The story ‘The Open Boat’ by Stephen Crane was a wonderful story to read. Through reading this short story I found some symbols within in it. The first symbol that I found was “The Boat”. The boat was what the men had to cling to in order to survive the seas. I think that the boat symbolizes human life bobbing along among the universe’s uncertainties. The boat was probably no larger than a bathtub but it seems even smaller than that against the massiveness of the ocean. Throughout the story the boat is worthless and always in danger of overturning. Just as humans are minor and delicate in the context of the world around us. The boat is often described as being “open” which I interpret that to mean that the boat is unprotected and open to suffering the unexpected turns of fate that are inevitable in life. The men on the boat realize that from being on the open boat it becomes the reality of their lives. They have very little control over where they can go and what they can do. Crane infers, through the use of the boat, that life is not something we can control, but rather life is what we must hang onto as we make our way in the world.
Another symbol that I picked up on in this story was ‘the cigars.’ The four wet and dry cigars serve as a complicated symbol of hope for spiritual salvation and as the ultimate loss of that salvation. Crane makes it clear that there are two explanations of the men’s trouble when the correspondent finds the cigars in his pockets. The four men are physically and spiritually saturated by the heavy, crushing forces of nature which makes them broken and useless just like the four drenched cigars. There is something inside the men that remains untouched by the cold, drenching despair that the sea imparts just like the four dry cigars are hidden deep inside the correspondent’s pocket. As the correspondent digs through his pocket, the men are apt to see themselves optimistically – as the four dry cigars – because their teamwork and hard work has seemingly put them on track to defeat nature. By the end of the story, the men’s assurance is not complete, and they feel distress, not success. The wet cigars are more appropriately demonstrating the tragedy of the men’s spirits.
A theme that I picked up on in this short story was nature’s indifference to man. Even with the narrator’s abundance of animistic (animal-like), humanistic (manlike), and deistic (godlike) characterizations of nature, Crane makes it very clear that nature is ultimately uncaring to the troubles of man. Nature has no consciousness that we can understand. The reality of nature’s lack of concern for them becomes increasingly clear as the stranded men progress through the story. The narrator emphasizes this development by changing the way he describes the sea. At the beginning of the story the sea snarls, hisses, and bucks like a bronco but later it merely “paces to and fro.” In reality, the sea does not change at all; it is only the men’s observation of the sea that changes. The action of the gulls, clouds, and tides clarifies that nature does not behave any differently in light of the men’s struggle to survive. Crane reinforces the idea that nature is unresponsive to man by showing that it is as randomly helpful as it is hurtful. The men experience an unforeseen good turn in the form of a favorable wind or calm night for every evil impulse that they undergo. The fact that the men almost seem to get assistance from nature destroys the notion of nature as an entirely unpleasant force. I can see this through the correspondent’s final rescue. The correspondent must grip the fact that the very thing that has put him in harm’s way has saved him when he is plowed to the shore and saved by a freak wave. The same wave that saved the correspondent may have also been responsible for killing the much stronger oiler. This turn in events demonstrates that nature is as much a harsh punisher as it is a benefactor and that nature does not act out of any motivation that can be understood in human terms.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Open Boat.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 13 Feb. 2011.
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