Stephen Crane's story "The Open Boat" is a masterful example of Naturalistic storytelling that evokes the characters of four men stranded on a small boat as well as character of the sea itself. By the end of this long short story, despite the fact that Crane has provided us with only the most elliptical clues about these four men, we have came to understand a great deal about their characters. Crane what must be seen as almost a stereotypical stratagem of the Naturalistic writer (Hill 1989) in placing people in a situation in which their characters are laid bare by the fact that the raw force of Nature is arrayed against them and this paper examines how Crane provides us with clues about how the proximity of danger peels away carefully constructed outer layers of our personalities. Each of these men may die from exposure or drowning or thirst, and because each one knows this, he reveals, intentionally or not, something of his most essential nature. Crane writes about these revelations with skill and wonderfully evocative language, although he saves his most compelling descriptions not for the men but for the sea itself. In the end, we understand something of the nature of each of these men as they find themselves challenged by the might of nature, but we actually discover more about the nature of the sea itself. This paper also examines the ways in which Crane creates a portrait of the sea as a marvelous complex, protean entity, perhaps in...
With his double use of the word "probably" Crane makes us realize early on (in chapter two) that the sea is both more powerful than the men and also something far grander than it, something beyond their ability to understand or even imagine. (Brown discusses these ways in which nature but not humans "plays" in chapter two.)
London's traveler is, to a certain degree, experiencing less terrible conditions and he is practically responsible for everything that happens to him. In contrast, the men on the boat have no power over what happens to them and they are constantly subjected to unfortunate events, even with the fact that they do everything that they can in order to remedy things. Crane's characters virtually refuse to believe that nature
Stephen Crane: A Great Writer of American Naturalist Fiction and Non-Fiction, and of Local Color Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was an American author of the late 19th century, whose work, in terms of style and sub-genre, was somewhere between American Romanticism and American Naturalism (with some American Realism added). Crane wrote at the end of a century (the 19th), a time when several literary styles and genres are typically blended together until
If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intentions. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all this trouble. The whole affair is absurd...But no, she cannot mean to drown me. She dare not drown me.
Open Boat Stephen Crane's short story "The Open Boat" is very much "open" to interpretation. The story revolving around four men on a small boat braving a raging sea in hopes to save themselves from death points to many interesting comparisons and deep symbolism. The purpose of this essay is to examine the five main characters of this story and how they collectively represent something more than the sum of their
"The Open Boat" may have been based on Crane's real-life experience but it also functions as symbolic "of man's battle against the malevolent, indifferent, and unpredictable forces of nature…This reading is confirmed by the final irony of the death of the oiler, physically the strongest man on the scene and the one most favored to withstand the ordeal" (Rath & Shaw 97). The futility of resisting the power nature with
One critic's reading of "The Open Boat" positions the story as a turning point in Crane's career, away from the isolation and interiority of The Red badge of Courage and towards a sense of the need of community and the inescapability of interpersonal bonding. Statements like "Four scowling men sat in the dingey" are taken by some to be indicators of the camaraderie that must necessarily form between any
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