Voices from the past in The Bride Comes to Yellow SkyOnce upon a time there was the West, and the West was wild. It was necessary to trace trails and fight the Indians. To overcome such difficulties and obstacles, men had to be as tough, sturdy and indomitable as the landscape they faced. At a time when the American people needed heroes, the men who conquered the Western frontier became objects of admiration and wonder. Furthermore, they set a standard of physical strength and violent self-reliance that anyone who decided to settle in the West had to meet, because it was a place of harshness, conflict, and courage. In Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", Scratchy Wilson and Jack Potter seem to possess the qualities required of a "western man". Through their voices, the legend of the West emerges in Crane's story. At the same time, however, their voices are only part of a discourse of voices in history that praise the death of the Wild West and the rise of civilization. Although it celebrates the Wild West, Crane's story dramatizes his passing in an ambivalent way. The collection of voices in "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" includes those of drummer and saloon bartender Weary Gentleman. The town of Yellow Sky, of course, has a typical frontier saloon where men gather to drink whiskey. The bartender's dog lounges outside the front door, admiring the scenery of a small, dusty town whose name, Yellow Sky, even suggests that the town is part of a vast but beautiful natural landscape. When the shooting suddenly begins in the street, the reader discovers with the drummer how quickly a sleepy town in the old Western can turn violent. Scratchy Wilson is responsible for filming, the barten...... middle of paper ......d West desperado. The last vestige of this desperado is the ritual he participates in when he fights Potter in the street. In his confrontation with Potter and the Bride, even that is removed. The idea of ​​marriage is so foreign to Scratchy that he decides that 'it's all over now'” (122). More than one particular fight is interrupted. Everything that was once traditional in Yellow Sky is also extinct. Civilization has tamed Scratchy Wilson and Jack Potter, the last men of the Wild West. With ironic humor, Stephen Crane marks the disappearance of the Wild West in “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”. But one thing remains and endures: the myth that Crane both mourns and celebrates. Works Cited Crane, Stephen. “The bride comes to the yellow sky.” 1925. Short story masterpieces. Ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine. New York: Laurel, 1982. 110-122.