The Other Boat
Who am I? Why do I do what I do? When can I break the rules of society without being guilty? In the unique agony of seeking understanding, acceptance, and love, these several questions echo poignantly throughout human history. For all people these introspective problems—while difficult—desperately need answers, as answers to these questions dictate the choice to stay within the bounds of accepted ethics or to step out. The importance and difficulty of finding good answers to these questions intensifies for atheists and agnostics, since they must formulate answers with the full responsibility for their conclusions resting on their own shoulders. No religion can answer these questions for them. Thus, Forster, a humanist who shunned organized religions and endorsed the creation of individualistic creeds, if choosing to step out from established laws and customs, must ask, on his own, if his justifications hold true or if they converge with all other crimes against society. “The Other Boat” contains many of Forster’s personal humanistic moral perspectives on many issues including class conflict, colonization, racism, and adultery. However, most centrally, through a perspective of naturalistic fatalism, “The Other Boat” contains Forster’s personal moral justifications for homosexuality.
Readily available contexts for discovering and analyzing Forster’s moral justifications appear throughout critical scholarship on “The Other Boat,” yet many critics overlook these humanistic conclusions. In a biographical essay on Forster’s life, Carrol Viera notes that the collection The Life to Come and Other Stories, which includes “The Other Boat,” has generally been analyzed by critics from two perspectives. Most critics, she says...
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...ose difficult recurring questions, and from his own unique perspective he answers boldly: I am a homosexual. I do what I do because my nature dictates I must do it. I can break the rules of society without being guilty for nature disallows doing otherwise. These arguments for justified homosexuality live on today, and in many ways Forster’s naturalistic answers remain the dominant answers given by modern homosexuals. Through “The Other Boat” Forster gives their moral argument an early and eloquent voice, and though we agree or disagree we should laud him for that.
Works Cited
Forster, Edward Morgan. "The Other Boat." The Norton Anthology English Literature. Ed. Stephan Greenblatt. Vol. F. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
Viera, Carrol. “E. M. Forster.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Ed. John H. Rogers. Vol. 162. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1996.
“The Boat”, narrated by a Mid-western university professor, Alistar MacLeod, is a short story concerning a family and their different perspectives on freedom vs. tradition. The mother pushes the son to embrace more of a traditional lifestyle by taking over the fathers fishing business, while on the other hand the father pushes the son to live more autonomously in an unconstrained manner. “The Boat” focuses on the father and how his personality influences the son’s choice on how to live and how to make decisions that will ultimately affect his life. In Alistair MacLeod’s, “The Boat”, MacLeod suggest that although dreams and desires give people purpose, the nobility of accepting a life of discontentment out weighs the selfishness of following ones own true desires. In the story, the father is obligated to provide for his family as well as to continue the fishing tradition that was inherited from his own father. The mother emphasizes the boat and it’s significance when she consistently asked the father “ How did things go in the boat today” since tradition was paramount to the mother. H...
Abrams, M. H. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York; W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
The movie On the Waterfront begins with a long shot and the surroundings on the edge of a waterfront. There is a dark lighting like sunset is about to hit, and we are able to see a giant cruise liner in the harbor. The giant boat stands out in the light, and the much of the water is dark. There are many horizontal lines that define the giant boat, and a few vertical lines are able to get distinguished by the small boat with the mast on it as well as the shed on the side. The music has rapidity and suspense that leads you to think that something bad is about to happen. The camera has a long shot that moves to medium. The long shot is balancing with the rapid music because since there is a long short is not as suspense with the hurried music and you feel more comfortable. The Men come out of the small shed by the dock. They walk in a linear form, one behind the other, wearing long dark coats with a mysterious look on their faces. Most of them are wearing the long coats that fall to their knees, and one of them is wearing a square pattern shirt with his right hand in his jacket , his and expressions unhappy.
People exploit the faults in their surroundings in hypocritical attempts to justify their own imperfections. Goodman Brown and Dimmesdale demonstrate hypocrisy in their efforts to avoid confronting their own distorted realities. Both Goodman Brown and Dimmesdale seek to exemplify the ideal Puritan lifestyle. After succumbing to unfaithful temptations, both men recognize that they have transgressed certain central values of their respective puritan communities yet neither correctly identifies the sin that ultimately debases his initially righteous character. For instance, Goodman Brown breaches basic Puritan prin...
In Daniel Karslake’s documentary, For the Bible Tells Me So, he examines the intersection between Christianity and homosexuality. Karslake uses parallelism, appeal to emotion, and appeal to logic to highlight how the religious right has used its interpretation of the bible to stigmatize the gay community. With the use of these rhetorical devices, he is able to auspiciously convey his argument that there can be a healthy relationship amongst the opposing side of this belief. He attempts to enlighten the viewer with the thought that Christianity's homophobia represents a misreading of scripture, a denial of science, and an embrace of fake psychology. The families call for love.
...He is still anchored to his past and transmits the message that one makes their own choices and should be satisfied with their lives. Moreover, the story shows that one should not be extremely rigid and refuse to change their beliefs and that people should be willing to adapt to new customs in order to prevent isolation. Lastly, reader is able to understand that sacrifice is an important part of life and that nothing can be achieved without it. Boats are often used as symbols to represent a journey through life, and like a captain of a boat which is setting sail, the narrator feels that his journey is only just beginning and realizes that everyone is in charge of their own life. Despite the wind that can sometimes blow feverishly and the waves that may slow the journey, the boat should not change its course and is ultimately responsible for completing its voyage.
The story possesses amazingly vivid description. This attention to detail affords the reader the greatest degree of reading pleasure. Crane paints such glorious images in reader's mind with his eloquence. "The morning appeared finally, in its splendor, with a sky of pure blue, and the sunlight flamed on the tips of waves"(387). Artistic sentences of such caliber are not often found. The reader is left with a terrific vision of the perilous sea maintaining its beauty amongst the violence of the wind. "Their back- bones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat and they now rode this wild colt of a dinghy like circus men"(378). Here, again, Crane uses splendid detail to capture the essence of the chaotic situation.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Imagine a scene in which a small, wooden boat is peacefully floating on the ocean. Now, imagine that the scene is panning out to reveal the boat is merely a tiny speck, the ocean reaching out endlessly around it. Suddenly, the peaceful quality of the boat has been replaced by a feeling of consuming meaninglessness. Stephen Crane, a naturalist writer and reporter in nineteenth century America, often used nature to prompt readers into questioning their purpose and place in the universe. In “The Open Boat,” complex symbolism allows Crane’s characters to reflect humanity's shared experience regarding existence and self-worth.
Modernist writings have always been hailed for its nuanced relationship with sexuality. This paper looks at the ways E.M. Forster, one of the modernist writers on the fringes, deals with the discourses of sexuality different in ways different from other high modernists against the backdrop of the socio-cultural milieu which was extremely intolerant to homosexuality through his novel Maurice, written in 1913-14 and published posthumously in 1971. To what extent Forster’s homosexuality and his novel on same sex love negotiate with other homosexual writers and activists of the period? The mere fact that Maurice was published posthumously shows the grim situation of homosexual men and women of the time. Now our job is to closely look at the novel and situate its transgressions and liberation in the larger context of same-sex writings of the early twentieth century.
Stephen Crane’s short story, “The Open Boat” speaks directly to Jack London’s own story, “To Build A Fire” in their applications of naturalism and views on humanity. Both writers are pessimistic in their views of humanity and are acutely aware of the natural world. The representations of their characters show humans who believe that they are strong and can ably survive, but these characters many times overestimate themselves which can lead to an understanding of their own mortality as they face down death.
Homosexuality is a sensitive topic and often avoided in conversation. For centuries the human race has oppressed and persecuted others strictly because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual etc. Although it is disturbing to most of us, these actions still occur in our society today, as many believe that homosexuality is abnormal and disgraceful. One supporter of this belief is Michael Levin, who strongly believes that homosexuality is highly abnormal and thus, undesirable. Although his beliefs and theories supporting this claim are subjective, there is evidence that can support his stance on this topic; we will analyze this claim in further detail and how it relates to his other views mentioned in this essay.
Crane, Stephen. "The Open Boat." The Harper American Literature. Ed. Donald McQuade et al. 2nd ed. 2 Vols. New York: Longman, 1993.
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
Abrams, M. H., et al., The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1986.