Stephen Crane's The Open Boat

There are many aspects that go into making a piece of work an enjoyable story. Stephen Crane used elements like narration, setting, and character to make “The Open Boat” a classic piece of literature. These key elements help to create symbols and a common theme that makes the short story the classic that it is today.

Stephen Crane: “The Open Boat” Being stranded at sea in a small boat is a frightening thought. The Open Boat by Stephen Crane is a short story that will have the reader in suspense, wondering what will happen next. The Open Boat takes place in a small boat on the open sea, with four men working together to survive. These four men fight their way through rough tides, hunger and thirst. ” These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in a small-boat navigation”(Crane 195).

While taking a cruise to Jamaica for vacations, the ship you are at starts to sink. How do you think people in the ship would react to this scenario? Stephen Crane, an American author, wrote the story “The Open Boat”. The story is about a boat sinking in the middle of the ocean with four men. The characters presented by Crane in the story are a cook, an oiler, a correspondent, and the captain. Although the story is narrated from the view of the correspondent; Crane gives the reader some particular characteristics of the captain. The goal of this paper is to interpret the character of the captain by discussing his actions, feelings, and quotes presented by Crane.

"None of them knew the color of the sky." This first sentence in Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" implies the overall relationship between the individual and nature. This sentence also implies the limitations of anyone's perspective. The men in the boat concentrate so much on the danger they are in, that they are oblivious and unaware to everything else; in other words, maybe lacking experience. "The Open Boat" begins with a description of four men aboard a small boat on a rough sea. The central theme of this story is about confronting Nature itself. "The Open Boat" is Stephen Crane's account from an outsider's point of view of the two days spent in a small boat. The correspondent is autobiographical in

No matter how long it may take or the struggles that lay before us we always find the strength to carry on. I’m sure everyone has been asked to perform above and beyond what seems possible to him or her. Hopefully, most people go their entire lives without having to face a life or death situation, but it is when all seems lost and there is no hope to be seen in any direction that normal men and woman rise to the occasion, showing us that anything is possible. In Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” written in 1897, we explore

In "The Open Boat," Crane writes of the "EXPERIENCE OF FOUR MEN FROM THE SUNK STEAMER COMMODORE" (743). Having escaped the sunken ship, the four men--the cook, the correspondent, the oiler, and the captain--are now in a dinghy sailing obstinately in the midst of a seething ocean for the coast of Florida. From the beginning of the story till the end, one can admire these honest men, who confront such a dangerous environment.

The book “The Great Wide Sea” is written by M. H. Herlong, this book talks about three young children named Ben, Dylan, Gerry. The three young boys lose their mother on a car accident where their dad had sold the house they lived in and sail in the Bahamas for a whole year. During their sailing, one morning they suddenly lost their father. Starting of the book the three boys start off with their family traveling to the Bahamas sea. Are the boys able to survive on their own?Ben’s dad had decided to travel down to their house next to the Bahamas, but not everything goes as planned during this life. Their mom who was a hard-working woman who would always make fun of their dad for making poems has died in a car accident the first thing they got there. The family’s planned didn’t go as planned as they expected. Their father had pulled the boys, Ben, Dylan, Gerry out of school and make other destination in Florida and live on a boat for a whole year. The boat they lived on was named the Chrysalis, she was a little bit of busted and the boys were unimpressed on what they had to deal with. It was rough sailing on a boat where the boys and the dad wouldn’t get along together. Their dad was being a real pill and everybody else had to have their own space. Fortunately,

In “The Open Boat,” Stephen Crane’s writing style creates an emotional separation between the audience and the story’s characters. This short story is an example of American naturalism. American naturalism can be described as “whatever happens, happens.” Although the story’s characters do not think so, nature is indifferent. It does not try to punish or harm; it just follows its natural cycle. Because of the emotional separation created by the American naturalism style writing, the text is open to different interpretations. The audience may be able to recall different life events by the vagueness of the text, and most readers will have empathy for the stranded men.

“The Open Boat,” is very rich in symbolism. Symbolism evokes or describes ideas and feelings through the use of symbolic images. In chapter seven of “The Open Boat,” the narrator describes a tower. “It was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants” (Crane 297). The tower represents many different

"The Open Boat", by Stephen Crane exemplifies this due to its pessimistic interpretation of life, in which the captain, cook, correspondent, and oiler are forced to conject to the will of external force and entity, nature, an apathetic power they have no control of. Nature vs man centers the story, being that the men struggle for survival from the sea, tides, a shark, and temperature, consequently setting a tone of hopelessness and naturalism throughout the story. In addition, the psychological arduous journey of their dilemma of being at the dangers of the sea on a boat, their existence relies heavily on their teamwork and ability to concentrate. For example, the oiler, Billie, rows stints with the correspondent and swims strongly toward shore but ends up dying. Although Billie's has power and yearn to live, he confronts a force that he cannot overcome, underlining the naturalistic idea of determinism. Nevertheless, "The Open Boat", illustrates the overall objective of naturalism, the characters lack control

In Stephen Crane’s short story, “The Open Boat,” there are four men who are stranded in the middle of the ocean on an exposed lifeboat that is not much bigger than a bread box. They are located off the coast of Florida in an area called the Mosquito Inlet. They are faced with the harshness of nature—the waves especially—throughout the duration of their voyage to safety. The significance of pitting these men against the harsh natural world is used to showcase life’s cruel indifference towards us as individuals.

Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” has long been acclaimed as a fascinating exemplar of Naturalism, generating many studies that range from the indifference of Nature to the “psychological growth of the men through the experience” (466). The psychological growth happens to every man on the boat, yet is mostly depicted through the voice of the Correspondent and in the form of his questioning and contemplating their desperate situation. Being a correspondent, who is innately able as well as inclined to interpret and communicate ideas, the Correspondent is singled out to articulate the mind of his three

“The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane is a very accurate title that can be viewed in a couple of different perspectives. In this story, the characters show their true selves as their personalities and traits come through as they face their situation. In addition, the boat is open, small, and exposed to the angry ocean, which shows how fragile life can be when facing nature. The story is loosely based off his experience of being shipwrecked, which prompted Crane to write this story. Experiences can help you write stories and create characters and environments that seem real. In the Open Boat, Crane used his past fully as it relates to a tragedy at sea. With this approach, he could write how the characters in the story interacted and played off each other’s personalities in a dangerous location thus giving it good imagery. The personas of the different characters come out in how they react in certain situations by the tasks performed when trying to survive. To many, the story represents tradition as it relates to a crew and their captain.

In Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat, the context of the dinghy and the four surviving people in it shows the struggle of human nature as well as the need for hope that is a concept often created from dangerous, and more often than not, desperate situations. The captain, the cook, the correspondent, and the oiler, are embodiments of Crane’s fiction about the human psyche. The sea, which is treacherous, as well as the islands which the characters believe can save them from death from drowning, is a vision of the reality that is suspended in point of view and is an abstraction of the reflection of Crane’s perspective of perception, metaphysics, and the extraordinary experience. Crane’s point in doing this kind of style in The Open Boat is to confront the fear of death by facing it, as described in the interpretation of its non-human nature.