The setting of the story

    In fact there are quite few descriptions of the settings in the text. At the beginning of the story we see that the main character a child stands on the street near "a high board-fence". Then the narrator describes the meeting of a dog and the child, but not the word about the look of the street. So the reader can imagine any type of street he likes.

    Then there were couple of words about the house of the child "In a small room containing a stove, a table, a bureau and some chairs". This description shows the small, grey, uninteresting room. It seems like there is nothing more to say about the room in particular and the child’s house as a whole. From the story we also can found out that the family lives in a multifamily house of at least five floors. "The end" of the setting's description.

    Such poor description of the places in the story draws the reader’s intention to the actions and feelings. It seems that for the narrator the place is really unimportant and meaningless. Thanks to this the reader doesn’t digress from the characters and their feelings and emotions, what makes this story sensible. 

Stephen Crane

    Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American author. He wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.
The eighth surviving child of Protestant Methodist parents, Crane began writing at the age of four and had published several articles by the age of 16. Having little interest in university studies, he left college in 1891 to work as a reporter and writer. Crane's first novel was the 1893 Bowery tale “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets”, generally considered by critics to be the first work of American literary Naturalism. He won international acclaim in 1895 for his Civil War novel “The Red Badge of Courage”, which he wrote without having any battle experience. Plagued by financial difficulties and ill health, Crane died of tuberculosis in a Black Forest sanatorium in Germany at the age of 28.
    Stephen Crane's fiction is typically categorized as representative of Naturalism, American realism, Impressionism or a mixture of the three. Crane's work, however, cannot be determined by style solely on chronology. Not only does his fiction not take place in any particular region with similar characters, but it varies from serious in tone to reportorial writing and light fiction. The novels and short stories contain poetic characteristics such as shorthand prose, suggestibility, shifts in perspective and ellipses between and within sentences. Similarly, omission plays a large part in Crane's work; the names of his protagonists are not commonly used and sometimes they are not named at all.
    Crane is also known for his poetry, journalism, and short stories such as "The Open Boat", "The Blue Hotel", "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", and “The Monster”.

My first impression

    When I’ve read the first couple lines, I thought that this story will be about the relations between a little dog and a boy. I predicted that they will become friends and grow up together. The small dog will become the big, even the huge one and it will be the most faithful creature in the boy’s life. And they will live the long and happy life.

    At first my predictions were right: they really became good friend. But the end of the story was very much unexpected. The story is quite short, but during this small period of time of reading I came to love these two and the loss of one of them was a great shock for me. It even made me cry. Still I don’t regret that I’ve chosen this short story, as it is really touching and nice piece of literature.