is is when the Swede accuses Johnny of cheating in a card game. This offends Johnny and his emotional and physical reaction is to challenge the Swede to a fight. Crane stories consist of that moment when the characters confront the inescapable impasse of their situation, they are caught and boxed in by fate, and then nothing happens. That is what happens with the Swede after he whips Johnny in the fight. The Swede feels as if he is no longer wanted at the hotel since Johnnys father is the owner of the hotel. The Swede becomes boxed in an inescapable situation.Crane also shows his naturally used theme of betrayal and guilt through the Swede. He does this after the Swede leaves the hotel. The Swede goes into a bar and asks some gentlemen to drink with him to celebrate his victory over Johnny. When they refuse he become angry as if these men are betraying him because they will not let him buy them a drink. The Swede then threatens one of the gentlemen and the man retaliates and ends up killing the Swede. Without this betrayed feeling the Swede would have probably lived. This was different in the movie. In the movie he is just ignored by a single visitor at the hotel. The stranger is threatened and he retaliates by stabbing the Swede.This, the blue hotel, could have been one of Cranes best works if it were not for the puzzling ending, in which the Easterner offers a moral that baffles not only the Cowboy, but the reader as well. The Easterner does this by telling the Cowboy he seen Johnny cheating but never spoke up. If the Easterner had spoken up sooner the whole story would have changed drastically....
