The Open Boat

Sing Ruby Siu
English 48B
February 13, 2009
Journal #12 Stephen Crane


QUOTE:

“In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been gray. Their eyes must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern” (1001).

SUMMARY:
In Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat, he wrote a story about the four men, the captain, the cook, the correspondent and the oiler, who were forced to wander in the sea on a small dingey after a shipwreck. This story is based on Crane’s first-hand experience of The Commodore. Arranging himself in the role of the correspondent, Crane depicts the disastrous experience in a third-person viewpoint. In this particular quote, Crane on the literal surface is describing the gray tone on the men’s expression – gazing deadly. However, what he is really referring to is the inner, psychological fear each man went through during their rowing in the sea.

RESPONSE:
“Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat is not a story about four shipwrecked men, but the relationship between man, nature, and fate” (Wikipedia). However, I think there are far more themes needed to be explored in the text. For example in the above quote, I see the subtle theme of the fear of death. The fear I am talking about here is not the nominal one every one might have jokingly talked about it somehow. The fear of death experienced by these men is the slow, realizable and irreversible fundamental terror. It is until they reached such a decisive moment, when they had no choice other than gambling their life in the sea, they were finally completely overwhelmed and disturbed by the big questions of life and death.

The correspondent even, in retrospect, remembered how he had felt indifferent to other’s death before. He “had never considered it his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow” (1012). This shows that in an earlier period, before the shipwreck, the correspondent did not see death as a matter to himself. However, when his own life was in hand of the unpredictable and powerful waves, he suddenly felt submitted to the natural force, and, felt obviously hopeless. The fear of death penetrated all his body and his comrades’, yet no one mentions these deep thought. At first, these men tried to fool each other and themselves by generating fake silence and optimism. These men attempted to remain calm and logical, especially the captain, who tried his very best to coordinate his crew in the best way. They hope by doing this, everyone will gain faith and confidence in their group future. However, they could not help putting a similarly “gray” face, which signifies their hopelessness, anxiety and fear.

The fear of death made me relate to Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams Stories, in which young Nick first encountered the fear of death early during his days of hunting with his father, and the stay in Indian camp. Later, Nick was also exposed to more deaths during his services as an American soldier in Italian Army. I see both stories are describing the process of consolidating fear of death, so as to honestly outline the human psyche under certain circumstances.