How light is portrayed in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Chapter seventeen of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane, has a great example of metaphorai; light. In the beginning of the chapter a girl, assuming to be Maggie, is explained to be painted (Crane 52). As the chapter develops, we are presented with the element of light, “She passed more glittering avenues and went into darker blocks than those where the crowd travelled” (Crane 52). The next stage of darkness is when, “the girl went into gloomy districts near the river, where the tall black factories shut in the street and only occasional broad beams of light fell across the pavements from saloons” (Crane 53). “Further on in the darkness she met a ragged being…she went into the blackness of the final block,” this is the progression of the light in the chapter (Crane 53). As the chapter comes to a close, the girl sees from “afar off the lights of the avenues glittered as if from an impossible distance” (Crane 53). At the end of the chapter it is explained that, “at their feet the river appeared a deathly black hue” (Crane 53).

Metaphorai is evident in this chapter through the object of light. Light serves as a journey through Maggie’s last day on Earth. In the beginning of the chapter the light is bright as it is explained to be “painted,” in other words, bright. When we first see that she is going into darkness, it is illustrated that Maggie or “the girl” goes from “glittering avenues into darker blocks” (Crane 52). The next evidence comes with more information. Not only is the girl going towards the darkness, she is also going towards the river. Also knowing about the river we are also informed that the black factories sometimes let off “beams of light,” symbolizing that her life is getting darker but she also has some good in her. That this “new self” isn’t completely who she wants to be, but she thinks it’s too late to change the innate nature she has taken on. As the girl gets more and more into the darkness she meets a “huge fat man in torn and greasy garments,” which could symbolize the degrading factor of where her life has led her (Crane 53). The audience is told that the girl sees lights from afar but that they seem to have “an impossible distance,” this distance could be explained that she remembers “the light” in her past life but that she is too far off the beaten path to regain that life (Crane 53). She sees the once she reaches the river of a “deathly black hue” that she has reached the end of her journey (Crane 53). Light can be used as the metaphorai in the novel, Maggie and the light can help us understand the journey that Maggie, the girl, went through during her last day before her tragic and sudden death.