Plot Overview

It is just before dawn, and not far off the coast of Florida, between the
open sea and the surf, are four men in a dinghy. The ship on which they
were sailing sank overnight, and they are the only survivors, left to bob up
and down in the waves until their bathtub-sized boat capsizes and they
too drown. They do not have a moment’s peace. The ocean is so rough
that one indelicate move will upset the dinghy and send them into the
winter waters. Each man, despite not having slept for two days, works
tirelessly to keep the boat afloat. The correspondent and the oiler share
the work of rowing, while the cook huddles on the floor of the dinghy,
bailing water. These men take their direction from the captain, who was
injured during the shipwreck and sits grimly in the bow, the memory still
fresh of his ship engulfed in the sea and the crew’s dead faces in the
water.
As day breaks and the cook and correspondent bicker about being
rescued, the men begin to make progress toward the shore. Fighting
hopelessness, they row silently. Gulls fly overhead and perch on the
water. The gulls are at ease on the ocean, so much so that one lands on
the captain’s head. The men see this as a sinister, insulting gesture, but
the captain cannot swat the bird off because the sudden movement would
likely topple the boat.
Eventually, the captain shoos the bird away, and they go on rowing until
the captain sees a lighthouse in the distance. Although the cook
expresses reservation that the nearby lifesaving station has been
abandoned for more than a year, the crew heartens at approaching land,
almost taking pleasure in the brotherhood that they have formed and in
attending to the business of the sea. The correspondent even finds four
dry cigars in a pocket, which he shares with the others.
The men’s optimism evaporates when, approaching land yet unable to
master the turbulent surf, they realize that help isn’t coming. They again
make for the open sea, exhausted and bitter. Another sign of hope comes
when the captain sees a man on shore. Each crew member looks for
signs of hope in the man’s gestures. They think the man sees them. Then
they think they see two men, then a crowd and perhaps a boat being
rolled down to the shore. They stubbornly think that help is on the way as
the shadows lengthen and the sea and sky turn black.
During the night, the men forget about being saved and attend to the
business of the boat. The correspondent and oiler, exhausted from
rowing, plan to alternate throughout the night. But they get tired in the
early hours of the morning, and the cook helps out. For the most part, the
correspondent rows alone, wondering how he can have come so far if he
is only going to drown. Rowing through phosphorescence and alongside
a monstrous shark, the correspondent thinks of a poem he learned in
childhood about a soldier dying in a distant land, never to return home.
When morning comes, the captain suggests that they try to run the surf
while they still have enough energy. They take the boat shoreward until it
capsizes, and then they all make a break for it in the icy water. The oiler
leads the group, while the cook and correspondent swim more slowly and
the captain holds onto the keel of the overturned dinghy. With the help of
a life preserver, the correspondent makes good progress, until he is
caught in a current that forces him to back to the boat. Before he can
reach the dinghy, a wave hurls him to shallower water, where he is saved
by a man who has appeared on shore and plunged into the sea to save
the crew. On land, the correspondent drifts in and out of consciousness,
but as he regains his senses, he sees a large number of people on the
shore with rescue gear. He learns that the captain and cook have been
saved but the oiler has died.
Shifting Frames of Reference and
Impressionism
Although Crane was foremost a realist and naturalist writer who valued
firsthand, close-up experience as the key to understanding, Crane in “The
Open Boat” relies on impressionism to communicate the gulf between
objective reality and what his characters perceive as reality. Whereas the
logic of realism and naturalism calls for experience and perception to be
nearly identical, impressionism differs from the other two in that it allows
for the fact that a character’s grasp of reality is at best fleeting or even
impossible. Crane’s impressionistic technique in “The Open Boat” is ideal
for placing his readers into the same frame of reference as his characters.
The story’s first sentence, “No one knew the color of the sky,” thrusts the
reader into the position of his characters, who have a limited perspective
of the world. Each character lives alone in his own reality, as does the
narrator, whose lack of omniscience (the ability to be all-knowing)
underscores one of the story’s central messages: no one truly knows
anything.
Crane enriches his impressionistic technique by juxtaposing close-up,
sensory descriptions of the men’s experience in the dinghy with the
narrator’s detached perspective. The narrator says that the mountainous
gray waters obstruct the men’s view of everything outside the boat, but in
the next sentence the narrator comments on how the whole scene would
have been picturesque if viewed from afar. The point of shifting the frame
of reference is to convey that the significance of intense moments, such
as the men’s experience in the dinghy, depends on the perspective from
which they are seen. This idea becomes relevant to the characters
themselves as they realize that, from a cosmic perspective, their lives are
inconsequential.
Existentialism and Irony
In “The Open Boat,” Crane conveys an existential view of humanity: that
is, he depicts a human situation in which the individual is insignificant in
the universe and yet, through free will and consciousness, must interpret
a reality that is essentially unknowable. The men in the dinghy,
particularly the correspondent, try desperately to justify their survival in
the struggle against the sea, but the values by which they live and the
appeals they make to the heavens are inadequate. The universe is
indifferent to their courage, valor, and brotherhood, and there is no
response to the men’s furious appeals to fate and God to answer for the
outrageous misfortune that has befallen them. Crane’s use of the
word absurd in the narrator’s refrain challenging fate—“The whole affair is
absurd”—resonates well with the existentialist creed that the universe
itself is “absurd” and that there is no meaning in the natural order of
things. At best, these men can construct their own meanings, such as the
“subtle brotherhood of men” they form, but in Crane’s vision, they are shut
out from the cosmos.
The irony in Crane’s vision of “The Open Boat” is that, in describing the
situation of the correspondent, who has come to understand his
insignificant position in the natural universe through the manmade tower,
the narrator continues to give human qualities to inhuman things. For
example, the narrator calls nature a “she.” For both the narrator and
correspondent, nature is an old, inscrutable mistress whose workings are
always beyond their grasp. At the end of the story, the captain,
correspondent, and cook are no more able to converse with nature than
they were at the beginning. Indeed, they finally realize that there is no
such thing as conversing with nature. This awareness drives home the
irony of the final sentence in the story, in which the narrator says that the
three surviving men feel that they can be interpreters of the ocean’s
voice. The men’s capacity to interpret nature for other people refers
simply to their understanding that the sea’s voice is incoherent and the
universe a cosmic void. There is nothing to interpret.
Alternative Interpretations
Critics generally agree that “The Open Boat” is an examination of man’s
relationship to the universe as well as of man’s relationship to other men.
But there are different opinions about the precise nature of these
relationships. On one hand, Crane’s work seems to be anti-Romantic.
Romanticism argues that human beings exist in harmony with nature. The
sea in this story, with its constant snarls and hisses, is a hostile force to
mankind and certainly not in harmony with the men who are fighting for
their lives. American writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau believed that nature is a mystic wonderland that in every
corner holds tiny clues to how man fits seamlessly into the universe. “The
Open Boat” suggests the opposite: man is alienated from the universe
and doomed to lead a cold, unnatural existence.
On the other hand, “The Open Boat” could be seen as a Darwinian story
that shows how man is intimately connected to nature. Whereas the anti-
Romantics tried to separate man completely from nature, the Darwinians
understand Crane to be embracing nature so tightly that his plot simply
expands on Darwin’s idea of “survival of the fittest.” In this interpretation,
nature has no will or purpose. Just as the men come to realize that nature
has not actually taken up arms against them, they begin to devote
themselves to “the business of the boat”—to survival. Although the oiler’s
death seems to undermine the Darwinian interpretation of the story,
because he is clearly the strongest of the group and therefore should
have survived, it actually reinforces the idea of “survival of the fittest.”
While the cook, captain, and correspondent all depend on a manmade or
naturally occurring device to help them to the shore, the oiler goes it
alone, relying only on his human strength and not on his more evolved
capacity for thought and strategy. The “fittest” are the men who have
relied on man’s ability to intelligently adapt and create.
Character List
The Correspondent - A reporter and the central character of the story.
The correspondent is presumably young and able-bodied, given that he
shares rowing duties with the oiler. The correspondent is also, by virtue of
his profession, inclined to be cynical of men. He is pleasantly surprised to
find his heart warmed by the brotherhood that he and the crew have
formed in the boat. Several times, the correspondent curses nature and
the gods who rule the sea and wonders whether he is really meant to
drown.
Read an IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF THE CORRESPONDENT.
The Captain - The captain of the ship, injured when the ship floods. The
captain is calm and quiet, talking for the most part only to give directions
and lead the crew to shore. The captain commands complete authority,
and although he does not take part in keeping the dinghy afloat, he bears
the full responsibility of getting everyone to safety. He is always alert and
cool-headed, even when it looks as though he might be sleeping.
Read an IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF THE CAPTAIN.
The Cook - The ship’s cook, who maintains a positive, even naïve,
outlook on the men’s rescue. The cook is the first to suggest the presence
of a lifesaving station and cannot help but turn his mind to the simple
pleasures of living on land, such as his favorite pies and meats. Although
he is not fit enough to help with the rowing, the cook makes himself useful
by bailing water.
The Oiler (Billie) - The only refugee from the ship to die in the final
attempt at reaching land. Before the ship sank, the oiler worked a double
watch in the engine room, and he is most likely to be exhausted in the
dinghy. The oiler is staunch, obedient to the captain, and generous and
polite to the correspondent whenever he is asked to row. The oiler also
seems to be the most realistic of the men, never losing sight of the task at
hand or the slim chance they have of surviving.
The Correspondent
For Crane, each crewmember is an archetype that, when joined with his
fellow castaways, constitutes part of a microcosm of society. The captain
represents the leaders; the cook the followers; the oiler the good, working
men; and the correspondent the observers and thinkers. As his
profession as a reporter suggests, the correspondent functions as the
eyes and voice of the story. Crane underlines this point in his introduction
of the characters in the first section. While the cook is cowering on the
boat’s floor and the oiler is silently working at his oar, the correspondent
watches the waves and wonders why he is caught on the ocean, a
question that reveals the correspondent’s search for purpose in life. With
this question alone, the correspondent begins to shape our perceptions of
the ordeal the men are undergoing.
In the first five sections of “The Open Boat,” the correspondent’s
challenges to the sea, which he associates with nature and fate, reveal
his desire to make sense of surviving the ship only to drown in the dinghy.
Although he understands that nature and fate do not act and think as men
do, the correspondent nevertheless goads them because he believes that
there is a purpose to nature, that it in some way validates his struggle for
survival. The correspondent initially thinks he finds the answer when he
considers the “subtle brotherhood of men” that develops among the crew
in response to the overwhelming cruelty of nature. At this point, he takes
pleasure in the pain caused by rowing in the rough sea because he
believes that this pain is the healthy byproduct of his effort at community,
which nature has forced them to create and is the only thing that really
matters. As the men realize that no one is coming to save them, however,
the correspondent comes to lose hope in the “subtle brotherhood” that
had seemed to be the noble purpose of submitting to nature’s
punishment.
The Captain
The captain is the consummate leader, a man who never shirks from the
responsibility he takes for those who have entrusted their safety to him.
When he loses his ship to the sea at the beginning of the story, the
captain suffers infinitely more than the other survivors. Deprived of his
ship, he becomes a broken man who has lost the very thing that grants
him his authority. Yet the captain, through his dedication to guiding the
men to safety, retains a degree of dignity to go with the ineffable sense of
loss he feels at having failed in his charge. In this sense, the captain is at
once a majestic and tragic figure, one who has not measured up to the
standards he has set for himself but continues to fight for his fellow men.
His quiet, steady efforts in the boat are not self-motivated and afford him
no personal redemption. Instead, his actions are directed toward the
others.
The Oiler (Billie)
Of the four characters in the boat, the oiler represents the everyman, the
one whom Crane intends to resemble the average person most closely.
The oiler functions as the lynchpin of the crew, holding everyone together
through his staunch heroism. He has the fewest delusions about the
men’s physical plight, but he never gives in to the hopelessness that the
others mask with idle talk about nonexistent opportunities for rescue or
meditations about the cruelty of nature. Instead, the oiler maintains an
image of strength, warmth, and integrity. He echoes the captain’s orders,
reinforcing the social structure of the crew and instilling confidence in the
others, whose outlook rises and falls with the waves.
Themes
Nature’s Indifference to Man
Despite the narrator’s profusion of animistic (animal-like), humanistic
(manlike), and deistic (godlike) characterizations of nature, Crane makes
clear that nature is ultimately indifferent to the plight of man, possessing
no consciousness that we can understand. As the stranded men progress
through the story, the reality of nature’s lack of concern for them becomes
increasingly clear. The narrator highlights this development by changing
the way he describes the sea. Early in the story, the sea snarls, hisses,
and bucks like a bronco; later, it merely “paces to and fro,” no longer an
actor in the men’s drama. In reality, the sea does not change at all; only
the men’s perception of the sea changes. The unaltered activity of the
gulls, clouds, and tides illustrates that nature does not behave any
differently in light of the men’s struggle to survive.
Crane strengthens the idea that nature is indifferent to man by showing
that it is as randomly helpful as it is hurtful. For every malevolent whim
that the men suffer, they experience an unexpected good turn in the form
of a favorable wind or calm night. The fact that the men almost seem to
get assistance from nature destroys the notion of nature as an entirely
hostile force. Nothing highlights this point so much as the correspondent’s
final rescue. Plowed to shore and saved by a freak wave, the
correspondent must embrace the fact that the very thing that has put him
in harm’s way has saved him. This freak wave, however, may also be
responsible for killing the much hardier oiler, a turn of events that
demonstrates two ideas: nature is as much a harsh punisher as it is a
benefactor, and nature does not act out of any motivation that can be
understood in human terms.
Man’s Insignificance in the Universe
“The Open Boat” conveys a feeling of loneliness that comes from man’s
understanding that he is alone in the universe and insignificant in its
workings. Underneath the men’s and narrator’s collective rants at fate and
the universe is the fear of nothingness. They have an egotistical belief
that they should have a role in the universe, that their existence should
mean something. When the correspondent realizes by section VI that fate
will not answer his pleas, he settles into despair. His subsequent
recollection of the poem about the soldier who lies dying in Algiers
reflects his feelings of alienation at being displaced from his position in
the universe. Like the soldier who dies in alien territory, the correspondent
fears that he too will perish without a connection to whatever gives him
his sense of self.
Throughout “The Open Boat,” the correspondent understands pain to be
the necessary byproduct of his efforts to overcome nature, the willful
enemy. He comes to value his suffering because it is nobly derived; in the
earlier sections, the correspondent, whom the narrator says is cynical, is
often cheerful and talkative in his descriptions of the physical pain he
experiences. By the end of the story, however, the correspondent’s new
awareness that the universe is unconcerned with the situation’s outcome
makes him physically and spiritually weary. He decides that there is no
higher purpose to surviving other than prolonging a life that is
meaningless. His comment in section VII that the coldness of the water is
simply “sad” underscores this despair. At this point, all sensations of pain
and pleasure are merely physical and have no spiritual meaning.
Society as Meaning in a Harsh World
In assembling the men in the dinghy and creating a microcosm of
mankind, Crane sets up man’s greatest invention, society, against what
first seems to be a cruel, unrelenting nature. When faced with the savage,
stormy sea, the men in the dinghy immediately band together because
they recognize that society is the best defense against the chaos of
nature. The men derive meaning from their fellowship, created to oppose
nature, which they view as the force that seeks to undo them. Even when
they become disheartened by the fact that nature shows no regard for
them, they can still turn to one another. In creating society, they have
created an obligation to one another that they must honor to survive. The
narrator observes that the men’s cooperation is “personal and heartfelt,”
which suggests that the men derive some spiritual satisfaction from the
arrangement. Although they are shut out of the realm of cosmic
importance, these men nevertheless construct something that is
meaningful to them.
Motifs
Drowning
As the narrator attempts to capture the men’s thoughts as they endure
many demoralizing episodes, he inserts a refrain into the text three times
that suggests that the men’s general fear of death is exacerbated by the
unconcern of nature. The refrain is a rant against fate, which the narrator
personifies as an incompetent fool unable to govern men’s lives. The
narrator is not really trying to tell us that fate is cruel. Instead, he is
suggesting that the men are furious because they believe that fate has
toyed with their lives. The men consider their situation unfair, and in the
refrain, they protest against it. The fact that the narrator intrudes on the
story with this refrain at the moments when fate seems to have let the
men down creates the impression that this is, in fact, the men’s reaction.
The refrain acts as the narrator’s interpretation of how the men
themselves interpret their situation
Hidden deeper in the refrain is the narrator’s conviction that a higher
power does not exist to weigh in on men’s affairs. By making outright
references to “the seven mad gods who rule the sea,” the narrator clues
us in to the mythical implications of the story, insinuating that these pagan
gods, who are traditionally involved in men’s lives, have abandoned the
stranded men. More important, the narrator hints at the absence of an
overseeing God through a subtle use of numerology. The thrice-repeated
phrase “If I am going to be drowned” in the refrain alludes to the New
Testament Gethsemane scene in which Peter denies Jesus three times.
In the Bible, man denies God, but Crane inverts the scene so that it is
God denying man.
Waves
A ceaseless presence in the story and constant nuisance to the refugees,
the ocean waves suggest both the forces of nature and uncontrollability of
life. At the beginning of the story, the narrator presents the waves as the
men’s primary concern, the thing they must master if they are to survive
the shipwreck. In this sense, the waves resemble the ever-changing
demands of the present, the part of life that demands the most attention
but allows for the least reflection. Crane seems to imply that because the
men cannot control the waves’ ebb and flow, man in general cannot affect
the outcomes of his life and can hope only to respond constructively to
what he encounters. Just as the waves are constantly changing,
becoming sometimes violent and sometimes favorable, the pressures in
man’s life will continue to jostle his progress toward whatever he seeks.
The narrator’s final mention of the waves as “pacing to and fro”
emphasizes this point by suggesting that the waves, in their motion, are
impatiently waiting for the men, who must eventually venture out again
onto the seas of fortune.
Symbols
The Boat
The boat, to which the men must cling to survive the seas, symbolizes
human life bobbing along among the universe’s uncertainties. The boat,
no larger than a bathtub, seems even smaller against the vastness of the
ocean. The boat is inconsequential and always in danger of capsizing,
much as we as humans are inconsequential and frail in the context of the
world around us. The fact that the boat is characterized as “open”
supports this interpretation: the boat is unprotected and thus open to
suffering the unexpected turns of fortune that are unavoidable in life. For
the men, being in the open boat becomes the reality of their lives, and
they realize from their experience on the boat how little control they have
over where they can go and what they can do. Through the boat, Crane
implies that life is not something we can control, but rather life is what we
must hang onto as we make our way in the world.
The Oiler’s Death
The oiler’s death and lack of explanation surrounding it reinforce the
randomness of nature’s whims and symbolize the indifference of nature
toward man. Because he is no more deserving of death than any other
crew member, and in some cases is less deserving because he has
worked the hardest under the most physical strain, his death highlights
the fact that nature is arbitrary in how it chooses its victims. The events
surrounding the oiler’s death also uncover the fact that the “subtle
brotherhood of men” sensed by the crew is nothing more than a delusion.
The men make a break for land on their own, and the good-natured oiler
leaves everyone behind to reach the shore. In this way, Crane illustrates
that there is a limit to what working together can accomplish and that all
men ultimately end up alone.
The Poem
The poem that the correspondent recites about the soldier who pitifully
lies dying in a foreign land represents the correspondent’s understanding
of his own plight. Just as in youth he never considered it a tragedy that
the fictitious soldier dies away from home, the correspondent realizes
that, as a grown man, his situation is like the soldier’s and that it is nature
that now regards his death as inconsequential. This understanding forces
the correspondent to see the soldier’s story as tragic because it is the
only way to give his own life weight. The correspondent endows the
fictitious soldier with humanity, a gesture that reveals both his maturity at
understanding what his life really amounts to and his self-delusion for
using fiction to give meaning to his own situation. In truth, the poem does
not make the correspondent’s plight any more real. Rather, it only
reinforces the meaningless of his struggle, which the narrator later
describes as “the plight of the ants.”
The Cigars
The four wet cigars and four dry cigars serve as a complex symbol of
hope for spiritual salvation and as the ultimate loss of that salvation.
When the correspondent finds these cigars in his pockets, Crane makes it
clear that there are two interpretations of the men’s plight. First, like the
four sodden cigars, the four men are physically and spiritually soaked by
the heavy, demoralizing forces of nature—they are broken and useless.
Second, like the four dry cigars hidden deep inside the correspondent’s
pocket, there is something inside the men that remains untouched by the
cold, drenching despair that the sea imparts. At the moment when the
correspondent digs through his pocket, the men are likely to see
themselves optimistically—as the four dry cigars—because their
cooperation and hard work has seemingly put them on track to defeat
nature. Yet by the end of the story, the men’s optimism is not intact, and
they feel misery, not triumph. The wet cigars more aptly illustrate the
tragedy of the men’s spirits.
Context
Born in 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane hailed from a line of
strong-willed men who took active roles in the founding and building of
America. On his father’s side, one man sailed to America with Sir Francis
Drake, and another served as a representative to the pre–Revolutionary
War Continental Congresses. Crane was always proud of his family’s part
in American history, and it motivated him to carve out his own place in
history, albeit in a style all his own. It is a marvel that in his short life,
Stephen Crane produced so much memorable fiction; he died in 1900, at
the young age of twenty-eight. Although his last years were dominated by
poor health, Crane left a grand mark on American literature. His
influences were few, but his disciples were many, among them
Hemingway and Joseph Heller as well as many twentieth-century war
novelists. Crane was probably unaware of the literary legacy he would
leave, but he always had a good idea of the legacy he inherited.
Although he began writing at a very young age, Crane first made his
presence felt in the literary world at age twenty-two with Maggie: A Girl of
the Streets (1893), which he wrote while living in the slums of New York
and for which he needed money from his brother to publish. Maggie was
instantly notable not only for the conditions in which Crane wrote it but
also for its unblinking look at its subject: the underbelly of New York.
Crane attempted to depict what he saw as the enslavement of the poor by
their own poverty. He was committed to naturalism and realism, as he
would be throughout his life, no matter what subject he was writing about.
A “naturalist” writer approaches subjects objectively, almost scientifically,
staying detached as much as possible. “Realist” writers strive to portray
their subjects as realistically as possible. Crane’s best-known work, The
Red Badge of Courage (1895), was a naturalistic novel set during the Civil
War. Told from a private’s point of view, Red Badge resonated with readers
who were familiar with the life of the grunt: the constant threat of the
unknown, the feeling of being a pawn in someone else’s schemes, the
suppression of personality, and self-doubt.
“The Open Boat” (1897) evolved from Crane’s real-life experience of
being stranded in a dinghy on the Atlantic Ocean. On December 31,
1896, Crane sailed out of Jacksonville, Florida, bound for Cuba, to cover
the emerging war as a correspondent. His ship sank in the morning of
January 2, and Crane and three crew members spent thirty hours in a
dinghy before coming ashore near Daytona Beach. Crane immediately
wrote “Stephen Crane’s Own Story,” a newspaper account of the sinking,
but he shied away from further telling of his experience, writing only that
“The history of life in an open boat for thirty hours would no doubt be
instructive for the young, but none is to be told here now.” Crane waited
for years before he turned his experience into “The Open Boat.”
“The Open Boat” confronts both Crane’s time aboard the dinghy and the
symbolic implications of fighting for one’s life amidst forces that are
uncaring about one’s survival. The correspondent in the story is based on
Crane himself, while the injured captain, the cook, and Billie the oiler all
have their real-life counterparts in the men who shared the dinghy with
Crane. The actual captain did indeed injure himself in the ship’s
foundering, and William Higgins, the actual oiler, did indeed die on the
shore. Although all of Crane’s characters are based in reality, Crane turns
them into archetypes (ideal models) of humanity and submits them to the
whims of nature. The critical reception of “The Open Boat” was
enthusiastic, with both H. G. Wells and Joseph Conrad praising the story.
Unfortunately for Crane, the experience that gave him this story also took
away his health. Following his experience at sea, Crane became
vulnerable to the diseases that would eventually kill him.
Despite his poor health, Crane never stopped moving in an attempt to be
on the frontline of some of the grimmer scenes of his time. His travels
took him to Greece to report on the Greco-Turkish War; to England,
where he befriended contemporaries such as Henry James, H. G. Wells,
and Joseph Conrad; back to Cuba to cover the Spanish-American War;
and finally to England and Germany, where he succumbed to
tuberculosis. During all this time, Crane persisted in writing fiction and
poetry, much of it characterized by his naturalistic perception of man
caught in the throes of the conflicting, alienating forces that define the
human condition. Ultimately, Crane tried to follow his own maxim that “the
nearer a writer gets to life the greater he becomes as an artist.” For him,
this meant a commitment to reality in life as well as in art. Crane lived this
maxim so deeply that in the end, his desire to report from the thick of war
was responsible for putting him in contact with the diseases that killed him
while he was still in his twenties.
ON AMERICAN NATURALISM AND STEPHEN CRANE’S ‘THE OPEN BOAT’

Crane’s “The Open Boat” is a perfect piece to examine the naturalistic mode of writing. It contains
elements that include a pessimistic tone and external forces that are indifferent to the characters
in the story. As a naturalist, Stephen Crane is a leader.

by EVAN LUZIRETIRED

19
0

American naturalism is a writing technique that coincided with another major movement, realism,
during the post-Civil War period until around 1910 or 1920. It was said to be an extreme form of
realism, one that moved away from the middle class focus of the realists and pertained more to
the dregs of society. Naturalism’s largest difference from realism, however, was the deterministic
nature and view of the works written with naturalistic modes. Unlike the realists and their “local
color,” naturalism was more concerned with urbanized environments. Many of the naturalist
writers were from these urban cities and included Frank Norris and Stephen Crane among others.
Crane, one of the better-known naturalists, was an honest practitioner of this technique, and as
such his short story “The Open Boat” will be examined later in this essay.

Naturalism is said to be simply an “emphasized realism,” but others would argue that it is
deserving of its own place in American literary history. Perhaps Lars Ahnebrink said it best,
describing naturalism as “a manner and method of composition by which the author portrays ‘life
as it is’,” much like the realism, but naturalism differs. Ahnebrink goes on to say, “…in accordance
with the philosophic theory of determinism.” Determinism is a philosophical point of view that
puts the events of a person’s life beyond the grasp of them and out of their control. Patricia
Penrose gives a simple analogy that naturalists thought of the individual as “a helpless object.” As
the definition would point out, naturalists believed that human beings had no control over the
events in their lives and that the universe was largely responsible for actions that took place. This
was radically different from the third movement taking place in the late 19th century,
romanticism, which sought humans as God-like and was even more extreme from the realists who
believed that humans at least had some control of the events in their lives.

As such, Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species” largely influenced the naturalists. The ideas
Darwin put forth contributed to the idea that biological and environmental forces controlled
human beings. This led the American naturalists to be “skeptical… of organized religion and beliefs
in human freewill,” points out Davies. Davies continues on that naturalists wished to find
explanations for behavior in natural science. It would follow then, that the naturalists found little
to no room for divinity in their conception of the universe. Man was just a prop inside nature, a
rag doll that is moved only by the external forces of the universe.
Naturalism, though most often noted for it’s deterministic philosophy and ideas on man and his
fate in the universe, had many more characteristics that critics and literary theorists have defined.
Among these traits are a focus on the lower classes of society, characters are thwarted of their
free will by external forces beyond their control including an indifferent nature, the settings are
frequently urban, the world is random, details are not as important as in realism, and life is often
cutthroat and cut short.

In stark contrast to realism, naturalism was much more concerned with the urban societies. It is no
accident then that many of it’s key writers were of urban environments, such as Stephen Crane
who was said to have always identified with the urban poor will living in New York City. Some of
the other key practitioners of the naturalistic mode were Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Jack
London, and Edith Wharton. They served to influence such later writers as John Steinbeck and
Richard Wright.

Stephen Crane is one of the most prominent figures of the naturalist movement. His works include
stories such as “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” and “The Blue Hotel.” But perhaps Crane is most
well known for one of his later stories, “The Open Boat.” This story is of an exemplary naturalism
because of its cynical portrayal of life, the characters are left to surmise to the will of external
forces, and nature is not an entity but rather an indifferent force.

Crane’s story seems to have a theme of hopelessness that runs through it which contributes to its
cynical and morbid view of life. From the beginning to the end of the story, the tone and
perception of the writing is one that is somber as well as the characters never seem to be free of
peril. The four men are always struggling against something; waves, sharks, their muscles, their
psyche, their acceptance of a nature they don’t control. Its this belittling of the central characters
that leads Crane’s piece to be the most pessimistic. This tone is very naturalistic because it
contributes to a feeling of cut-throat life and little control. The characters are always hopeless
because they are not agents of free will, as the realists believed, but they are puppets to the ocean
and the winds and their dingy.

These puppeteers of the characters are the external forces that the characters must combat but
will ultimately lose to no matter what. As a story of naturalism, Crane’s characters are left to the
randomness of external forces whether that is fate, nature, or a force beyond those two. In the
case of “The Open Boat,” the forces operating on the character are largely ones of nature and fate.
The men are often wondering why fate has brought them so far only to drown them, but what
they fail to realize is that fate had nothing to do with it. Fate was not toying with them nor was
fate intending to drown them. In fact, fate had nothing to do with it at all because the acts that
happened upon these men were random and were uncontrollable by them. This is the essence of
naturalism – a lack of control.

While fate is not controlling the characters, it is most certainly nature. The ocean, the currents, the
winds, the temperature of the sea, the sun rising and setting; these are all factors of nature that
play a role in how the men are affected while drifting in their dingy. But these factors are also
entirely indifferent. They are random. Crane notes that “shipwrecks are apropos of nothing,” and
even states quite obviously in reference to nature that “she was indifferent, flatly indifferent.” In
the story, this is seen as sharks come and go, wind changes directions and the sun is regarded as
just there. Nature has no preference of these men. If it did, why would it kill the strongest
swimmer in the oiler? Nature is an entity that acts as itself and those who act within it are subject
to its randomness and power.

Crane’s “The Open Boat” is a perfect piece to examine the naturalistic mode of writing. It contains
elements that include a pessimistic tone and external forces that are indifferent to the characters
in the story. As a naturalist, Stephen Crane is a leader.