A Swede, its central figure, toward the end manages to get
himself murdered. Crane's description of it is just as casual as that.
The story fills a dozen pages of the book; but the social injustice of
the whole world is hinted in that space; the upside-downness of
creation, right prostrate, wrong triumphant,--a mad, crazy world. The
incident of the murdered Swede is just part of the backwash of it all,
but it is an illuminating fragment. The Swede was slain, not by the
gambler whose knife pierced his thick hide: he was the victim of a
condition for which he was no more to blame than the man who stabbed
him. Stephen Crane thus speaks through the lips of one of the
characters:--
"We are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even
a noun. He is a kind of an adverb. Every sin is
the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have
collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually
there are from a dozen to forty women really involved
in every murder, but in this case it seems
to be only five men--you, I, Johnnie, Old Scully,
and that fool of an unfortunate gambler came
merely as a culmination, the apex of a human movement,
and gets all the punishment."
And then this typical and arresting piece of irony:--
"The corpse of the Swede, alone in the saloon,
had its eyes fixed upon a dreadful legend that
dwelt atop of the cash-machine: 'This registers the
amount of your purchase.
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