Stephen Crane`s The Open Boat: Man Against Nature
Four men, crew members and a passenger from the sinking ship Commodore are floating in a lifeboat hardly bigger than a bathtub, their eyes focused on the ocean waves that threaten to overwhelm them at any moment. While the oiler and correspondent row, the cook drains the water from the boat. The captain of the Commodore is injured, his mind racing with images of the ship sinking and the crewmember’s faces.It's the never struggle to keep the boat upright and out of the waves. The only way the men know it's daytime is when the color of the sea changes. They have no need to gaze up at the sky; their only focus is on the threatening waves. The cook expresses hope that he knows of a shipwrecked men's sanctuary on land with a crew that could save them.
The men begin to argue about whether or not the home of refuge will have a crew, but the oiler reminds them again that they are still on the beach. The 'probably splendid' ocean continues to throw the boat, but the men are in so much danger and agony that they have little desire to think about the sea's beauty. The sailors rig a mast and sail on the captain's advice. The lighthouse has gotten larger, signaling that they are reaching it. The cook remarks, almost casually, that he believes the shoreside life-saving station was abandoned approximately a year ago. When the wind stops blowing, the guys take up the oars. Before getting on the dingy, the men had barely slept for two days and nights and had eaten very little. Their efforts are so impressive that the reporter is baffled as to how anyone could enjoy rowing a boat. The captain can make out a home on the shore as they get closer to land; the cook and the captain expect men to come out to rescue them. Given that no rescuers had been searching for survivors, none of the other lifeboats must have made it to land, according to the oiler.
The men's spirits brighten as they near the coast. Everyone smokes and drinks water after the correspondent finds four dry cigars. There is no evidence of life in the shelter house. The soldiers are confused; they are unaware that for miles, there are no life-saving stations. The men's spirits begin to wane. The captain says they'll have to try to come into the land before they're too exhausted to make the swim. The men are furious, questioning why they should put up with so much if they might drown before reaching the beach. The waves become so large that the boat would be swamped before the guys can get near enough to swim, so they push the boat out further. Their emotions soar when they see a man on the beach. He starts waving his coat at them. A second man joins him, as well as something on wheels, which the shipwrecked men hope is a boat being prepared for launch. They eventually identify the item on wheels as just a bus, out of desperation (an omnibus). The man waves the coat until the sunset obscures him, while the men finally lose hope that someone on shore understands their dilemma and will launch a boat to save them. Once again, they begin to wonder why they might have been brought so close to shore if they are going to drown before reaching it. The answer appears to be a cool star. The correspondent remembers a verse about a dying soldier in Algiers that he had never considered significant before. He can now clearly visualize the dying soldier and is genuinely moved by the event. The correspondent and the oiler, both exhausted, take turns rowing now that they are awake. The men arrived at daybreak to find uninhabited homes and a windmill on the beach. The captain advises them to make a dash for shore before they get too exhausted to reach it. The men are carried into the freezing sea as they situate the boat amid the heavy surf. The reporter notices the oiler, who is swimming rapidly, as well as the cook and the captain, who is clinging to the upturned dingy. The correspondent encounters a challenge currently. The captain instructs the cook to lie down and paddle with the oar, and the boat sweeps by, the captain still holding to the oar. The correspondent is pushed out of the current by a wave, and the captain summons him to the boat. Because the effort required to reach the boat is so enormous, the correspondent recognizes that drowning would be simple and comfortable. He notices a man pulling his clothes off as he runs along the beach. The correspondent is thrown overboard by a wave. The man on the beach dives into the ocean and takes the cook before heading to the captain, who guides him to the journalist. “Thanks, old man,” the correspondent says casually, but the man exclaims at something: the oiler floats face down in the shallow water. As if falling from a roof, the correspondent reaches land. Blankets, clothes, and refreshments are provided by a swarm of individuals. The cheerful reception for the survivors contrasts sharply with the ominous welcome for the dead guy, the oiler, in the grave. The survivors believe they can understand the huge voice of the water at night.
“The Open Boat” is not simply a realistic account of the ordeal of four men on the open sea. The story is, indeed, largely autobiographical, based on the sinking of the USS Commodore, on which Stephen Crane was en route to Cuba as a reporter covering the Spanish-American War; the character of the correspondent is an obvious persona for Crane himself. Nevertheless, the story goes beyond mere journalistic accuracy and makes a statement about man’s relationship to nature, and his place in the universe. The overwhelming theme of the story is the conflict between the men and the cold indifference of the sea. The sea, in fact, is a character in its own right, an elemental force, unmindful of the human struggle to survive. The sea, as an analog to nature, is cruel or sportive, taunting, menacing, or easeful, having no other motive but the exercise of its own power. When, for example, the correspondent remembers the childhood verse about the soldier of the Legion dying in Algiers, he realizes that as a child he had no interest in the soldier. Now, on the verge of death himself, the correspondent understands that nature, the sea, has no interest in him. He and the soldier are thus brothers, sharing in the total apathy of fate. Survival on the sea or in Algiers is a matter of chance, of the accident, of complete indifference. Man’s struggles in the face of this elemental indifference are often marked by a grim irony. The oiler, the strongest of the group, drowns, but the sea leaves unclaimed the wounded captain and the cowardly cook. In the concluding passage, the survivors stand on the beach looking at the sea. They “felt they could be interpreters.” What they interpret is the sheer accident of their existence, the arrant tenuousness of life.
Individual vs. Nature
During the late nineteenth century, Americans had come to expect that they could control and conquer their environment. With the technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution, humankind appeared to have demonstrated its ability to both understand and to dominate the forces of nature. In 'The Open Boat,'' Crane questions these self-confident assumptions by describing the precarious situation of four shipwrecked men as they are tossed about on the sea. The men seem to recognize that they are helpless in the face of nature. Their lives could be lost at any moment by the most common of natural phenomena: a wave, a current, the wind, a shark, or even simple starvation and exposure. The men are at the mercy of mere chance. This realization profoundly affects the correspondent, who is angered that he might be drowned despite all of his efforts to save himself. In a passage that drips with irony, Crane writes of the correspondent: 'He thought: 'Am I going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be possible? Can it be possible?' Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.’’ This passage suggests the absurdity of an individual's sense of self-importance against the mindless power of nature.
Death
The drama of the story comes from the men's realization that they are likely to drown. Having to confront the probability of their own imminent death, each of the characters accepts what Crane calls a ‘‘new ignorance of the grave edge.’’ It is interesting that Crane refers to this understanding as 'ignorance' rather than 'knowledge.' Being at the mercy of fate has demonstrated to them how wrong their previous beliefs about their own importance had been. The correspondent, in particular, is troubled by the senselessness of his predicament, and he thinks about a poem in which a French soldier dies, unceremoniously, far from his home and family. Facing senseless death, the universe suddenly seems deprived of the meaning he had previously attached to it. Thus, he is overtaken by a new 'ignorance' about life, rather than a new 'knowledge.'' Crane seems to endorse the idea that nature is random and senseless by having the oiler drown in the surf. Of all the men, the oiler seemed the most likely to survive, being the most physically fit. His death implies that the others' survival was merely the result of good fortune. Once the survivors are safe from danger, however, death's senselessness is quickly forgotten.
Free Will
Crane was regarded as a leading member of the Realist or Naturalist movement in his time. One of the main concerns of the Naturalists involved the dilemma of whether human beings could exercise control over their fate or whether their fate was predetermined by their environment. To state it differently, they asked whether humans possess free will or were powerless to shape external events. Drawing upon deterministic philosophies such as those of Charles Darwin, Auguste Comte, or Karl Marx the Naturalists analyzed the various natural forces that affected the ‘‘struggle for life.’’ These concerns are evident in ‘‘The Open Boat.’’ Although the four men are clearly making the best effort to get to shore, it is never certain until the end whether they will drown. Their fate seems to rest mostly in the hands of forces beyond their control. A prime example of this comes when the correspondent gets caught in a current while trying to swim to the shore. He is trapped by an invisible force—an underwater current—which he can neither understand nor escape. For unknown reasons, the current suddenly frees him and he is washed ashore by a giant wave. It seems clear that Crane attributes the correspondent's survival more to uncontrollable forces than to his own efforts.
The main conflict is the classic one of man against nature--in this case, the sea. Crane gives a detailed account of thirty hours spent in a ten-foot dinghy by four men--a cook, a correspondent, the Captain, and Billy Higgens, the oiler, who is the only character called by name, though the correspondent is obviously Crane himself. The four men make up the entire cast of characters; there is no single protagonist. The point of view is that of an omniscient narrator, and the use of plural pronouns throughout much of the story enforces the impression that their predicament is a collective experience. While the men are adrift off the coast of Florida, they learn two important lessons. First, the natural world is at best indifferent to man, if not hostile, as the high, cold winter star, the roaring waves, and a menacing shark symbolically suggest. Second, if they are to survive, they will have to rely on themselves alone since they can expect no benevolent intervention from either God or nature. Even though Crane writes that “shipwrecks are apropos of nothing,” he conveys with almost poetic prose a conception that was at the heart of his vision as an artist: The true nature of man’s perilous position in the naturalistic universe dictates that he must form “a subtle brotherhood,” composed of those who truly understand the way things are. The men in the open boat show us that compassion for one’s fellows, stoic endurance, and courage is the true moral standards in an amoral cosmos. The cynical view of human society reflected in Crane’s earlier story “THE BLUE HOTEL” is here replaced by a more optimistic outlook; although Crane still regards the universe as inhospitable, he sees hope in human solidarity as a means of mutual salvation.
