The Indifference Of Nature In Stephen Crane's The Open Boat

The Indifference of Nature Nature is the core of life, and people are submerged in it. Walt Whitman shows that life moves on without regard to anyone by remarking, “Sea of stretch'd ground-swells/Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths/Sea of the brine of life and of unshoveled yet always-ready graves/Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea/I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.” People and other forms of life are no different than nature. The lives of living things must occur with little intervention.“The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane includes many elements pertaining to the struggles in life; in fact, he reveals nature's indifference to man by adding a shark to the severe hardships of one of the members of the crew, reiterating to the characters that there is no way to communicate with nature, and killing the hardest worker of the crew. Midstory, the correspondent encounters a shark while he is rowing the boat alone. The

Crane’s shows this when he writes, “When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important… he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples” (752). People say the best way to solve problems is to communicate, but that is impossible when no median exists. Nature doesn’t care, so it disregards man’s wishes as none of its concern. A written criticism that emphasizes the inability to communicate with nature states, “The recognition that there are neither bricks nor temples leads straight to the depersonalized, remote indifference of the 'high cold star on a winter's night'. ,” (LaFrance). Once someone understands that the universe doesn’t care he or she can take a different approach to life - such as the oiler. The relationship between life and nature has always been like this; fortunately, individuals have found a way to effectively adapt to