The Open Boat
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Introduction
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Introduction
The Open Boat is one of Crane’s best known short stories. The story is based on Crane’s real experiences when he “entered” the Spanish-American war as a reporter. In December 1896, Crane signed on board the Commodore, a filibuster which sank, shortly after they left the port. Crane and three other members of the crew (Captain Edward Murphy, Stewart Joseph Montgomery and the Oiler William Higgins) rescued themselves with a dinghy and drifted within sight of a beach. Finally, they reached the shore safely but exhausted; William Higgins, however, died in the aftermath of a strike on his head by floating timber.
Crane had never before experienced the horror of a shipwreck though he had written about it in earlier works. The subtitle of the Open Boat reads as follows: “A Tale Intended to be after the Fact.” Crane tried to confront his dreadful experience, first in a newspaper story a few days after his rescue and later in his completed short story. “Stephen Crane’s Own Story”is a journalistic report of the event, but it is also a first-person narrative striving for tonal objectivity.
It is “only at the end, when Crane omits the details of life in an open boat for thirty hours, does the personal cost of his reportorial stance break through.” [1]
In Crane’s previous recountings of shipwreck, he presents one point of view and maintains distance between the narrator and the event. In The Open Boat, the narration shifts in distance as well as in focus. “Since the correspondent’s viewpoint is intimately revealed, his conclusion of nature’s indifference dominates until the sacrificial death of the oiler, the man who had been mainly responsible for the spiritual strength of the men in the boat, effectively redeems the significance of life.”[2]
[1] The portable S.Crane xvii
[2] Crane xviii
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