The Open Boat Symbolism

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“The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane: a story considered by many as literary masterpiece for the boundless and borderline obnoxious amount of symbolism. With vibrant and fleshed out characters, it isn’t be difficult to imagine the acclaim this book holds. Each of the four men-- the correspondent, the oiler, the captain, and the cook-- have a differing and startlingly real personality that when joined together through the happenings while stranded out at sea form a bond unlike anything that witnessed yet. The characters are fascinating; the men are complex and real in a way that no one thought possible to put into print before this book was published, and the relationships are captivatingly raw. One of the most literarily fascinating parts of this …show more content…

It has often been compared to as a microcosm of society, with each of the men coming together to form a singular, perfectly functioning human machine. For example, the captain represents the leaders in the world. He directs the men in the boat, reminding the forgetful cook to bail out the boat every once and awhile, as well as directing Billie in which way to point the boat, or how to steer it, or just general advice to the rest of the men in the boat. The correspondent is the observers in society. He thinks about the nature of man and his relation to nature, as mentioned before. He is cold and calculating and thinks about everything while stuck on the boat. He eventually comes to the conclusion that nature is a cruel mistress whose job is to torture man endlessly, but he also finds that this isn’t true. “This tower is a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented, in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual-- nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent” (page 83). In this quote, the correspondent realizes much about himself and nature, all because he was stuck in that boat. The oiler represents the everyman, the subtle heros, the firemen and the postman who are

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