An Indifferent Sea: Analysis of the Open Boat by Stephen Crane

“The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane is a short, fictional story written from a Naturalists point of view. Naturalism is “fundamentally concerned with the relationship between the individual and the environment, since the environment determines the individual” (class notes). The irony of the four sailors’ position, lost at sea, lies within the view of a Naturalist author, depicted in this story by both the narrator and situation. The narrator in “The Open Boat” describes the ironic position by stating “But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent” (210). “She” represents nature and the fact that “she” is indifferent as to whether the sailors drown or survive. Crane purposely inserts this line to emphasize the grander view point of Naturalist writers, which is that humans are always determined by environment.

Cranes’ Naturalist perspective provides the irony of nature, or “she”, being indifferent towards the sailors lost at sea. Nature neither aims to help the sailors or hurt the sailors. Rather, the sailors simply find themselves in the middle of natures natural power. This is can be seen with the gulls flying overhead. The narrator describes how “the birds sat comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens” (192). The irony lies within the contrast of the gulls’ comfortable, natural state in the stormy water, against the deadly position the sailors are helplessly in. It is ironic that such a simple being, such as a gull, is comfortable in the violent seas where humans, superior in every other aspect, are faced with death. The gulls, however, are simply in their natural environment, where the four sailors are not. This shows how nature is once again “indifferent” because it is not trying to kill the sailors or save the gulls, but rather, creating an environment by which each organism is determined. The gulls flourish in such conditions, where as the sailors struggle.

The irony of the sailors’ predicament can again be seen with another example of an animal that accompanies them at sea. The narrator describes a shark, whose “speed and power of the thing was greatly to be admired. It cut the water like a gigantic and keen projectile” (206). Like the birds, it lives without struggle in the sea, even during violent storms. While the shark moves with “speed and power” like a “gigantic projectile” through the choppy water, the four sailors are left helplessly bobbing with the crests of the waves. The irony lies again