The Open Boat

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In the 1800’s, naturalism and realism made waves in the world of literature. Novels such as Huckleberry Finn utilized this writing style, and represented a shift from the formal, romantic writings of the late 1700’s to a realistic and often more pessimistic outlook on life. An example of one such work is The Open Boat by Stephen Crane. This short story is the epitome of naturalism through its use of relaxed, realistic writing, as well as man’s fate being in the hands of nature.
The Open Boat is similar in writing style to the works of Mark Twain in that the dialogue resembles what would be heard in speech. While this work does not feature the vernacular that Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer do, this is mostly down to the fact that in Florida …show more content…
In these stories, although the ending is not happy, man is very much in control against a subdued mother nature. In The Open Boat however, nature is an all-powerful force that controls the fate of the crew. Also, the four protagonists in this story have nothing special about them, unlike in many romance novels. For the most part, realist novels have a tendency to make a larger point of the mundane rather than the spectacular or fantastical. This is perfectly summed up in the quote “In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed. And also they rowed. They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the oiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed” (Crane). This excerpt hardly paints a pretty picture of the situation, but rather makes a point of the difficult and monotonous labor carried out by the men on board. In a romance novel it is likely that the men’s strength would have overpowered nature, but that is not at all what happened in this story. Instead it was their weaknesses which were exposed, as the sailors are shown to be miniscule beside the empty hugeness of the sea. At the end, when the sailors “understand”, it is the power of nature and their place in the universe which they understand, contracting the theme in
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