“The Blue Hotel” operates on subversion by setting up narrative expectations and then failing to fulfill them. The story foreshadows events that never come to fruition and introduces characters who do little. Instead, characters exhibit overblown reactions to emotional triggers, leading to consequences that readers may variously interpret as either inevitable or entirely avoidable based on the way in which Crane toys with expectations about what is “supposed to” happen in a story.

For example, the old farmer who is playing cards with Johnnie at the beginning of the story holds no clear purpose in the text, though he is mentioned several times. Just as the tension between the Swede and the others begins to mount, the farmer leaves the hotel and vanishes from the story. Similarly, the men who are drinking with the gambler when the Swede arrives at the saloon vanish so unobtrusively when the violence occurs that it is only after they are gone that the narrative even notes their absence. This is particularly unusual given that the story identifies one of these men as a district attorney; readers might expect him to stand as a figure of law and order during a scene in which a crime takes place, but his presence is simply another loose end.