In the Bride comes to Yellow Sky, Stephen Crane uses symbolism to evoke in readers a sense of the “old west”. However, the knowledge of the “old west” that the average person holds in his or her mind is false and nothing more than a Hollywood created myth. By using the symbols inherent in Hollywood’s old western myth Crane manipulates the reader’s misconceptions only to leave them feeling stupid when he reveals a hole in that way of thinking with the irrational ending.This is actually a thesis i'm working on for an analytical essay on the piece.I need to know if anyone has ever read the story and gotten the same feeling Crane was having fun at the reader's expense or perhaps poking fun at the old western I have very good points from the text to support my thesis but i cannot find anything online that touches on the possability of this being a parody. Anyone else think Crane's having fun or is a bit condescending in this piece?
I have to say no. Your question erred in a significant way. Hollywood didn't create this false image of the West. The false image was created a long time before by people living in the age of the incidents. It didn't take publishers long to notice that people living back East enjoyed these gritty depictions of the West. Dime novels were a big seller in the 18th and 19th centuries. Look at Stephen Crane. He died in 1900. Hollywood was non-existent as the facet of American life that it holds now. Crane would have been writing this story with the idea that he was depicting a real slice of the wild West that was becoming more civilized.
