Color Symbolism in the Works of Stephen Crane

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Research Paper concerning color symbolism in the works of Stephen Crane

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Stephen Crane’s Use of Color Symbolism

“None of them knew the color of the sky....and all of the men knew the colors of the sea” (Crane 453). This opening line of Crane’s “The Open Boat” presents his unique literary art of the use of color as symbols. Stephen Crane’s interest in selection of perceptions and filtration of reality according to disposition and circumstances influenced his writing style greatly (Karlen 5846). Practically every scene of Crane’s works is related to vision, to sense-perception of incidents and details, and to sense-reactions rather than to psychological impulses (Nagel 57). Stephen Crane’s use of colors, particularly red, yellow, blue, and black, gives the reader constant and deeper access to new dynamics of his works.

Stephen Crane was the fourteenth son of Johnathan Townley Crane, a Methodist minister. Crane grew up under his parents’ extremely stern, oppressive, and religious care in various parsonages in New Jersey and New York, so his pessimistic style probably grew from the fact that he never had a very stable or pleasant childhood (Cazemajou 406). However, he was greatly interested in journalism and writing. Stephen Crane’s sensitivity was developed early through a gradual training of his senses and scrutiny: “Methodism forced him to probe his own soul, journalism taught him how to note facts with accuracy, and art provided his craving for reality with dramatic patterns” (407). It was remarked that Crane “had no surface,” but that “he was all interior” (Kunitz 189). His depth in writing brought about various perceptions of his work. The thirties saw Crane as a champion of the cause of the common man, and the forties continued to portray him as a realistic traditionalist. In the next two decades he was shown by critics primarily as a symbolist, but a wide range of interpretations has confronted readers with a great deal of conflicting scholarship (405). His matchless use of color has been greatly controversial, but it has also marked Crane as distinct in the literary world. One can obtain a glimpse of Crane’s love of color simply by observing the use of color words as parts of titles of his works. Examples include The Red Badge of Courage, The Third Violet, The O’Ruddy, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” The Black Riders, and “The Blue Hotel.” Crane paints with words much in the way French impressionists paint with pigments; both use pure colors and contrasts to elicit ideas (Stallman 129).

Stephen Crane’s interest in color symbolism was greatly influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe was a German poet, novelist, and playwright who not only ranked among the most important and influential writers of European literature, but also worked with various philosophers and physicists studying the principles of light (Hoffmeister 247). Goethe was also deeply influenced by philosophers Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schiller’s deep opposition to rationalism and artificiality in literature (248). Goethe’s studies with light and his relationship to philosophers and physicists eventually led him to formulate his controversial theory that influenced Crane to use colors so uniquely in his works. Goethe’s theory essentially stated that “colors are immediately associated with the emotions of the mind,” and Crane tested this theory by using colors in his literary works. (Holton 92). Crane was deeply interested in what Goethe called “the moral-sensual effect of color” (Berryman 48).

The color red to symbolize emotions, ideas, and psychological notions is used extensively in Stephen Crane’s works, especially in works dealing with war. Red has been called the most “panicky and explosive of all colors, the most primative,” as well as the most ambivalent. It is associated equally to rage and love, battle and fire, and exuberant joy and utter destruction (Berryman 48). Red, which is traditionally associated with blood and fire, suggests courage, vigor, strength, life-energy, desire, and ambition (Hart 5853). For example, in The Red Badge of Courage, a novel about war, red is used to allow for a deeper understanding of the mood of characters and setting. At night, when soldiers’ campfires dot the landscape “like peculiar blossoms, each one casting a vigorous red glow onto the faces” of the men, the communal fires throughout the landscape “impregnate it with life and vitality” (Hart 5854). The redness of the fires and the red glow they cast suggest the life-energy of the group (5854). When the main character of the novel, Henry, “hears the ‘red cheers’ of marching men, he is determined: he runs in the direction of the ‘crimson roar’ of battle” (5854-5855). When Crane describes one sense in terms of another by relating the color red to a sound, a different insight and a deeper understanding can be reached. It is later mentioned that when he sees his comrades’ faces in the “red light” of the fire, Henry goes directly toward them. The light symbolizes the group’s energy and courage, which empowers him. Red is used elsewhere in the novel to describe battle. The term “red sickness of battle” is used abundantly (McDermott 5861). The term implies the terror and disgust that are the reality of war, rather than a romanticized picture. The word red in conjunction with the word sickness in the phrase symbolizes several things: blood, fire, suffering, pain, anguish, or death. Red, to Goethe and Crane, was “the color of anger that….inspires sentiments of awe and heightens the emotional intensity” (Holton 94).

Crane’s use of yellow in his works is generally interpreted to symbolize cowardice, age, or confusion. Yellow, “the color nearest the light of personal wholeness” for Goethe, is the color of the light in the barracks hut in The Red Bade of Courage in which the main character, Henry, considers his situation in the beginning of the novel. Yellow is the color associated with his feelings of confusion concerning leaving his mother, joining the war, and trying to understand himself (93). Other examples of yellow in The Red Badge of Courage include Henry experiencing a “yellow discontent” when he realizes the gravity of the war and a “yellow confusion” at the sight of combat. Yellow is used to symbolize cowardice when Henry runs from battle and finds himself in the midst of a “yellow fog,” wherein he contemplates his disgust with himself for running away.

Crane uses the color blue in his works both to represent distinction and passivity. For example, in “The Blue Hotel,” the color value becomes clearly apparent. Light blue, the surface color of the hotel, sets it apart from its background (152). “The Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade that is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare its position against any background” (152). Automatically Crane’s intention of portraying the hotel in a distinct and different sense than the rest of its surroundings is revealed (151). This setting-off of the building brings about curiosity about what is so particular about the edifice. Crane’s use of blue in “The Blue Hotel” suggests “qualities of emotional atmosphere or metaphysical circumstance” about the building (152). Blue, for Goethe and Crane, is also somewhat a passive color, carrying connotations of monotony, habit, and mindlessness. “Blue, in ‘its highest purity, is, as it were, a stimulating negation’” (94). In The Red Badge of Courage, Henry, seeing blue, feels his own insignificance. He sees war as a “blue demonstration,” himself only a “part of an impersonal military machine, and tiny soldiers gesticulating against the blue and somber sky” (94).

Stephen Crane uses the color black in his works to evoke deeper appreciation of psychological themes. Black, which is traditionally associated with death, implies the “great unknown,” darkness, loneliness, morbidity, and, “by extension, entombment and psychological death” (Hart 5853). Darkness serves as a symbol of concealment and deception (Stallman 130). Black is both traditionally and contemporarily associated with evil and sin; Crane’s use of black symbolically depicts these concepts. In The Red Badge of Courage, shortly after the main character realizes the sickness of war and killing, he stands alone outside of the camp. “He remains ‘a few paces in the gloom,’ a ‘mental outcast.’ He is ‘alone in space,’ where only the ‘mood of darkness’” exists with him (Hart 5854).

Over the years, Stephen Crane has been visited with a host of labels - realist, naturalist, symbolist, parodist, ironist, and impressionist - and with a variety of estimates (Gullason 5846). Stephen Crane “was mesmerized with his bold ideas; he wanted to smash the ideas of traditionalism” (5848). His works are based on an impressionistic rendering of sense perception that try strenuously to make the reader hear, feel, and above all else, see the motives and temperament of his characters. “Gifted plainly with a powerful and probably very odd sense of color…he did not refuse to use it.” (Berryman 48). By having imagery reflect the world, not as it is, but as his characters perceive it to be, Crane gives the reader constant access to the inner states of the characters, thus deepening the meaning of the work (Lavers 48). Stephen Crane’s intricate use of colors as symbols is a unique art that is crucial to grasp the full meaning of his narratives.




Works Cited

Berryman, John. “Crane’s Art.” Stephen Crane. Ed. Maurice Bassan. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967. 27-51.

Cazemajou, Jean. “Stephen Crane 1871-1900.” American Writers. Ed. Leonard Unger. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974. 405-427.

Crane, Stephen. “The Open Boat.” Adventures in American Literature. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1989. 452-446.

Gullason, Thomas A. “The Permanence of Stephen Crane.” The Critical Perspective. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. 5846-5850.

Hart, John E. “The Red Bade of Courage as Myth and Symbol.” The Critical Perspective. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. 5853-5856.
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Hoffmeister, Werner. “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.” The World Book Encyclopedia. 1989 ed. 247-248.

Holton, Milne. Cylinder of Vision: The Fiction and Journalistic Writings of Stephen Crane. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972.

Karlen, Arno. “The Craft of Stephen Crane.” The Critical Perspective. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. 5842-5846.

Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft, Ed. American Authors. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1998. 188-190.

Lavers, Norman. “Order in The Red Badge of Courage.” Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 43-54.

Nagel, James. “Literary Impressionism.” Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 55-64.

Stallman, R.W. “Notes Toward an Analysis of The Red Badge of Courage.” Stephen Crane. Ed. Maurice Bassan. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967. 128-140.