Section IV-V:

In this section, the townspeople of Whilomville are introduced.

Section  IV begins with a Saturday evening, outdoor social. A mediocre band plays, and short snippets of people in the crowd establish the townspeople to be of the regular sort.  Smug boys watch silly girls in groups, trying to establish social superiority by saying ridiculous things. Young children run around raucously, as they are wont to do. This is a run of the mill town.  The section ends with a fire call for a burning building in district two.  The townspeople are all aflutter. “In a flash the company of indolent and cynical young men had vanished like a snowball disrupted by dynamite.” The band conductor stops with his baton still raised in the air.

Section V continues to emphasize how normal the town really is. Jake Rogers and Johnnie Thorpe are introduced for this section only as firemen consumed by adrenaline and excitement to get to the fire and prove themselves.   Willie and his mother are also introduced as a one time thing. Willie wants to go watch the firemen put out the fire. The church bell begins to toll. Willie throws a fit when his mother won’t let him go.

Crane uses two entire sections to establish the normalcy of the townspeople with their cliques, words, actions, and excitement over the fire.

Link to text:

Section IV:

http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=CraMons.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=4&division=div2

Section V: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=CraMons.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=5&division=div2