The Open Boat

Crane’s story introduces the theme of Humans Versus Nature in the first paragraph when his narrator says the eyes of his men are “fastened upon the waves that swept toward them” (213). The men in the boat have an adversary, and it’s the sea. They have to figure out how to rebuff nature’s attacks, and their battle with nature slides into another theme: Survival Versus Fate and Powerlessness. The men have to endure the waves to survive. Yet, at times, it seems like whether they live or die isn’t up to them but a matter of fate. At one point, the men concede their lack of agency when they bemoan the meanness of fate, thinking, “If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men’s fortunes” (222-23). Here, fate controls whether the men live, and they clearly don’t trust fate to make (what they regard as) the right decision.

The scornful tone with which the men describe fate fits in with the overall tone of the story. The men are in a hostile situation, and the narrator reinforces their adversarial context with a blunt and somewhat brutal voice. The narrator doesn’t sugarcoat the men’s precariousness and in fact frequently uses hyperbole to emphasize the threat—for instance, describing the waves as “most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall” (213). The truculent tone also manifests in the men’s dialogue. When the oiler spots a bird, he calls it an “[u]gly brute” and compares it to a “jack-knife” (217). Speaking of one of the people at the winter resort, a man on the boat says, “I’d like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like socking him one, just for luck” (227). The men deplore fate and many other things.

The inimical interactions with their environment contrast with how the men approach each other. When the narrator discusses the relationship between the men, the voice changes. The negative, stark tone becomes positive and communal as the narrator describes “the subtle brotherhood” of the men on the boat (218). The narrator explains, “[T]hey were friends—friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common” (219). The voice remains somewhat hyperbolic, as “iron-bound” is quite dramatic, but now the tone is affable since the men on the boat possess a strong, friendly bond. Crane uses this juxtaposition to spotlight how the men work together and look out for one another as they confront the harsh sea and their antagonistic fate.

The portrayal of the men relates to the theme of Community and Cooperation Versus Alienation. The men get along. They don’t fight with one another and are mostly helpful and encouraging. The captain acts like a father who’s “soothing his children” by telling them they’ll survive the shipwreck and their ordeal at sea (216). The oiler and the correspondent maintain the communal atmosphere by taking turns rowing without complaint. The strong, sacrificial bond between the men lasts until the end of the story; the correspondent returns to help the captain before the big wave hits him, and the captain orders the mysterious man on the beach to help the correspondent before rescuing him.

The focus on community doesn’t preclude feelings of alienation. While the men have each other, they don’t enjoy a great bond with people from the outside world. Until the end, no one comes along to rescue them. When they spot the people at the resort, the people act strangely and don’t offer any help. Even on the boat, the men can sometimes feel atomized or alone. As the captain sleeps, the correspondent feels as if he’s “the one man afloat on all the ocean” (229). The oiler dies face down, alone, and without comment from the men. Maintaining the estrangement in the penultimate paragraph, the narrator notes the “still and dripping shape [that’s] carried slowly up the beach” (239); in death, the oiler ceases to share in the other men’s humanity at all, becoming a mere thing.

Although three out of the four men triumph over nature and fate, the story doesn’t conclude on a victorious note. The final paragraph is haunting and melancholy, as “the wind brought the sound of the great sea’s voice to the men on shore” (239). The story frequently personifies the sea, but there are suggestions that these attributions of emotion and intent are simply the men’s efforts to understand something that doesn’t have a deeper “meaning.” For example, the narrator writes, “It was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water” (215), stressing how easy and tempting it is to humanize (even as an adversary) what is actually just a bare fact. The correspondent ultimately recognizes that nature is simply “not interested” (though even this ascribes a mental state), only for the personification to return in the closing lines. It is unclear whether what the men think they can “interpret” in the sea’s voice is nature’s indifference or whether, having reached land, they can now once again seek to make sense of their experience in human terms.