THE DEEP ONES: "The Black Dog" by Stephen Crane

"The Black Dog" by Stephen Crane

Discussion begins April 14, 2021.

First published in the July 24, 1892 issue of the New York Tribune.



ONLINE VERSIONS

https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/Crane_Black_Dog.pdf
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.loa.org/images/pdf/Crane_Black_Dog...

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1094991

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Terribly Strange Tales
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps

MISCELLANY

https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2020/10/the-black-dog.html
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/30/the-red-and-the-scarlet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Crane
https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/weird-nj/2014/10/04/weird-nj-hau...
https://tinyurl.com/78y33cc4

Well, the black dog's obviously some sort of banshee-style announcer of death, but for the rest this story left me more bewildered than anything else. Who are the four men, the little one, the pudgy one and the blue istari? They're presented as if they ought be familiar but I couldn't make head or tails of it.

I was confused about the four men, too. A couple of the LOA links (some posted above, some reached by clicking through links on those pages) clarified that Crane wrote a clutch of stories featuring these four men. While some stories might expand a bit on their personalities, I gather it's not crucial and not much more detailed in any event. Some speculate that Crane himself is the short one, others that he's the quiet one.

Who is the blue istari? I missed that in my read.

I was let down by the whimsy at the end. Perhaps because I'm more familiar with Dunsany's stories, I picked up on Crane's prose and thought of Dunsanian stylings more than Machen. Though they seemed tongue-in-cheek, I found them effective. That in the end, it was disappointing that the hound seems so unambiguously non-supernatural.

I'm not sure how unambiguous it is. We are told he has a "master" who has "moved to Pike county," which doesn't sound very supernatural. (If the master were Death himself, or the Devil, would his residence be so provincialized?) And the image of the dog quietly lapping the beef broth and wagging its tail deflates its spectral impression.

But the old man did die when the dog went quiet. Had he simply died of fright in his advanced illness? Had the dog stopped its howl just because its regular dog hunger was satisfied, or because the old man was dead?

I was wondering about "slate-colored." Is that supposed to be a dark African-American complexion, or an unhealthy strange gray color?

>3 elenchus:

Sorry, the blue istari was my little Tolkien reference. There's five istari (aka wizards), Saruman the White, Gandalf the Grey, and Radagast the Brown, the first two of whom are major characters and the third at least shows up, and two blue ones about whom we learn basically nothing. Similarly, here there's four men, one little, one pudgy, and two that don't get any characterization at all.

>4 paradoxosalpha:

FWIW, I assumed the latter interpretation of "slate-colored". I'm not sure I've ever heard it used in description of healthy human skin?

>5 AndreasJ: I'm not sure I've ever heard it used in description of healthy human skin?

Me neither, but since there was no explanation for it, I thought about it further and realized that while we often use "slate" in discussions of pigments and colors to mean a lighter gray now, actual slate is pretty black, and sort of similar to the coloration that you can see in some African ethnicities. Since the language here is from the late 19th century, I wondered. The fact that the character was set apart by dialect as well seemed to support this other hypothesis.

>4 paradoxosalpha:
I confess I agree it's not completely unambiguous! My complaint is how it ends on such a strong non-supernatural note. It might not "hit" so hard were the story shared aloud or around a campfire, I suppose, which the Crane's allegedly were fond of doing. Humour often is used to relieve (without negating) the fear preceding it.

>5 AndreasJ:

Oh, I should have recollected the istari term.

>5 AndreasJ:
>6 paradoxosalpha:

I wondered the same about the complexion and made the same inference about African American. paradoxosalpha's conjecture sounds right, I should have realised the change in usage. After all: blackboards were originally slate.

I was confused by the two non-speaking and not-characterised companions of the short man and the pudgy man, the the degree that I began to wonder if the "four" at the beginning of the story was a misprint for "two". The antagonism between the short man and the pudgy one wasn't foregrounded either, so I had a moment of wondering who the short man was arguing with. Was it the man cooking their supper? Very ungrateful, if so, I thought.

We don't learn much about the four men but I assume they are relatively sophisticated ("townies", "city slickers" - that sort of idea), and the point of the story is to show - cliché warning! - how thin the veneer of sophistication is, because they fully buy into the idea of the Black Dog and are as terrified of it as the home owner.

When I say the point of the story I don't mean there's anything profound here. This is more of a tall tale or situation comedy sequence (I grew up with more than my share of 1970s British sitcoms with an existential void at their heart!).

I have to confess that I didn't see even the barest hint of supernaturalism at the end of the story, but rather the fact of the old man's having really died being an ironic sting in the tail (and a "punchline" to wind up the story).

>8 housefulofpaper: to show - cliché warning! - how thin the veneer of sophistication is

I suppose that interpretation could be aimed at us, the readers, as well as the four city slickers. A shot across the bow of THE DEEP ONES? I'm not familiar enough with Crane's writing to know whether that's likely or not.

>9 elenchus:

I just think it's a very common notion, expressed in all sorts of ways - ranging from the assertion "there are no atheists in a foxhole" to silent movie comedians running from a presumed ghost (but just somebody covered in a sheet).

I'm going to agree with the ISFDB entry on this and regard it as a parody. Normally, I'm not as sensitive to the significance of characters' names as others here, but I'm wondering if "Crocker" isn't meant to suggest "crock" as in that's a "crock of . . . "

I also sort of wonder if there isn't a vague symbolic point about the nature of life. The old man dies. The dog gets to live another day, indirectly because of the old man's death.

The "little man" seems little in more than one way. He's panicky and fearful.