Humor in Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"

Stephen Crane's short story "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" is considered by many to be a masterpiece. One writer even called it "the greatest story ever written." One of the reasons the story is so good is that Crane uses humor to make some serious points about people in general and the Old West in particular. In the first part of the story, Crane portrays Jack Potter and his new wife as humorous characters. …

…to a society in transition, a culture whose values are in a state of flux. A "simple child of the earlier plains", Scratchy Wilson is an anachronism, a man who finds himself out of place historically. Luckily, he has the good grade and good sense to realize his predicament and walk away from what he cannot understand. But who knows- perhaps some day he'll find himself a bride and bring her back to Yellow Sky.