Marriage Of The End Essay, Research Paper

The Marriage of the end

“The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” by Stephen Crane, was a story that showed the dying of the old west and the merging of the eastern way of thinking. In this story The sheriff gets married and comes home to a town that may or may not accept what he has done.

The sheriff is coming home on a train, not horses but a train with a wife he did not ask the town permission for. The entire train ride home consists of him telling his new wife everything about everything on the train which shows his anxiety in going home to his town. Every thing on the train symbolizes how the east is coming to the west and how the west is slowly fading out. Everyone on the train keeps referring to time as if time were running out for everybody.

The other main character of this story is Scratchy Wilson. Scratchy is the only trace of the traditional western bad guy even though his clothes are from a catalog from new York. Scratchy Has played a sort of game with the sheriff and feels that this is the way it should be. The whole town has been a part of this game as well, reacting to Scratchy as one should react to a typical bad guy. When the sheriff comes home with his wife Scratchy threatens to kill the sheriff until he learns that he has broken the rules and gotten married. This ends the game and forever changes the way the town interacts with each other.