sociology of literature class; analysis of the open boat short story by stephen crane

In the short story The Open Boat by Stephen Crane, the author narrates a story about a journey of an open boat or in other words, shipwreck, in the middle of the ocean that is currently facing a very bad weather. It is said that the short story is inspired by the author’s real experience living on shipwreck and survive and put them into the narrative text.

The whole story is talking about the greatness of nature power or we better known as naturalism. About how small we are humans in front of the nature which has power beyond us, in this case is happen to be the wave of the sea that keep coming frequently and cause the damage both the boat nor the four people on it.

Through this story, the narrator is trying to narrate the readers to experiencing and get to know how it felt like to be in a shipwreck. The boat might represent the life and then the wave that keep coming over and crush the boat would be the best representation of the tons of the obstacles we are going through in our life every single day.

As we read it deeper we know that this is not ordinary story, there are symbols lay upon it. We may say that because we can relate to one of the quotation in the story that repeatedly written for several times and strongly stated that the story offer much more than we tough it is. “If I am going to lose my life to the sea-if I am going to lose my life to the sea-why was I allowed to come this far and see sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to waste the holy food of life.” This has direct message to the human life of the questions like how do we end up living in the world and how we have a life but we are going to lost it anyway in the end. So this story is not only about the naturalism but also existentialism.

How the only four character; the captain, the oiler, the correspondent, and the cook, having episode during the time they are being pushed here and there in the ocean and how they improve their feelings of working together as a team also as friendship which might face the death very soon and how they question the god for everything they have done and willing to chose death over the uncertain of stay alive in the shipwreck.