Although the oiler, who seems the most physically
fit of the crew, is unfortunately drowned, the other
three men reach shore, with the land’s welcome
“warm and generous.” The oiler is left to the “sinister
hospitality of the grave.” The survivors, however, are
left to be interpreters of “the great sea’s voice.”
As an interpreter, the correspondent can now
say more than he felt nature had said to him earlier
when he was contemplating being drowned: “A high
cold star on a winter’s night is the word he feels
that she says to him.” The high, cold star had given
him little comfort, and the oiler’s death had seemed
to confirm nature’s hostility, but the miracle of the
wave’s catapulting him over the upturned boat pres-
ents the other side of nature, the miraculous occur-
rence of his life having been spared. It is the story of
“The Open Boat” that the correspondent can pass
on to others who may see only one side of nature.
Joyce Smith
sur vival in “The Open Boat”
As Stephen Crane remarks, “Shipwrecks are apropos
of nothing.” In other words, one does not prepare
for such a happening because one never expects it.
With their very survival dependent on their physical
ability, the four men in the open boat are soon at
their weakest. For two days before the wreck, none
of them has either slept or eaten much; the cook is
out of shape and overweight, and the captain has
been injured. Only the correspondent and the oiler
can row, and they have become increasingly weary.
The waves work continuously against the small
boat, whose seats are “not unlike a seat upon a buck-
ing broncho.” When it becomes necessary to trade
places so that the correspondent can spell the oiler
at rowing, the exchange itself is precarious: “[I]t is
easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to
change seats in the dingey.” As soon as one wave is
successfully traversed, another takes its place, and
the closer the men get to land, the more severe the
pounding of the breaking waves and the greater the
possibility of the boat being swamped.
The only hope for survival, then, seems to be
rescue from shore, from someone who can send out
a larger boat to get them. They work to keep hope
alive as the cook remembers a “house of refuge just
north of the Mosquito Inlet.” After they discuss the
fact that such houses do not have staff, only supplies,
the cook decides that perhaps it is not a house of
refuge. Ethics will not allow “any open suggestion
of hopelessness. So they were silent.” Their survival
is an issue that does not allow negativity.
The captain continues to reassure the men,
calmly coaching them to save their strength and to
keep their hope alive. When a lighthouse looms on
the horizon, the men become quietly cheerful, but
their hope dims when no signs of life are visible at
the structure, and the lighthouse itself is described as
“slim” and “little.” The loss of hope is punctuated by
the mournful line “Funny they don’t see us,” spoken
three different times as any lightheartedness com-
pletely vanishes.
Physical pain and discomfort finally reaches a
point where the correspondent welcomes the idea
of death as a relief: “It is almost certain that if the
boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfort-
ably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it
was a great soft mattress.” But when death seems
most inviting, they spot a man on the shore, and
they improvise a flag to wave at him. The man then
waves his coat in meaningless gyrations interpreted
by the men to indicate that help is on its way. It soon
becomes apparent, however, that he is just part of a
group boarding an omnibus after a beach outing.
When hope of survival is at its lowest point, the
correspondent gives way to despair: “If I am going
to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—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 thus far and contemplate sand and trees?” The
shark encircling the boat heightens the threat to
survival. Again the correspondent asks himself why
he has been allowed to see sand and trees if he is to
be drowned anyway.
Later, when the men decide no help is coming,
the correspondent intellectualizes the possibility of
not surviving, and he simply wishes that death not
be painful. He is so tired that he merely thinks it
would be a shame to drown. He considers his own
mortality and considers that “his own death [might]
be the final phenomenon of nature.”
The great mystery of survival then plays itself out
as the men must abandon the boat and struggle to
keep it from hitting them. The injured captain uses“The Open Boat” 307