976). 5 Language Development, p. 120. 6 Chapter I: 11.19; Chapter XVII: 15.00. 7 The table reads: one T-unit with one word, fourteen T-units with two words, and so forth. 8 The exceptionally long T-unit occurs in "A Man and Some Others": "Finally, when the great moon climbed the heavens and cast its ghastly radiance upon the bushes, it made a new and more brilliant crimson of the camp-fire, where the flames capered merrily through its mesquit branches, filling the silence with the fire chorus, an ancient melody which surely bears a message of the inconsequence of individual tragedy --a message that is in the boom of the sea, the sliver of the wind through the grass-blades, the silken clash of the hemlock boughs" (60). 278 APPENDIX E MEASURES OF SYNTACTIC MATURITY Crane's Use of Free Modifiers 1 Verb Clusters 2 Group 3 No. of VC's ~ 0 Per T-Unit 1 37 .100 2 65 .184 4 71 .127 5 60 .155 6 58 .143 7 so .154 8 48 .095 Subordinate Clauses Group No. of SC's ~ 0 Per T-Unit 1 13 .035 2 34 .096 4 41 .073 5 40 .103 6 54 .138 7 59 .182 8 74 .147 Relative Clauses Group No. of RC's ~ 0 Per T-Unit 1 8 .022 2 18 .051 4 16 .029 5 24 .062 6 32 .082 7 21 .065 8 24 .050 279 Absolutes Group No. of Abs's 9,: 0 Per T-Unit 1 9 .024 2 14 .049 4 6 .011 5 24 .062 6 11 9028 7 10 .031 8 6 .012 Noun Clusters Group No. of NC's 9,: 0 Per T-Unit 1 1 .003 2 6 .017 4 5 .009 5 18 .046 6 17 . 043 7 19 .058 8 13 .026 Adjective Clusters Group No. of AC's 9,: 0 Per T-Unit 1 5 .013 2 6 .017 4 6 .011 5 2 .005 6 9 .023 7 10 .031 8 4 .008 Adjective Series Group No. of A+A' s 9,: 0 Per T-Unit 1 0 .000 2 0 .000 4 10 .018 5 9 .023 6 8 .020 7 15 .046 8 8 .016 280 Depth of Free Modifier Structural Levels 4 T-Units with Three Structural Levels Group No. T-Units ~ 0 Per T-Unit 1 2 .005 2 9 .025 4 3 .005 5 17 .044 6 28 .072 7 27 .083 8 26 .051 T-Units with Four Structural Levels Group No. T-Units ~ 0 Per T-Unit 1 1 .002 2 2 .006 4 0 .000 5 2 .005 6 5 .013 7 3 .009 8 2 .004 T-Units with Five Structural Levels Group No. T-Units ~ 0 Per T-Unit 1 0 .000 2 0 .000 4 0 .000 5 1 .003 6 1 .003 7 3 .009 8 0 T-Units with Six Structural Levels Group No. T-Units ~ 0 Per T-Unit 1 0 .000 2 0 .000 4 0 .000 5 1 .003 6 0 .000 7 1 .003 8 0 .000 281 Conjunctive Adverbs The computer is not programmed to count conjunctive adverbs, only sentence adverbs, a category which includes both those with a conjunc tive function and those that modify an entire sentence (unfortunately, obviously, suddenly, and so forth) but do not have a conjunctive func- tion. Conjunctive adverbs were separated out by hand from this general group as were prepositional phrases which function as conjunctive ad verbs and which are parsed as ordinary prepositional phrases. Chart A shows the number of conjunctive adverbs and percent per T-unit; Chart B shows the variety of conjunctive adverbs chosen by Crane in each group. Number of Group Conjunctive Adverbs ~ 0 Per T-Unit 1 7 .019 2 2 .006 4 27 .048 5 25 .064 6 28 .072 7 23 .071 8 40 .079 Chart A Conjunctive Adverbs 1 also, however, then 2 then 4 also, besides, however, 1n fact, meanwhile, nevertheless, on the contrary, on the other hand, still, then, too 5 after all, also> however, moreover, nevertheless, still, then, too, whereupon 6 after all, for instance, however, in fact, moreover, neverthe less, on the other hand, still, then 7 besides, furthermore, hence, however, indeed, in fact, moreover on the · other hand, then 8 also, after all, besides, hence, however, in fact, indeed, instead, meanwhile, moreover, on the contrary, still, then, thus, too Chart B 282 Sentence Initial Coordinators 9,: 0 Per Group Coordinators Sentence And But For Or Nor So Yet And yet And so 1 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .043 2 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 . 014 4 7 4 0 1 0 3 0 0 0 .033 5 2 4 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 .028 6 1 9 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 .043 7 3 8 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 .066 8 9 20 1 0 2 1 0 0 1 .092 Gerunds Group Number of Gerunds % Per T-Unit 1 3 .008 2 10 .028 4 9 .016 5 15 .039 6 12 .031 7 14 .043 8 21 .042 283 Notes 1 Separated out and counted by hand except for absolutes . Prepo sitional phrases were not counted . 2 Crane consistently prefers present ("chuckling and leering, he ... ") to past participle ("a blunt ended boat, painted a very light blue") verb clusters. Only a few past perfect participles occur ("They were worn, exhausted, having slept but little") and no instance of the perfect progressive participle. The results of Crane's preference are to emphasize action over description, although descriptive force is present in both appositive structures that he uses the most, and to mitigate against the sense of outside, naturalistic forces controlling events. 3 Group 1 : The "Sullivan County Sketches." Group 2: Maggie. Group 4: The Red Badge. Group 5: "The Wise Men," "The Five White Mice," "A Man and Others." Group 6: "The Open Boat," "The Monster," "The Blue Hotel. " Group 7: "The Price of the Harness," "The Clan of No-Name." Group 8: The O'Ruddy. 4 Crane prefers on~and two-level sentences; these were not counted. Nowhere in the data does a seven-or more-level sentence occur. Some 284 APPENDIX F CHANGES IN GRAMMATICAL STYLE BETWEEN THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE DRAFT AND MANUSCRIPT The basis for the following discussion is that part of The Red Badge draft that corresponds to data from the rnauscript which was in- eluded in the larger study. The material included from the draft fac simile is: pp. 204-205; p. 208, 1. 15-p. 210; p. 214; p. 222 from 1. 18; p. 232-234, 1. 6. Total words: 1852. Total sentences: 142. As in the data for the primary study, dialogue and connected words and phrases (such as "he said in a quiet voice") were omitted. Two salient features of Crane's revision process emerge from the data: (1) it is primarily additive, and (2) it is extensive. Less than half the sentences make the transition from draft to manuscript un changed. (For our purposes, changed means syntactic and lexical sub stitutions, additions, and deletions; unchanged sentences are those with no change other than punctuation.) In the 142 sentences examined from the draft, only forty-seven are transferred intact (one of them reordered). Most of the unchanged sentences (thirty) occur in Chapter VII, which recounts Fleming's flight from the battlefield and confronta tion with a dead soldier in the forest chapel. In contrast, only fif teen sentences from Chapter I carry over unchanged. In all, as far as can be determined, Crane adds thirty-six new sentences, that is, sen tences with no corresponding words in draft sentences. (Since some pages of draft are missing--in the material studied the draft breaks ofj several times for a page or more--only those sentences interpolated 285 within the continuing passages of draft were judged additions.) The total of thirty-six does not include new independent clauses added to sentences. Rarely do sentences or clauses occur in the draft that do not emerge in some form in the manuscript, whether combined with an other draft sentence or forming part of a sentence to which new infor mation is added. I will, after examining one instance of Crane's adding a number of sentences in the transfer of an episode from draft to manuscript, dis cuss his changes involving verbs, adjectives and adverbs, prepositions, sentence connectors, free modifiers, and sentence combining. 1 All examples quoted will show the draft version first, the manuscript ver sion second. The arrow (--~)) between the two means "is transformed into" or "is rewritten as." Although Crane rearranges, deletes, and adds, often combining the three processes, his revision process overall is expansive, not contrac tive. Indeed, with some of his additions the desire to add words, any words, seems paramount (for example, "an evening hymn" (234) --➔ > "a hymn of twilight" (64)). One is reminded of Crane's compulsive word counting (he customarily kept a running total o ~ the word counts for each page in his manuscripts), ever haunted by the fear of not writing enough for publishers and public that expected their money's worth in / long novels, not Crane's forte. Other additions seem much more strongly motivated. For example, although, as remarked earlier, Crane seems to have been reasonably sat isfied with his draft Chapter VII sentences since many are transferred intact to the manuscript, he adds six of eight new sentences to that 286 portion of the chapter before Fleming enters the forest chapel. Crane particularly aims in these additions to develop further Fleming's per ception of the squirrel's actions and reactions. As Crane transfers the one sentence from the draft mentioning and describing the squirrel, he makes a significant change in it. He substitutes masculine pronoun reference for neuter, making more "natural" Fleming's identification with the squirrel's running in fear from Fleming's tossed pinecone. The added sentences amplify the squirrel's fearful reaction to the pinecone missile, providing Fleming with justification for his convic tion that the squirrel's prudence signifies a "law" applicable also to Fleming. Of similar significance is Crane's altering reference to nature from "it" to "she" immediately following the added sentences des cribing the squirrel. This change makes more "natural" Fleming's con clusion that nature is "of his mind," whereas in the draft nature stands outside Fleming agreeing with him. Such changes and additions are crucial to the expression of Fleming's character and perceptions. Verbs Crane's most significant change in verb forms involves the past and past perfect tenses. 2 Some final draft and manuscript choices in volving these tenses are: "had gone over the horizon and disappeared" (204) ) "had been long gone over the horizon and had disappeared" (7); "the wind carried" (205) ) "the winds had carried" (8); "It was not quite what he had expected" (208) > "It had not been quite what he expected" (11). In this last example the forward shift of "had" still allows it to be assumed for "expected." These altered tenses show Crane's particular concern with time, certainly of key importance 287 to The Red Badge's theme of change: Fleming's shifting thoughts and perceptions as he undergoes experiences testing his ability to become a man. (In addition, six alterations involving past and past perfect within the extant pages of Chapter I of the draft and five within Chap ter I of the manuscript further attest to his concern with time.) Crane's alterations mostly involve addition of "had" to emphasize past completed action during Fleming's reflecting back upon his thoughts and actions leading up to the days of encampment and battle that form the "episode of the Civil War," although in colloquial use, which would cer tainly seem appropriate for Fleming, simple past is often used to indi cate completed action. 3 Change to the past perfect, then, stresses the time relation, and at this point in the novel distinguishes Fleming's perceptions before his first battle from those during battle. Similar! Crane's use of the past perfect in the manuscript's final chapter sets off battle-involved Fleming from post-battle Fleming. In regard to this established pattern, it is interesting to note that on one occasion simple past within the context of prevailing past perfect assumes a continuing aspect. In Chapter I the narrator relates from Fleming's point of view: "Besides, on her [his mother's] side, was his belief that her ethical motive in the argument was impregnable" (7-8). (There is no comparable draft sentence.) Omitting "had" here imposes the notion that Fleming believes in his mother's integrity not only while he disparages her realistic appraisal of his war-ardor and where he is most needed, on the farm, but as a continuing thing. The effect on the reader is to create a more positive attitude toward Fleming. 288 Some altered verb structures point less to theme in The Red Badge than to a general tendency in Crane's syntactic choices. He transforms a number of verbs into nominals and participles, both of which tend to lengthen clauses, the first through periphrasis, the second through con densation (separate clauses are condensed and attached to or embedded ir matrices). The first slows and fixes action, the second quickens it. (Some examples: "he had rebelled" [205] ) "he had made firm rebel- lion" [8]; "He had never had doubts of the ultimate success of it and had bothered little" [210] ) "He ... never challenging his belief in ultimate success and bothering little" [14]; "He was continually mea suring himself" [214] > "He continually tried to measure himself" [19].) Both types of structures tend to increase during the span of Crane's career. Adjectives and Adverbs Although Crane's tendency to add applies to adjectives, it barely does. He deletes almost as many as he adds, his purpose being clarity of description rather than added words, as we can see in these examples: "an oblique square of light" (204) ) "an oblique square of whiter light" (6); "of sublime assurance" (209) ) "of bland and infantile assurance" (13); "of heavy golden crowns and high dreary castles" (204) --) "of heavy crowns and high castles" (7). Crane adds or changes ad verbs even less than adjectives except to lengthen adverbs through transformation into their prepositional phrase counterparts; only one prepositional phrase is converted to its corresponding adverb. These illustrate: "pausing once" (232) ) "pausing at one time" (62); "Be- fore this, he had never" (210) > "Previously he had never" (14). One 289 change places a frequency adverb at sentence head, its more natural and logical position: "He found himself almost into a swamp once" (232) --) "Once he found himself almost into a swamp" (62). Prepositions Of particular interest is Crane's manipulation of prepositions. Revisions and additions in The Red Badge reflect Crane's desire to ex press relationships exactly and his favorite method of adding details to his sentences. In Stoppe's examination of sentences from Maggie and The Red Badge, she finds many altered prepositions in Maggie but scant manipulation of prepositions in The Red Badge. 4 Those in Maggie she attributes to Crane's concern, perhaps about previous careless choice, when he revised the 1893 Maggie for publication in 1896. We have no way of knowing un equivocally who changed the prepositions 1n the 1896 Maggie since other hands than Crane's intervened in revision. But, contrary to Stoppe's findings, Crane does manipulate prepositions when revising his draft of The Red Badge, and we know the manipulations are his. Nine preposition changes occur in the data, four concerning "on." Once Crane changes "on" to "along": "The only foes he had seen were some pickets along the river bank" (13), giving a clearer picture of the men's extension in space. Three times he changes "on" to "upon," this latter preposition one that Stoppe argues is used "creatively" in Maggie. She claims that in "A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley," "upon" suggests "up" for the figurative verb "stood up for" (meaning defended) and "on" for the literal verb "stood." Actually, Crane's use is quite ordinary. A common meaning of "for" is "in behalf 290 of" and the prepositions "on" and "upon" are fairly interchangeable in meaning although their effects differ sligh~ly. "On" is less formal an carries only a sense of place, hence is more static than the more forma "upon," which carries not only a sense of place but motion. We can assume that these are the effects for which Crane is striving, especial ly that of activity, :1ot only in his substitution of "upon" for "on," but "into" for "to" ("going from obscurity to promises of greater ob scurity" [2 3 3] ---) "going from obscurity in to prom is es of a greater obscurity" [62]). Crane not only substitutes prepositions, he adds bound preposi tional phrases to lengthen his clauses and sentences with details. Som of the additions increase word count more than meaning; others add needed specificity to make statements more informative. (A few examples are: "He had taken certain things for granted" [210]-- ➔ "In his life, he had taken certain things for granted" 14 · "his laws of life were , useless" [210]---> "in this crisis his laws of life were useless" [15]; "to a melancholy green" [233]--~ "to a melancholy shade of green" [62].) One revision removes the stiff, literary "withal," and replaces it with the less formal "with it all." But Crane is as likely to sub stitute an unexpected construction as delete one. "Of a sudden" re places the more common "suddenly" of the draft, calling undue attention to the abruptness of the event that follows as opposed to the event it self: "From his [Jim Conklin's] lips came a black procession of curious oaths. Suddenly, another broke out in a querelous way like a man who has mislaid his hat" (222) ----\ ". . . . Of a sudden another ... " (46). It is the man's response among all the others that is important, not the 291 abruptness of it. (Crane generally prefers "suddenly"; "all of a sud den" does not occur in the data, and its truncated version only 1n The Red Badge. Such deviant constructions dwindle in his later work.) Many of the prepositional phrase additions involve establishing time relationships, clarifying when Fleming perceives and thinks certain things. Such additions are as pertinent to The Red Badge's theme of change as are verb tense changes. Some of these time adverbials are free modifiers, meaning that Crane could have shifted them within their matrix clauses. Four times, however, he places them sentence initially, stressing the time factor. Sentence Connectors Throughout his writing career, as we have seen, Crane increases his use of sentence connectors, a trend that cuts across particular novels and stories although it is conditioned to some extent by his need to create a particular facet of a character. We have also noted that Crane's favored coordinating conjunction in emphasized sentence initial position is "but," apparently reflecting his contrastive view of the world. Both elements of Crane's grammatical style are revealed in his revision of The Red Badge draft, in transferred sentences, combined sen tences, and newly created ones. He deletes one sentence initial "and," shifts a mid-clause "however" to sentence initial position and substi tutes "but," and adds seven conjunctive adverbs (none are deleted except the one just mentioned for which "but" is substituted). ( Some examples in transferred sentences are: 0 His mother had, however, discouraged him" [205] ) "But his mother had discouraged him" [7]; "At last, he had rebelled" [205] ) "At last, however, he had rebelled" [8]; "He 292 was continually measuring himself" [214]-- 4 ) "Meanwhile he continually tried to measure himself" [19]. Here is one example of Crane's adding connectors when combining draft sentences: "He would again be obliged to experiment, as he had in early youth, and get upon his guard, else those qualities of which he knew nothing might everlastingly disgrace him" [210] ) "He saw that he would again be obliged to experiment as he had in early youth. He must accumulate information of himself and, meanwhile, he resolved to remain close upon his guard lest those quali ties of which he knew nothing should everlastingly disgrace him" [15]. And here are two examples of sentence connectors in newly created manu script sentences for which there are no comparable draft sentences: "The youth felt however that his problem was in no wise lifted from him' [19]; "On the contrary, he had fled as fast as his legs could carry hi:n' [6].) Of as much interest stylistically as Crane's quantitative increase in sentence connectors (which reflects his increasing concern for co herence) is his positioning of connectors, particularly the conjunctive adverb ''however." In the early work Crane prefers "however" in its les emphatic, "softer" position within a clause; indeed, in The Red Badge h - ---- does so twice as often as he prefers "however" in sentence initial posi tion. Such placement contrasts with the later work, particularly The O'Ruddy, in which Crane's preference reverses itself. Even though char acterization of O'Ruddy may influence Crane's preference, one may con jecture that his growing boldness in the use of such formal connectors is also a cause. In other words, Crane not only uses fewer sentence connectors in the early work, even in The Red Badge, which reveals many more, he uses them less obtrusively. Sentence Combining 293 As Crane revises his draft, he employs three general methods of sentence combining: (1) two sentences from the draft form one in the manuscript (Crane's most frequent process), (2) one sentence from the draft forms part of a new sentence to which another clause or clauses are added, and (3) one sentence from the draft forms the basis for two sentences in the manuscript. Additions and deletions of words or word groups can occur with any of these main processes. An example of the first process is: "Some tin dishes lay on a small pile of fire-wood. Equipments were hung on handy projections" (204) ) "Equipments hung on handy projections and some tin dishes lay upon a small pile of fire wood" (6). An .example of the second process is: "The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay-chimney and wreathed into the room" (204) } "The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay-chimney and wreathed into the room and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks made endless threats to set a-blaze the whole establishment" (6). And an example of the third process is: "They were a sun-tanned, philosoph ical lot who sometimes shot thoughtfully at the opposite pickets but usually seemed sorry for it afterwards" (209)---) "They were a sun tanned, philosophical lot who sometimes shot reflectively at the blue pickets. When reproached for this, afterwards, they usually expressed sorrow and swore by their gods that the guns had exploded without per mission" (13). Crane's manipulation of structures as he combines sentences follows no simpl~ and consistent pattern, but the overall result is lengthening 294 clauses and sentences in the manuscript. He combines by compounding, adds by compounding, combines by embedding a draft clause into a new matrix, and adds by subordination. Compounding is the sentence combin ing method most favored by Crane at this point in his career; many newl formed sentences reveal aspects of compounding, some only this process. While compounding contributes to longer sentences, it adds no additiona complexity. In fact, Crane misses many opportunities to condense and smooth his prose by forming free modifiers and dependent clauses as he combines sentences. One possibility: "He kept up ceaseless calcula tions. They were wondrously unsatisfactory" (214) could have become, b forming an appositive, "For days, he made ceaseless calculations, all wondrously unsatisfactory" instead of "For days, he made ceaseless cal culations, but they were all wondrously unsatisfactory" (19). At an other point, "The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay chimney and wreathed into the room" (204) co~ld have become a complex sentence with the formation of a subordinate clause, "Because the smoke from the fire neglected the clay-chimney and wreathed into the room, this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks made endless threats to set a blaze the whole establishment," instead of the compound sentence Crane writes: "The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay-chimney and wreathed into the room and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks made endless threats to set a-blaze the whole establishment" (6). ·· Yet at times Crane does create more complex, fluent sentences from shorter, choppier originals as in the following: "He could not convinc himself of it. It was too strange" (204) > "For a time, he was obliged to make himself believe" (6). And because of such instances an the lengthening of sentences in general, The Red Badge manuscript, though still characterized by fragmented syntax, is less fragmented th the draft. Free Modifiers Crane's sentence combining and additions in comparable portions of the draft and manuscript reveal an obvious desire to add descriptive details and vary structures. Ignoring those portions of manuscript for which draft pages are missing, we find a number of added free modifiers which give his sentences denser texture than in the draft: seven verb clusters, nine prepositional phrases, two adjective clusters, one adjec tive series, and one relative clause. Crane subtracts only one verb cluster, changing it to a free prepo sitional phrase. This change, probably motivated by Crane's desire to avoid two successive -ing words, creates an even more awkwardly struc tured sentence: Some talked of gray, bewhiskered hordes who were advancing, cursing relentlessly and chewing tobacco with unspeakable valor. (209) Some talked of gray, be-whiskered hordes who were advancing, with relentless curses and chewing tobacco with unspeakable valor. (13-14) Crane's change destroys symmetrically parallel participles, the verbal force of the construction as the action is frozen and objectified, and meaningful reference for "with unspeakable valor," which with the chang refers ridiculously to "chewing tobacco" only. Elsewhere, however, Crane's adding free modifiers improves the aes thetic and intellectual quality of his novel, especially in three sen tences added to Fleming's recollections of his parting with his mother. 296 Fleming hears his mother's long speech of homely advice impatiently; "still, when he had looked back from the gate, he had seen his mother kneeling among the potato-parings. Her brown face, up-raised, was stained with tears and her spare form was quivering. He bowed his head and went on, feeling suddenly ashamed of his purposes" (11). Crane ex pands his early conception of the scene, and the details that he adds are crucial to the reader's proper judgment of Fleming, a far kinder judgment than would result from the draft, in which the parting scene consists solely of Fleming's tolerating his mother's speech impatiently, and sheepishly feeling glad that none of his friends were there to hear it. Summar Crane's revisions of The Red Badg~ provide eloquent contrary evi dence to claims such as his friend C. K. Linson's that Crane's writing as "as effortless as the flowing of a stream." 5 Crane revises both lexical and syntactic aspects of his draft as he transforms it into the anuscript. Such dual revision, as noted previously, is not character istic of revisions within the draft and manuscript, where substitutions retain the same form and function as prior selections. Hence, the two documents when compared present a unique opportunity to observe in icrocosm within one work Crane's tendency throughout his career to develop a smoother, fuller, more complex writing style between works. Evidence of Crane's effort within The Red Badge lies basically in 1s noticeable effort to add, not only by creating new sentences, but by lengthening phrases and clauses of already existing sentences. Although ometimes the result is words added for the mere sake of adding words, 297 most additions are meaningful. Furthermore, although C1ane transfers series of short sentences intact (notably in Chapter VII where he has just cause since they aptly mirror Fleming's disordered mind when he en counters the decaying corpse propped against a tree), he is more likely to combine short sentences and add to them. Rarely do sentences emerge shorter in the manuscript than in the draft. Crane's favored options for adding and sharpening informative de tails are bound prepositional phrases and separate clauses, yet he does occasionally adopt some of the embedding options offered by the English language. He also strives to make relationships between clauses and sentences more explicit by adding sentence connectors, and searches for the precise word that he wants, not only content words but function words also, especially prepositions. Of equal concern to him is exact rendering of time, revealed in verb tense changes and the addition of numerous prepositional phrases that function as time adverbials, and enhanced coherence. Although in The Red Badge Crane has achieved a style which express es his personal vision and performance capabilities at the time, he has not, at least not syntactically, arrived at his mature style. But com parison of the draft and manuscript shows us his early steps in that direction. 298 Notes 1 Although Crane's even-exchange revisions significantly reveal his searching for exactly the right word, for the most part we will not be concerned with them here. The following, however, are some examples: 11 despondent rifles" (209) ) "despondent powder" (14) · "in his bunk debating" (209) ) "in his bunk pondering" (14); "to grapple too seriously" (209) ) "to wrestle too seriously" (14); "a woodpecker stuck his insolent head" (232) )"a woodpecker stuck his impudent head' (61) . Within the draft and the manuscript themselves, Crane's revisions are almost invariably even exchanges. He searches for the exact word or word group matching the structures already established, for example: "Conklin" ) "The first" > "The soldier" > "The excited soldier" ) "The tall soldier" (4). Only rarely does Crane alter syntax. One example: "Fleming, a certain youthful private, listened" > "There was a youthful private who listened" (5) . 2 Crane also recasts active mode sentences into passive mode, but none of these changes that appeared in the data was significant, and Crane is equally inclined to recast passive constructions into their active counterparts. 3 For a discussion of the historical development of the past per fect and its use, see Curme, pp. 358 and 361. 4 "A Transformational Analysis," pp. 45 and 92. 299 APPENDIX G RECORD OF EMENDATIONS All emendations made in the selections chosen from the editions used in the study are listed below. The conventions of The University Press of Virginia edition of Crane's works are followed in itemizing emendations except that substantive and accidentals emendations are not separated here. In each item page number is first, followed by line number (1.10); the a~cepted reading is before the square bracket, with source notation following the square bracket except when emenda tion 1s mine in which case there is no notation; the rejected reading follows the semicolon (in each case the source edition's reading); an inferior caret indicates absence of a punctuation mark or word. Where Crane's spelling of a word is an acceptable variant of the more common form (for example, "grey" vice the more common "gray") the acceptable variant 1s used. Silent changes have been made throughout the early draft of The Red Badge and the manuscript of The Red Badge to correct misspellings such as Crane's characteristic "cie" for "cei" (for example, 0 recieve" vice "receive"), "cammander" vice "commander," and so forth; to remove the extraneous apostrophe in "it's" for pos sessive "its"; and to insert the omitted apostrophe in contractions ("isnt" vice "isn't"). Emendations have been restricted to a minimum, and mostly involve a return to the manuscript form, correction of spelling, and only twice addition of words (necessary for the sense 300 of passages in The Red Badge) which make no difference in the study conducted. Since tl1is is the case, although a textual purist would probably insist on leaving everything exactly as Crane wrote it, it seemed unnecessary to needlessly complicate computer analysis. In regard to word division, at times compounds or possible com pounds occur at line end of Maggie and The Red Badge. In such cases, Crane's usual practice and parallel occurrences guide insertion or omission of a hyphento form or not form a compound. Where a compound is elsewhere consistently formed, the hyphm is inserted if omitted in other occurrences ("street car" vice "street-car"). Information about compounds or possible compounds which occur in the Virginia edition is noted in the textual apparatus of individual volumes. Editions and Emendations Edition: Facsimile of the 1893 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets: A Story of New York, ed. Joseph Katz (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1966). Emendations and Word Division: 6.2 33.10 33.20 34 .13 36:4-5 38.22 70.8-9 92.10 145.2-3 148.10 148.16 148.19 manhood]; manood it. ] ; it" chrysanthemums]; chrisanthemums breathe]; breath street-cars]; street/cars fire engine]; fire-eng~ne nickel-plated]; nickel-/plated begrimed]; begrimmed forgetfulness]; forget-/ness grimy] ; grimey eyes]; eyet street-car]; streetAcar Edition: The Red Badge of Courage: A Facsimile Edition of the Manu SCTi~ ed-. -Fredson Bowers (Washington, D. C.:NCR Micro card Editions, 1972). Emendations and Word Div"sion: 20.25 22.19 23.19 47.8 62.24 63.16 107.3 120.16 125.22 133.27 177.6-7 177.13-14 208.14 209.29 232.7 233.17 development]; developement breathing]; breatheing bodies of] ; bodiesA · magician's]; magacian's appalling]; apalling squawk] ; sqawk squawking]; sqawking borne] ; born there was a] ; there/\ a breathin&J; breatheing man-hoodJ; man-/hood hot-ploughshares]; hot-/ploughshares borne J ; born ecstasy]; ecstacy rhythmical]; rythmical appalling]; apalling Edition: The O'Ruddy, Vol. IV of The Works of Stephen Crane, ed. Fredson Bowers (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1971). Emendations: 3.12 4.22 51.20 63.12 114.5 114.21 115.7 115.28 116.28 130.6 133.8 133.18 140.4 abidingA] MS; abiding, BristolA] MS; Bristol, short/\] MS; short, judgment,,.J MS; judgment, afterwards] MS; afterward splendor] MS; splendour of course] MS; of course, favorite] MS; favourite stableAboys] MS; stable-boys never had I] MS; never have I had choose] MS; chose garden] MS; Gardens refusing] MS; refused 301 Edition: Tales of Adventure, Vol. V of The Works of Stephen Crane, ed. Fredson Bowers (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1970). "The Five White Mice" Emendations: 40.1 honour] MS; honor '14.23 47.29 comic~foolish~wise] MS; comic, foolish, wise (Parallel instances of unpunctuated series of prenominal adjectives occur elsewhere. See, for example, The O'Ruddy, Vol. IV of The Works, 128.30: "pale wicked snarling faces.") -- unplacedA] MS; unplaced, "A Man and Some Others" Emendations: mystic and sinister] The Century (Cy), Feb. 1897; mysterious and devilish three] Cy; two 302 53.27-28 57.7 57.13 61.5 mystic and still mystic] Cy; strange and still strange mystic] Cy; uncanny (Substitutions for "mystic" are later changes by Crane than the time examined.) Edition: Tales of War, Vol. VI of The Works of Stephen Crane, ed. Fredson Bowers (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1969). "The Price of the Harness" Emendations: 97.22 hill~]; hill, (B wers claims he emends "hill," to "hill" in "Editorial Emendations in the Copy-Text," p. 345, but within the text on p. 97 the comma appears.) Edition: Tales of Whilomville, Vol. VII of The Works of Stephen Crane,ed. Fredson Bowers (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1969). "The Monster" Emendations: 24.37 afterwards] Harper's Monthly, 1898 and Harper's, 1899; afterward, V (Crane is not consistent in his. use; in The Red Badge (MS), 138.25-26 and 13.18 for example show alternation between "afterward" and "afterwards.") Edition: Tales, Sketches, and Reports, Vol. VIII of The Works of Stephen Crane, ed . Fredson Bowers (Charlottesville: The Univer~ity Press of Virginia, 1973). 303 "The Cry of Huckleberry Pudding" from the "Sullivan County Sketches": Emendations: 255.24 imperturbable]; imperturable

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Asset Metadata

Creator Guinn, Dorothy Margaret (author)

Core Title A computer assisted analysis of Stephen Crane's grammatical style

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Degree Conferral Date 1978

Publication Date 01/01/1978

Defense Date 01/23/1978

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American Literature,Conrad, Joseph (1857-1924),Crane, Stephen (1871-1900),Hemingway, Ernest (1899-1961),OAI-PMH Harvest,rhetoric

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Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

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