I wasn’t previously familiar with the work of Stephen Crane.

This is about four men in a dinghy that is in danger of overturning.

These men are the cook, the oiler, the correspondent and the injured captain.

They are trying to get safely to land, but this is easier said than done.

They come from the steamer Commodore. The ship had gone down, but it is not explained how or why.

The story is exquisitely written.

At the start, the oiler steered with one of the two oars while the correspondent “pulled at the other oar”.

Why was the correspondent aboard the ship and what is an oiler?

We don’t know whether there are other members of the crew in another dinghy.

The cook thinks there’s a house of refuge “just north of the Mosquito Inlet Light that has a crew that will come and pick them up, whereas the correspondent says houses of refuge don’t have crews.

The cook is squatting in the bottom of the boat and the injured captain is lying in the bow. The oiler is in the stern.

The boat bounces from the top of each wave and the spray splashes past the men.

“It was probably splendid. It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights of emerald and white and amber.”

The oiler and the correspondent rowed.

The men saw the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet.

The captain says they’ll make it if the wind holds and the boat doesn’t swamp.

The cook bails the water.

A ”subtle brotherhood of men” was established.

The lighthouse grew slowly larger.

The cook recalls that the life-saving station was abandoned a year ago.

The surf’s roar was ”thunderous and mighty”. ’We’ll swamp sure’, said everybody.”

Nobody seemed to see them.

Sometimes the men are desperate, sometimes hopeful. Men on the land waved at them.

“”If I am going to be drowned --- why, in the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come this far and contemplate sand and trees?”

A shark was following the boat.

They “try a run through the surf”.

They picture their chances of survival.

“Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.”

I won’t reveal the ending. ( )

Stephen Crane’s short story, The Open Boat, is a microcosm of life itself. Four men are at sea in a lifeboat after the floundering of their ship, a captain, an oiler, a cook and a correspondent. We follow their efforts to get to shore after they have spotted land but while being kept offshore by a reef that blocks their entry. There is sorrow, fear, frustration, and desperation. The indifference of nature to their situation and the feeling that they are just specs in the ocean, unimportant to anyone and to God, grows as they continue to struggle against what seems to be their fate.

"IF I am going to be drowned -- if I am going to be drowned -- if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?"

Some of the things I believe Crane wants us to contemplate when we read this story: Why do we live? If death is the ultimate, unavoidable consequence of life, why do we live at all? Do we matter in the scheme of things? If we are so insignificant, what importance can our lives have? How cruel is hope in the face of the inevitable? Is it better to see a shore you cannot reach or to die searching for it? And, finally, who deserves to survive? Why do some of us arbitrarily endure while others, just as deserving, perish?

Finally, the correspondent recalls a poem he recited, with complete indifference, in school.
A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's
tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand
And he said: "I shall never see my own, my native land."
For the first time, he contemplates the soldier as a man, as a person losing his life on a foreign shore, a man just like himself; and he feels the connection, the connection to everyman. One cannot imagine that he will resume his indifference to the fate of others. Perhaps the meaning of this experience is the rare opportunity to see yourself as part of a whole, as one, but as one of many.


( )

A great example of the genre Naturalism ( )

An excellent short story. Crane writes in a clear and concise style that holds up remarkably well even by modern standards. The Open Boat is a captivating true life account of his and 3 others struggles to survive in the open sea in a tiny dingy. On a deeper level, Crane writes of the impersonal and arbitrary forces of nature. Highly recommended. ( )

I read Crane's "Red Badge of Courage" while in high school and without ever giving it a second thought over the years I've always recommended it highly to anyone who's ever asked. But after reading "The Open Boat," it seems I'd forgotten exactly how powerful a writer Crane really was.

I've never quite shared in the ultimate philosophy of writers like London, Conrad, and Crane yet they perpetually rank among my favorites, mainly I think, because the masculine vocabulary and narrative of "naturalist" deism (and sometimes atheism) speaks so well to those like myself who are or have been in constant contact with the dangers of outdoor life and work; those who know that their fate rests primarily in their own hands; those who know that one slip-up could cost them not simply their daily meal but their very lives. The "naturalist" relies upon the observation that although there may be a "grand architect" behind all that we see in this world, he/she/it is indifferent to our cares. It is not an agnosticism, but really that the idea that revelation, miracles, or any type of divine relationship between man and his creator is nonexistant. It is the belief that in nature, we are at the mercy only of our own abilities. How Crane came to hold such views, especially at such a young age, I can't comprehend, yet they are very evident in "The Open Boat" and it makes for extraordinarily beautiful though lonely sentiment:

"...During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude that it was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him, despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was certainly an abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard. The man felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still --

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.

Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself."

A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation..."

Crane does not entirely discount that miracles happen, just that they are rather rare natural turns of luck that few men are fortunate to witness or partake in. Near the end of the story, when rescue is at hand, a wave carries the "correspondent" over the capsized boat, he makes it a point to call this "a miracle of the sea."

However, Crane does give some hope in the story that even if we are at the mercy of nature, we are still worthy of survival because in the end we are capable of saving each other. For there are men, like the captain in the dinghy, that can still exhibit a duty toward other men as regards their cold station in life, and he paints a near messianic picture of his selflessness as he stood in the water with "a halo on his head" and shining "like a saint."

I never did nor will I agree with the basis of deism/naturalism but it makes for incredible literature. 4.5 stars and another look at Stephen Crane. ( )