Sensory Details in Maggie

           "In a hilarious hall there were twenty-eight tables and twenty-eight women and a crowd of smoking men. Valiant noise was made on a stage at the end of the hall by an orchestra composed of men who looked as if they had just happened in. Soiled waiters ran to and fro, swooping down like hawks on the unwary in the throng; clattering along the aisles with trays covered with glasses; stumbling over women's skirts and charging two prices for everything but beer, all with a swiftness that blurred the view of the cocoanut palms and dusty monstrosities painted upon the walls of the room. A bouncer, with an immense load of business upon his hands, plunged about in the crowd, dragging bashful strangers to prominent chairs, ordering waiters here and there and quarreling furiously with men who wanted to sing with the orchestra.
           The usual smoke cloud was present, but so dense that heads and arms seemed entangled in it. The rumble of conversation was replaced by a roar. Plenteous oaths heaved through the air. The room rang with the shrill voices of women bubbling o'er with drink-laughter. The chief element in the music of the orchestra was speed. The musicians played in intent fury. A woman was singing and smiling upon the stage, but no one took notice of her. The rate at which the piano, cornet and violins were going, seemed to impart wildness to the half-drunken crowd. Beer glasses were emptied at a gulp and conversation became a rapid chatter. The smoke eddied and swirled like a shadowy river hurrying toward some unseen falls. Pete and Maggie entered the hall and took chairs at a table near the door. The woman who was seated there made an attempt to occupy Pete's attention and, failing, went away."

          Sensory details fall under the literary element of "imagery," and authors must appeal to all five senses if they wish to produce a vivid image in readers' minds. In the first part of chapter fourteen of Maggie: Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane uses two condensed paragraphs (that don't quite fit in with the choppy and curt nature of the rest of the novel) to get readers believing that they are at this orchestra performance. By overloading this passage, Crane assails each of our senses - sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell - with tiny, yet significant details that convey the discourse that Maggie is feeling in this scene. As we read the long, windy sentences that fill this passage, our head starts to spin with all the details we are getting. We begin to smell the smoke cloud, and taste its density on our tongues as Crane goes into more details about it. The waiters dashing around the seas of flailing limbs make it so our minds' eyes can't fathom what they are seeing through this cloud, and we hear the wailing woman singing along with the music that's increase in pace increases the heartbeat.
       From this passage, we understand that Maggie is feeling a little frazzled at her boisterous and overbearing surroundings. By using our own senses to his advantage, Crane was able convey a sense of wariness by giving us solid, corporeal details to experience with Maggie. It is my opinion that this passage was meant to also give us a sense that Maggie does not feel safe in this setting. Crane uses words like "swooping down like hawks," "monstrosites," and "impart wildness" to issue a sense of danger, like she is surrounded by vicious creatures ready to attack. This ties into the theme of the book about survival of the fittest. In my interpretation of this passage, I would assume that Maggie no longer feels like she is one of the "fittest" in this social circle. If city living in the 1890's was like living in a jungle, then this was the watering hole where everyone strutted their stuff for power and prominence. I think that this is where Maggie starts to realize that there is no beauty in trying for the life she wants to live, and the remainder of the book has a more feral, animalistic feel than the hopeful beginning we read.