The Quiet Stranger

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is a novel written by Stephen Crane that tells the story of a girl and her life. It starts with a glimpse of Maggie’s childhood, where her brother, Jimmie, was fighting with the kids from another street. It’s the only time where her father makes an appearance in the story only to take his son out of the fight and drag him back home. When they are back home it’s shown the environment in which Maggie and Jimmie grew up: drunk parents cursing at each other until they both drink themselves to the oblivion. Maggie and Jimmie grew up in poverty, one getting corrupted by it and hardening, while the other was naive and hopeful for a better life. It ends up being Jimmie’s friend, Pete, who corrupts Maggie. He makes her fall in love with him just to use her body and then abandon her, seemingly unknowing of it. When Jimmie hears of the relationship between his sister and his friend, he takes it upon himself to start a fight with Pete. The tension between them builds up quickly and Crane offers the reader a violent scene through a complex use of literary tools such as repetition and metaphors. The quiet stranger is one of the things Crane uses to show the rising tension between the men. 

The first appearance of this quiet stranger is a simple one, that of a man in a bar ordering beer: “Pete, in a white jacket, was behind the bar bending expectantly towards a quiet stranger. ‘A beeh,’ said the man” (Crane 42). It’s a common scene to see in a bar: a man ordering beer. This is Pete’s job, everyday he serves people alcohol at work, everyday there’s men ordering beer, it’s his everyday life. The author uses this situation as a way of showing the beforemath of this fight, the normality there is of a bar offering alcohol and drinks to the people that come in, a normality that is later disrupted by Jimmie and his friend’s appearance. 

When Jimmie comes into the bar, coming in swaggering unsteadily but belligerently. While the bartender tries to ignore them, Jimmie makes a comment of the man in front of him, loudly enough for Pete to hear. The companion follows up on the conversation, creating tension as they talk of the man who is standing in front of them. The quiet stranger sensing the tension moves away from them: “The quiet stranger moved himself and his glass a trifle farther away and maintained an attitude of obliviousness” (Crane 43). The stranger’s movements are marked as a way to build up tension that appeared the second Jimmie came in the bar. The normality of the bar was disrupted by Maggie’s brother with an obvious intent to start a conflict. The reaction to move away to avoid what was about to happen is what Crane uses to show the reader that something is going to go wrong and it has already started.

Pete, listening to the comments that are being made about him, makes a retort towards Jimmie, defending himself and his pride. With that the arguments commence and his third appearance is made: “The quiet stranger looked at the door calculatingly” (Crane 43). With him planning to escape the place where chaos has already stricken, glancing at the door, thinking of an escape in case the situation worsens. On the other hand Pete and Jimmie keep arguing, and snarling like animals. The comparison the men have in this chapter to animals is another of the things Crane does to show their lack of thought throughout this fight, acting by instinct and attacking each other.

Things start escalating when Pete and Jimmie dare the other, to show who would win in the fight, hearing this the quiet stranger decides to start his escape in a furtive way: “The quiet stranger moved modestly toward the door” (Crane 44). The fighting is escalating, not yet to physical fighting, what started out as talking loudly and offensive comments turned into yelling and threats. Pete, who was equally into the fight as Jimmie, had asked the aggressor to leave without causing trouble. His words only got to offend Jimmie and get him more aggravated than before.

In the purpose to show that what they’re doing is inhuman, Crane brings in animal characteristics in the fight to describe the characters and their actions as well. It is when the fists go in and the blood pours out. That rationality, or whatever was left of it, leaves the fighters, throwing glasses around and making chaos. Seeing this the coy beer-drinker is also gone: “The quiet stranger vanished” (Crane 45). Is just another sign that the fighting got worse, it’s not only Jimmie and Pete’s problem now, but everyone inside the bar. The people got caught up in it too, the chaos augmented and his abandoned beer glass is used to get Pete unconscious by a blow in the head with it. 

Even if he had escaped the bar, the quiet stranger wasn’t fast enough to escape from the chaos that came from it. When the police arrive and Jimmie decides to leave before they catch him, readers get the last glimpse of him: “The quiet stranger had sprawled very pyrotechnically out on the sidewalk” (Crane 46).  A man who just wanted a beer probably ended up in the hospital because of two angry men and their temper tantrum over a girl.

Stephen Crane uses the quiet stranger, and other metaphors, to show how this scene went down, to show what happened and how quickly it escalated. Within a blink of an eye everyone was going at each other’s throats, there were things being thrown around and it seemed that the situation was inescapable, even for the ones that were not involved. The quiet stranger is a genius stylistic device that the author utilizes and manipulates to mark how things are developing, in this case, the fight, every movement he makes is important even if the character itself isn’t.