My English professor has a bit of a Stephen Crane fetish. She always assigns work and "A Dark Brown Dog" in every single of her classes. Anyway, this week we had to read "The Blue Hotel" and discuss it in depth for a pretty intense paper comparing the Realistic and Naturalistic themes.
Basically, this guy called The Swede travels "out west" because of his mini obsession with dime store novels. Hilarity, hostility, and paranoia ensue and he ends up dead. The last we see of The Swede is this:
"The corpse of the Swede, alone in the saloon, had its eyes fixed upon a dreadful legend that dwelt a-top of the cash-machine. 'This registers the amount of your purchase.'"
Interesting, ominous, symbolic--it's a hell of a way to end a life. As far as the story goes, it was really fun to read and kind of creepy. One of the better short stories I've read.
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