icant is not only ironic, but humorous as well. He is almost beaten to death, but none the less remains defiant in his honor of defending Rum Alley. Chester Walford notes of Crane’s technique, “…it’s greatness lies in the irony of this harsh environment, no one’s quest is fulfilled, and no one learns anything: the novel swings from chaos on the one side to complete illusion on the other.” The end of the novel brings along with it, the end of Maggie herself. In the final chapter Maggie meets her ultimate fate. Edwin Moses says of Maggie’s conclusion, “It is one of the most harrowingly ironic endings in all of fiction…”(433). After being disowned by her mother for leaving her home to live with Peter, Maggie is disowned by Peter as well. In the end she is left for a more beautiful woman with more beautiful Parra 6clothing and more money. When Maggie tries to return home to her mother, she is cast away and turns to prostitution as a way of life. She eventually dies alone and abandoned on the streets of New York. After hearing news of her daughter’s death, Maggie’s uncaring, uncompassionate, heartless, drunkard mother cries out in agony, “Oh, yes, I’ll fergive her! I’ll fergive her!”(Crane, 61). With this, the novel is ended and one is left with a unsatisfying feeling of overwhelming sadness. Pizer states that Crane’s purpose behind it all, “…was not to show the effects of environment but to distinguish between moral appearance and reality, to attack the sanctimonious self-deception and sentimental emotional gratification of moral poses”(5850).Crane could have most probably used any technique to reveal the truths and realities to his audience. His use of dialect and irony are only a few, but perhaps his most effective as well as his most powerful technique lies in his use of realism. Robert Cantwell claims, &#...
