SOURCE: Cox, James Trammel. “Stephen Crane as Symbolic Naturalist: An Analysis of ‘The Blue Hotel’.” Modern Fiction Studies 3, no. 2 (summer 1957): 147-58.

In the following essay, Cox offers an analysis of “The Blue Hotel” to illustrate his thesis that Stephen Crane is more of a symbolist than a naturalist.

The limitations of labels are less apparent when the term, like naturalism, has clearly definable boundaries than when it suffers from an excess of meaning, as in the much discussed omnibus romanticism. But they are no less real, and no less critically inhibiting. In the case of naturalism I would say this is particularly true, and as it has been applied to the fiction of Stephen Crane the effect has been to encourage a view and a lethargy which Crane hardly deserves. R. W. Stallman is almost alone in perceiving a fundamental difference in the fictional method of Crane and...