The Open Boat Analysis

Analysis of “The Open Boat” In 1897 acclaimed writer Stephen Crane boarded a freighter commissioned to smuggle weapons and munitions to Cuba; he was to document the journey, but quickly after departure, the freighter sank. The literary classic "The Open Boat", which Crane penned after surviving this disaster, had nothing to do with the intended purpose of the voyage, but instead focused on the will of man versus nature and is the greatest short story of Naturalistic literature.

Protagonists carry a great significance in Naturalism( ). Crane begins not with the details of the sinking vessel, but by immediately introducing the surviving characters in a lifeboat: the ship’s captain, the cook, the correspondent and an oiler; introduced primarily by their shipboard

Stephen Cranes uses the sea to both support and contradict this concept: He writes “A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats"(Perkins). He later uses the sea as the perfect vehicle to portray nature has no vested interest in human death: “The crest of each of these waves was a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed for a moment abroad tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid, it was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights of emerald and white and amber” (Perkins 104). Here the sea is objective in its connection to the boat and its occupants; they are being addressed without malice; it is simply doing what a sea does; not stalking them as predator versus prey. The narrative description is of a beautiful sea, not vengeful. These two depictions are another subtle conflict within the story of man against