SOURCE: Lolordo, Nick. “Possessed by the Gothic: Stephen Crane's ‘The Monster.’” Arizona Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2001): 33-56.

In the following essay, Lolordo argues that rather than classifying “The Monster” as realism or naturalism, it can be regarded as gothic.

The time is perhaps ten years after the Civil War, the place a small town in New York State. A fire has broken out in the home of Dr. Trescott, the town's leading physician; trapped upstairs is his son. Henry Johnson, Trescott's coachman and former domestic servant, is first to the scene and unhesitatingly rushes inside in search of young Jimmie Trescott. In the course of saving the boy, Johnson's face will be horribly disfigured by an accident in the doctor's laboratory, rendering him “the monster” of the story's title. As Johnson enters the smoke-filled house, Stephen Crane's narrative gaze coolly shifts: “In the hall a lick of flame had found...