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25 pages 50 minutes read

Stephen Crane

The Open Boat

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1897

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Literary Devices

Personification

Personification is a literary device where the author gives human characteristics to something nonhuman. In “The Open Boat,” Crane regularly gives the waves and the sea human traits to underscore the theme of People Versus Nature and to show how the men view the sea as more of an enemy combatant and less a creation of nature. As is typical in war, the men portray the opposing side as morally bankrupt, so the waves are “wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall” (213). The waves also “move with a terrible grace,” and they talk since the men hear the “snarling of the crests” (215).

The choice to use personification is especially noteworthy given the realization the men come to about the universe’s indifference. The sea is not out to get the men; it lacks that sort of human motivation. Emotionally and intellectually, however, this is a difficult idea for the men to grasp, so they fall back on personification despite themselves, as the narrator explicitly states:

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, […] he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no brick and no temples. […] 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 (231).

Simile

Simile is a form of metaphor that compares two things with a connecting word like “like,” “as,” or “than.” Crane uses simile throughout his story to add meaning to the adventure at sea. His narrator says sitting on the boat “was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho” (214). The seaweed is “like islands, bits of earth” (217), and the distant lighthouse is “like a point of a pin” (218). The simile also helps Crane substantiate some of his motifs and ideas. Describing the man who rescues the boat’s passengers, Crane uses the simile, “the man shone like a saint” (238).

Repetition

Repetition is a literary device in which particular words or phrases recur to reinforce ideas or plot points. Throughout the story, the narrator brings up the waves to show how the men constantly battle the sea. The regular appearance of the waves highlights their unceasing character, which the men have to keep fighting off.

Crane also repeats the thought of drowning to demonstrate the precarious situation of the men and their distress. Sometimes, the men bemoan the prospect of drowning, so the narrator repeats, with slight variation, their hatred of fate and the “sea gods”:

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? (222, 230).

At other times, the men welcome drowning as a respite for their suffering. To drown in the ocean might feel like “a great, soft mattress” or “a comfortable arrangement” (224, 238). Crane uses repetition to point out the men’s complex feelings about Survival Versus Fate and Powerlessness.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is a literary device where the narrator provides a hint or clue about what will happen later in the story. Crane uses foreshadowing to prepare the reader for the oiler’s death. Before the oiler dies in the shallow water, the correspondent thinks about the French soldier in Algiers, who dies on the sand: The latter provides a hazy preview of the former. The correspondent thinks of the dead French soldier with “profound and perfectly impersonal comprehension” (232). Like the French soldier, the oiler will die in a context that involves war and colonialism.

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