The Bowery

The Bowery

The Bowery & Stephen Crane

In Chapter 1, Stephen Crane is setting the scene of the Bowery for the novel. He writes, “A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley”. The book opens up with this fight in the Bowery making the setting as realistic as possible. He goes on to describe these boys as blood-thirsty savages as they battle with rocks. This is not a playground fight. These boys intend to do severe injury to one another. He depicts these children fighting for honor in the Bowery while there really is no. The Bowery is a busy very chaotic place, it is a place of violence where there is little respect for life. We learn that this is true through the entirety of the book. As the book unfolds, the boy, Jimmy is knocked around by his father who catches him fighting. He is taken home where his drunken mother brutalizes him. The irony in the quote is that this violent boy would fight for honor in a place where there is none. We see through the picture below that the Bowery is indeed a very chaotic place during the 1890’s, there are cars, masses of people and also trains all running through the Bowery at any given point in the day.

http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/the-bowerys-bid-for-posterity/

The Local East Village

Edward Regler