Maggie

In Stephen Crane's novella "Maggie," the author discourages readers from sympathizing with the characters through his use of character descriptions and stark imagery. Instead, readers are distanced from their plight and forced to see the universality of the destruction in the tenements in a critical manner, thus eliciting a desire for change.

Crane’s characters do not display conventional human emotions that readers can relate to. Instead, they are hardened and cruel to such a level that their actions cannot by sympathized with, but must be critiqued. For example, Jimmie’s incapability to be kind makes him seem inhuman. After Tommie’s death, Jimmie “studied human nature in the gutter and found it no worse than he thought he had reason to believe it. He never conceived a respect for the world, because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed” (12). By denying Jimmie humanity, readers must judge his actions using a different and broader lens. The judgment thus cannot merely be what we as readers think is right or wrong, but must be what is moral and ethical. We are denied the ability to be passive readers and instead implicated to become jurors. After this passage, Jimmie is referred to by name less. His complacency with his moral degradation is thus not a character flaw of an individual, but an epidemic of all tenement dwellers.

The descriptions of the tenement are extremely vivid in order to place readers in an area that they have never nor will ever visit. The physical decay of the dwellings also serves to represent the moral decay of the citizens. Chapter two begins with the description, “A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against a hundred windows” (4). The yellow dust serves as a reminder of city’s grime. The windows may represent the citizens of the tenements. This description highlights that they are forgotten and eventually lost in the vastness of the city. Crane’s description forces readers to recognize this, therefore bringing the need for reform to the forefront of readers’ minds.

Today, pictures and videos can be used to highlight the devastation in cities. Yet so much distance is created between the viewer and the picture that it can become difficult to critique our society. It becomes almost overwhelming to comprehend that citizens of our own country can exist like that. The strength of Crane’s novella comes from his ability to describe people and places and force readers to criticize how they have evolved.