Comparing Stephen Crane's The Black Riders And Other Lines

In part three of Stephen Crane’s “The Black Riders and Other Lines,” Crane uses dark imagery, barbaric adjectives, gloomy tone, and awkward dialogue to express self-acceptance, even in the worst of qualities. Crane depicts, “In the desert/ I saw a creature, naked, bestial,” which illustrates a bare picture of one’s pure self, in this case the creature with no clothing. By having the creature stripped of all clothes and in the desert where typical nothing obstructing is present, anything that can cover this creature is now gone. Crane uses “naked,” “bestial,” and “bitter” as adjectives that describe something lacking another, which emphasizes the point that in order to accept one’s self they must address what they lack. “Naked” implies that clothes or fur are missing,

Crane portrays a gloomy tone to emphasize the depressing reality that can occur when accepting one’s self. By having a naked creature who “held his heart in his hands/ and ate of it,” and ended up liking his own bitter heart, the poem contains aspects of human life that many people usually do not enjoy, such as being naked in front of others and tasting bitter food, which builds the gloomy tone of the poem. Also, The fact that the creature liked his bitter heart, which represents one accepting the worst in his/her self, gives the truly depressing tone, because the heart is associated with love and sweetness, but the creature’s heart was bitter which is the complete opposite. This implies, when the creature ate his own heart, that he was content with being a horrible creature. Lastly, Crane uses awkward dialogue to represent that accepting one’s true self, including the negatives, is uncomfortable and unpleasant. The narrator starts the conversation by asking, “Is it good, friend?” when he witnesses a naked creature eating its own heart. Calling someone “friend”