The Open Boat

In “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane, the main setting of the story is out at sea. The four men – the correspondent, the oiler, the cook, and the captain are inside a small boat in the middle of the ocean. At first Crane describes land as a “long black shadow on the sea that was thinner than paper.” The land disappears and then re-appears again as a black shadow, no matter how close the men get to the island. This motif of a black, thin shadow perfectly describes the situation of the men in the boat. The men in the boat are in a situation where the odds are against them, where they have no chance to survive. The thin black line is almost like a tease that there might be hope. The thought of hope gives the men something to fight for but it is a lost cause. Hope appears and disappears as the sight of land appears and disappears from the distance. In this situation, the characters literally have no chance of survival.

This tells a great deal about our own relationship with nature. Nature is unforgiving and has no sympathy for anyone or anything. Everything that man tries to do in this story is futile and ends in the demise of man. This story also tells us that nature is all powerful over man. The description of black and thin in the story give us the exact relationship between nature and man. Trying to find hope when man is going against nature is almost always a lost cause – nature will always win.