Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat"

Just off the coast of Florida, four surviving men struggle to survive and aimlessly seek help while rowing a dinghy after their ship was overturned. The correspondent and the oiler both split the labor of rowing, while the cook scrambles on the floor, bailing water. The men follow orders from the captain, who was wounded in the shipwreck and sits pitifully in the bow. The men battling hopelessly against the vicious current are careful to make no extreme movement as to capsize the small dinghy. So much so, that they will not even swat at a pestering gull perched on the captains head. After the captain finally shoos the bird and they continue rowing until they spot a lighthouse in the distance. The cook warns that the lighthouse has been abandoned for more than a year, but nonetheless the men begin to embrace the idea that they are near reaching land and survival. Their grimly moods are overturned into optimism for a brief period until they realize they are unable to navigate through the choppy surf, and help isn’t coming. When nightfall approaches, the men forget about being saved and continue on their gruesome journey, taking turns rowing and keeping the boat afloat. While rowing alongside a frighteningly, large shark, the correspondent reflects on a poem he heard in his youth about a soldier dying in a foreign land, never to return home. When dawn breaks, the captain proposes that they try to route the surf with what energy remains. They take the boat as close as possible to sore before it goes under and then begin to tread the wintery water to shore. Finally when the group is saved and reaches land, the correspondent floats in and out of consciousness, but as he recoups, he perceives many people on shore with rescue equipment. Finally he discovers, only the cook and captain survived with him as the oiler did not survive the swim.


Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” fully captures the moment and feelings of the surviving crew’s gruesome voyage at sea. Its overall vibe and points are very naturalistic in the sense that life is just an on-going suffering, struggling race to death. Just as the story went for the oiler; in the dinghy he fought and rowed with all his might to just keep surviving for no real purpose but to live a few moments longer.