The Power of Nature Revealed in The Open Boat
In 1894, Stephen Crane said, "A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'" This short encounter of man and nature is representative of Crane’s view of nature. However, he did not always see nature as indifferent to man. In 1887, he survived a shipwreck with two other men. "The Open Boat" is his account from an outsider’s point of view of the two days spent in a dinghy. Crane pays special attention to the correspondent, who shares the chore of rowing with the oiler. While rowing, he contemplates his situation and the part that nature plays in it. Mainly through the correspondent’s reflection, Crane shows the power that nature and experience have in expanding people’s ignorant opinions of the world around them.
In the beginning, the four men in the boat view nature as evil and unjust. Crane portrays this through the men’s reactions to the waves and the seagulls. They describe the waves as "most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall" (245). Later in their journey, the correspondent notices "the tall black waves that [sweep] forward in a most sinister silence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest" (254). Each of these examples show that the men in the boat feel that nature is out to get him. The waves are seen as a living enemy force. The men also view the seagulls as threatening. They hover around the boat and when they finally fly away, the men feel relieved. In a critique of "The Open Boat", Donald Gibson explains that "as observers we know the sea is in fact not hostile, that the sea gulls are not actually gruesome and ominous. But the men in the boat have this to lea...
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...cult situation, such as a shipwreck, enables us to comprehend the world around us. Thus, a story such as this can only be written after the fact. At the beginning of the story, Crane tells us that the men did not even know the color of the sky. However, after the correspondent recognizes nature’s complexity, he begins to see the world differently. His observations of the sea and sky become more detailed. Only after two days on a dinghy could the men listen to "the sound of the great sea’s voice" and feel "that they could…be interpreters" (Crane 261).
Works Cited
Crane, Stephen. "The Open Boat." Discovering Literature: Stories, Poems, Plays. Ed. Hans P. Guth and Gabriele L. Rico. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. 245-261.
Gibson, Donald B. The Fiction of Stephen Crane. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968. 128-133.
In the short story “ The Open Boat,” by Stephen Crane, Crane does an outstanding job creating descriptive images throughout the entire story. With saying this, Crane uses symbolism along with strong imagery to provide the reader with a fun and exciting story about four guys who 's fight was against nature and themselves. Starting early in the book, Crane creates a story line that has four men in a great amount of trouble in the open waters of the ocean. Going into great detail about natures fierce and powerful body of water, Crane makes it obvious that nature has no empathy for the human race. In this story, Crane shows the continuous fight that the four men have to endure in able to beat natures strongest body of water. It 's not just nature the men have to worry about though, its the ability to work together in order to win this fight against nature. Ultimately, Crane is able to use this story, along with its vast imagery and symbolism to compare the struggle between the human race and all of natures uncertainties.
The seagulls in this story are used to symbolize human frailty and nature’s indifference to it. As the men continue their journey through the fierce waves, Crane incorporates the use of imagery to describe the nature around them by giving it gloomy colors that are often used to represent death. Toward the end of the story, as the men are still hoping to be rescued, they encounter a shark swimming around the boat that symbolizes that something bad is about to happen. At the end of the story, readers learn that the Oiler, Billie, dies, but if one pays close enough attention to the detail used in this story there is enough evidence to foreshadow the death of one character. In this story, “The Open Boat,” Stephen Crane uses imagery and symbolism through the use of colors and objects in nature to depict the characters lack of power over
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