The Open Boat

By Stephen Crane

Though best known for The Red Badge of Courage, his classic novel of men at war, in his tragically brief life and career Stephen Crane produced a wealth of stories—among them "The Monster," "The Upturned Face," "The Open Boat," and the title story—that stand among the most acclaimed and enduring in the history of American fiction. 

This superb volume collects stories of unique power and variety in which impressionistic, hallucinatory, and realistic situations alike are brilliantly conveyed through the cold, sometimes brutal irony of Crane's narrative voice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 28, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061915857

Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was an American poet and author. Along with his literary work, Crane was a journalist, working as a war correspondent in both Cuba and Greece. Though he lived a short life, passing away due to illness at age twenty-eight, Crane’s literary work was both prolific and highly celebrated. Credited to creating one of the earliest examples of American Naturalism, Crane wrote many Realist works and decorated his prose and poetry with intricate and vivid detail.

Book preview

The Open Boat

Short Story

Stephen Crane

Contents

Begin Reading

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

THE OPEN BOAT

A Tale Intended to be after the Fact: Being the Experience of Four Men from the Sunk Steamer Commodore

I

None of them knew the colour of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colours of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.

Many a man ought to have a bathtub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small-boat navigation.

The cook squatted in the bottom, and looked with both eyes at the six inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said, Gawd! that was a narrow clip. As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the broken sea.

The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the stern. It was a thin little oar, and it seemed often ready to snap.

The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and wondered why he was there.

The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy-nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he command for a day or a decade; and this captain had on him the stern impression of a scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump of a topmast with a white ball on it, that slashed to and fro at the waves, went low and lower, and down. Thereafter there was something strange in his voice. Although steady, it was deep with mourning, and of a quality beyond oration or tears.

Keep ’er a little more south, Billie, said he.

A little more south, sir, said the oiler in the stern.

A seat in his boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and by the same token a broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced

Reviews for The Open Boat

[la2bkk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent short story. Crane writes in a clear and concise style that holds up remarkably well even by modern standards. The Open Boat is a captivating true life account of his and 3 others struggles to survive in the open sea in a tiny dingy. On a deeper level, Crane writes of the impersonal and arbitrary forces of nature. Highly recommended.

[gregorio_roth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A great example of the genre Naturalism

[cjyurkanin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read Crane's "Red Badge of Courage" while in high school and without ever giving it a second thought over the years I've always recommended it highly to anyone who's ever asked. But after reading "The Open Boat," it seems I'd forgotten exactly how powerful a writer Crane really was.

I've never quite shared in the ultimate philosophy of writers like London, Conrad, and Crane yet they perpetually rank among my favorites, mainly I think, because the masculine vocabulary and narrative of "naturalist" deism (and sometimes atheism) speaks so well to those like myself who are or have been in constant contact with the dangers of outdoor life and work; those who know that their fate rests primarily in their own hands; those who know that one slip-up could cost them not simply their daily meal but their very lives. The "naturalist" relies upon the observation that although there may be a "grand architect" behind all that we see in this world, he/she/it is indifferent to our cares. It is not an agnosticism, but really that the idea that revelation, miracles, or any type of divine relationship between man and his creator is nonexistant. It is the belief that in nature, we are at the mercy only of our own abilities. How Crane came to hold such views, especially at such a young age, I can't comprehend, yet they are very evident in "The Open Boat" and it makes for extraordinarily beautiful though lonely sentiment:

"...During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude that it was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him, despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was certainly an abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard. The man felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still --

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.

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, saying: "Yes, but I love myself."

A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation..."

Crane does not entirely discount that miracles happen, just that they are rather rare natural turns of luck that few men are fortunate to witness or partake in. Near the end of the story, when rescue is at hand, a wave carries the "correspondent" over the capsized boat, he makes it a point to call this "a miracle of the sea."

However, Crane does give some hope in the story that even if we are at the mercy of nature, we are still worthy of survival because in the end we are capable of saving each other. For there are men, like the captain in the dinghy, that can still exhibit a duty toward other men as regards their cold station in life, and he paints a near messianic picture of his selflessness as he stood in the water with "a halo on his head" and shining "like a saint."

I never did nor will I agree with the basis of deism/naturalism but it makes for incredible literature. 4.5 stars and another look at Stephen Crane.

[ionas_7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I wasn’t previously familiar with the work of Stephen Crane. This is about four men in a dinghy that is in danger of overturning. These men are the cook, the oiler, the correspondent and the injured captain. They are trying to get safely to land, but this is easier said than done. They come from the steamer Commodore. The ship had gone down, but it is not explained how or why. The story is exquisitely written. At the start, the oiler steered with one of the two oars while the correspondent “pulled at the other oar”. Why was the correspondent aboard the ship and what is an oiler? We don’t know whether there are other members of the crew in another dinghy. The cook thinks there’s a house of refuge “just north of the Mosquito Inlet Light that has a crew that will come and pick them up, whereas the correspondent says houses of refuge don’t have crews. The cook is squatting in the bottom of the boat and the injured captain is lying in the bow. The oiler is in the stern. The boat bounces from the top of each wave and the spray splashes past the men. “It was probably splendid. It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights of emerald and white and amber.” The oiler and the correspondent rowed. The men saw the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet. The captain says they’ll make it if the wind holds and the boat doesn’t swamp. The cook bails the water. A ”subtle brotherhood of men” was established. The lighthouse grew slowly larger. The cook recalls that the life-saving station was abandoned a year ago. The surf’s roar was ”thunderous and mighty”. ’We’ll swamp sure’, said everybody.” Nobody seemed to see them. Sometimes the men are desperate, sometimes hopeful. Men on the land waved at them. “”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 this far and contemplate sand and trees?” A shark was following the boat. They “try a run through the surf”. They picture their chances of survival. “Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.” I won’t reveal the ending.