The young man drinks his helping of free soup. He goes within and is ushered to an amicable man with an oily mustache ladling out hot chicken broth to the poor. He sees a sign in front of a saloon stating that free hot soup was served there.
Trains, trams, and cable cars go moving about him even at this late hour.
He is young but a man of his word who knows what he wants from life. His clothes are tattered his derby hat is dusty and old. Even though so young, he seems aware of how one must go about living like a tramp or a wanderer in New York. The young man who is the unnamed protagonist in this story titled ‘An Experiment in Misery’ is ready to embark on a life of poverty. ‘An Experiment in Misery’ is Crane’s story of how despite New York being one of the most advanced nations in the nineteenth century, it was a place with a large population of poor people, some who did not even have room to spend the night. He worked as a news correspondent and died at the young age of twenty-eight. The short story is penned by American writer Stephen Crane, famous for his second novel, The Red Badge of Courage. It narrates how he befriends a highly intoxicated tramp and tries to gain some nourishment for the day after they have spent a miserable night. It chronicles how he gets a cot to sleep in a seedy joint for the poor. ‘An Experiment in Misery’ is an excellent and highly evocative short story about how a young man enters the world of the weaker sections of society in New York City. ‘An Experiment in Misery’ by Stephen Crane: Short Story Analysis
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