Crane's Use of Ironic Symbolism in "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky".
Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," as well as his other Western stories, owe much to Mark Twain's approach to the West. According to Eric Solomon, "both authors?used humor to comment on the flaws of traditional fictional processes" (237). While employing parody of the Western literary tradition, Crane also uses realism to depict the influence of the East on the West. In "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," Stephen Crane uses symbolism to develop his study of the changes effected on the West and the roles of its inhabitants by the encroachment of eastern society.
"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" is a parable of the East's invasion of the West through role changes in a small western town. This invasion is perfectly illustrated in the first setting. Crane writes, "The great Pullman was whirling onward with such dignity of motion that a glance from the window seemed simply to prove that the plains of Texas were pouring eastward" (401). This, the first sentence of the story, "fixes the sensation of a train ride through a kinesthetic detail, and that detail also supplies a theme that the rest of the story will develop" (Bergon 95). The Pullman train is carrying Marshal Jack Potter and his Eastern bride back to Yellow Sky. The Marshall's role in the affairs of his town has been affected and changed by his literal marriage to the East. The Marshall is only beginning to realize the effect his arrival on the town will have. The train car is the perfect symbol of the East moving toward and imposing itself on the west. .
The second setting is "a world of complete contrast to the Eastern Pullman: the setting is Western, the bar of the Weary Gentleman Saloon" (Solomon 253). The saloon .
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contains all the necessary Western elements-- whisky, guns, barflies, and an all-knowing bartender. Crane places another sign of the encroaching east, a traveling salesman, in the bar to supply an observer to whom the local customs and roles can be explained.