All just a work of chance? Chance is not inevitable. It is impossible to predict a definite thing that will happen in the result of a chance. Things like having a chance to win a new car or having a chance to win the lottery are associated with possibilities but not guarantees. In our society chance plays a role in changing lives because people bet on it all the time. Chance can cause things that send ripples and affect other things without it being in relation. These short stories ”The Blue Hotel” by Stephen Crane and “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor test the idea of chance in their novels through the occurrences of random events around their characters. Examples like the Swede ending up in the hotel, the Misfit crossing paths with the family, or the bar incident with the Swede shows that there’s a reason things happen. Both authors use chance as a forefront to hide the meaning these characters have with their actions affecting people they meet for a reason revealing something about other character’s ethics and morals. Referring to the random circumstances that the Swede met with the other characters. The Swede was a wanted encounter at first because Scully wanted him to stay at his hotel but soon his actions becomes too much for the people around him. The Swede’s description from the start of the story had an uneasy feel amongst the other characters picked up. Crane describes the Swede as “shaky and quick-eyed” (3). This description is true throughout the story because his demeanor, inside the hotel, has him very self-conscious about his own wellbeing as he stares around a room full of people he thinks is going to kill him. The Swede thinks he has been put in this hotel by chance to die; the Swede looked at his chances of survival as slim the more he stays.
Furthermore, the Swede changed his mind set by the second half of the story. Crane had the Swede become even further distant from the people turning him from fearful and defensive to brash and outspoken. Crane showed the change in the Swede through the change in his tone, his voice was described now as “arrogantly, profanely, [and] angrily” (14). Crane did this out of random because one minute the Swede was too scared to be around people resulting in people not wanting to be around him; and now, after a short time upstairs, he comes back a new more annoying person that people still don’t want to be around. The Swede continues to be even more belligerent by starting a fight over a card game. The Swede’s drastic shift came to a high point as he went crazy wanting to brawl with Johnnie over the card game outcome. Crane comment on the Swede by changing his description from earlier; the Swede went from a “badly freighted man” (4) to “demoniac” (18). This moment goes with the absurdity that is happening, these random people and this one very random person is conflicting all from a chance of survival. The Swede already decided he is at war with these people and he is still got a chance to survive.
Regarding the chance of the Swede’s interaction with other outsiders. After the fight between the Swede and Johnnie, Swede decides to leave the hotel. He trudges through the snow and gets to the bar further away from the hotel and meets a bunch of different people. Now it is only by chance that the Swede left and made it to a bar out in the weather, he meets new people, and quickly starts acting the same way as he did before leaving the hotel. Crane did this because the Swede seemed to be more comfortable with fellow outsiders, the society which is the hotel, and the bar seemed like a place for outsiders to be; so the Swede transitioned fast. During this time the Swede urges the Gambler to drink with him, pushing him and threatening him until he randomly killed him. Crane described the gambler as a “moral” man but with the first sense of danger the belligerent Swede brought him he was quick to take a life. Crane used this moment as a