THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL FORCES IN STEPHEN CRANE’S THE OPEN BOAT

María Emilia Verón

Profesorado de Inglés

FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE CATAMARCA

November, 2018
Although the American Renaissance, also known as the Romantic Period in America, is
often regarded as being the greatest of American Literature, the periods that follow such as
Realism and Modernism were also marked by the greatness of their writers and their works
which in many ways influenced and inspired prominent writers in the years to come. One of
the most influential writers of the Realistic movement was Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
whose works have been credited with the establishment of the foundations of American
naturalism as well as having anticipated movements like Impressionism. He was the first
American to depict war realistically from the point of view of the individual soldier and also
the first to treat slums, prostitution, alcoholism and other unpleasant subjects associated to
Naturalism. Even though he died young, he wrote several works of fiction and poems among
the most well-known are Maggie (1893), The Red Badge of Courage (1895), and “The Open
Boat” (1898), the last work mentioned, the best known of Crane’s later stories, is based on
an actual incident from Crane’s life. While traveling to Cuba to work as a newspaper
correspondent during the Cuban insurrection against Spain, Crane was stranded at sea for
thirty hours after his ship, the Commodore, sank off the coast of Florida. Crane, together
with other three men, was forced to navigate his way to shore in a small boat. After reporting
the incident in newspapers he wrote the story “The Open Boat” soon afterward. It was
published in the collection The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure in 1898 six months
after Crane’s first-hand experience. Though some critics regard it as realistic fiction the
author applies naturalist elements to compose his story.
“Crane’s philosophical naturalism in “The Open Boat”, almost the type of Thomas Hardy’s
determinism, presents man in an indifferent universe that ignores him and his needs”
(Gottesman 59). Similarly, Fatna Kendir acknowledges naturalist traits in the story through
the indifference of nature toward the men’s predicament, they have no control over the
situation and their lives, and instead it is nature that controls everything (40).

The goal of this paper is to analyze the short story “The Open Boat” in terms of the
philosophy applied by its author. Specifically, how Crane applied the main principles of
Naturalism to demonstrate how man’s actions and destinies are determined by
environmental forces.
 The story opens up with four men: a cook, a correspondent, an oiler and a captain
drifting at sea in a small dinghy. They are off the coast of Florida, just after their ship has
sunk. Soon, they spot the light of a lighthouse somewhere in the distance, so they know they
are near land. They spend a total of two nights in the lifeboat and take turns rowing and then
resting. As they get closer to land a big wave comes and all the men are thrown into the sea.
The lifeboat turns over and the four men must swim to the shore. There are rescuers waiting
on shore who help the men out of the water. The cook, the captain and the correspondent
reach the shore safely and are helped out of the water, then they discover that the oiler has
drowned after being smashed in the surf by a huge wave.

As it was stated before, the objective is to show how Crane, drawing on the main tenets
of naturalism, attempted to prove that environmental forces affect and govern man’s actions
and decisions. In doing so, he presents man as a being devoid of free will. So that, in order
to have a clearer idea about this proposition it is of utmost importance to know first the main
characteristics of naturalism in literature, more specifically American literature.

In literary terms, naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific
principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike realism, which
focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic
writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be
studied through their relationships to their surroundings. Thus, through objective study of
human beings, naturalistic writers believed that the laws behind the forces that govern
human lives might be studied and understood. Hence, they used a version of the scientific
method to write their novels; they studied human beings governed by their instincts and
passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives were governed by forces of
heredity and environment (Zhang 196)

Naturalism began to influence American literature during the 20s, it was inspired by
Darwinism and French literary Naturalism. There are many defining characteristics of
American literary naturalism, however, only the ones that best apply to works of fiction will
be taken into account.

In the first place, the writer is simply a recorder of what happens without much judgment
or interpretation, his work intends to be an objective, almost scientific presentation of a
situation. In the second place, it is nature. It is presented as an indifferent force acting on
the lives of human beings which are part of it and subject to its laws. Moreover, another
relevant characteristic is Determinism. The writer presents situations and settings that take
away the free will of the characters. Even though they may want things to be different,
characters in naturalist fiction do not seem to have any choices about their own lives. They
are trapped by social, economic, emotional, hereditary or environmental forces. Also
characters often must resort to basic human instinct and desperate or degrading behaviors
and situations in order to survive. Furthermore, pessimism is another trait of naturalist fiction,
commonly, one or more characters will continue to repeat one line or phrase that tends to
have a pessimistic connotation, sometimes emphasizing the inevitability of death. To
conclude, it is the setting. Generally, it is an urban surrounding; life for the characters is
made up of dull routines of daily existence in order to make a life in harsh surroundings
(Kendir 10-11).
By the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a new generation of writers
arose in America, whose ideas of the workings of the universe and whose perception of
society’s disorders let them to naturalism, a new and harsher realism. Naturalists showed a
concern with the animal or the irrational motivations for human behaviour (Zhang 195). Most
of them wrote about criminals, slums, laborers, strikers and prostitutes, they attacked
capitalism but also explained society in Darwinist terms of heredity and environment
governing man in a world where only the fittest survive.

Stephen Crane, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser are regarded among the late 19th C
founders of American naturalism, their influence on later generations of writers was
enormous and long-lasting. In fact, Stephen Crane is considered the first American writer to
deal with harsh themes like poverty, violence and, prostitution among other themes. “Crane
anticipated the sparse and economical naturalism of Hemingway and other naturalists of the
twenties”, claims Gottesman (58). Furthermore, Crane was in the lead in transcribing
common speech as it was actually spoken, also his dialogues were full of repetitions and
inconsistencies possibly taken from recordings registered on the battlefield or the slums. As
regards fiction, his works were based on careful and authentic research although they were
not highly documented with places, names, and statistics in the way most naturalists did
(Gottesman 59). Indeed, as Gottesman concludes, Crane’s influence was a very important
one as his works greatly contributed to the development of literary naturalism and indicated
the direction 20th c naturalists were to take (59).
As previously mentioned, the goal of this paper is to demonstrate that Stephen Crane
applies characteristics of naturalism to the “The Open Boat” in order to prove that
environmental forces have a direct influence on the lives of men, affecting them often in a
negative way and taking away their free will. So that, it is time to focus on those
characteristics and how they serve to illustrate Crane’s perspective.

There are many characteristics of naturalism present in “The Open Boat”, however, only two
will be discussed in this paper. The first characteristic is ‘nature as an indifferent force acting
on the lives of human beings which are part of it and subject to its laws’. That is to say,
nature through the sea’s roughness, shows itself indifferent towards the men´s plight when
it affects their journey and puts their lives in danger, “A singular disadvantage of the sea lies
in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another
behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the
way of swamping boats” (Crane 2002: 2). The men’s disappointment before nature’s
indifference is reflected in this passage, they realize that no matter how much effort they do
to reach the shore nature remains impassive to their hardship (Kendir 34).

Another clear reference to nature’s indifference is found almost at the beginning of section
IV,

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she
would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple,
and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of
nature would surely be pelted with his jeers (Crane 2002: 21).

This quotation illustrates the correspondent’s full awareness about nature’s indifference. He
finds out that he means nothing to nature, that despite of his complaints and appeals he will
receive no answer. Certainly, “The Open Boat” shows man in an indifferent universe that it
is indifferent to him and his needs, and his reaction is anger and resentment (Gottesman
60).

A further allusion to nature acting as an indifferent force is present in section VII,

This tower was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree,
to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual—nature in the
 wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor
treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent (Crane 2002: 25)
In this fragment, the correspondent makes a parallelism between the huge wind mill that
stands in what it seems to be a small village, and nature. For him both represent an entity
that remains indifferent to the men’s predicament. In other words, the tall wind mill that
stands in its back towards the men ignoring their suffering and nature that although it doesn’t
seem to harm the men deliberately, remains always indifferent towards the suffering caused
by its elements, i.e. the sea.

The second characteristic to be developed here is ‘lack of free will’. Throughout the
story the men’s actions and destinies are determined by environmental forces, specifically
the sea, “The third wave moved forward, huge, furious, implacable. It fairly swallowed the
dingey, and almost simultaneously the men tumbled into the sea” (Crane 2002:28). Despite
of their effort to go ashore, the fierceness of the sea sinks the boat forcing the men to swim
in order to survive (Kendir 36).
As deterministic fiction implies, characters are devoid of their free will, so it does not matter
how hard they row to reach the shore, it will be nature in the end the one that determines
their fate.

The oiler’s death will be taken into account as the clearest example of lack of free will in
“The Open Boat”,

The man gave a strong pull, a long drag, and a big push. The correspondent said, “Thanks, old
man.” But suddenly the man cried, “What’s that?” He pointed a quick finger. The correspondent
said, “Go.” In the low water, face down, lay the oiler. His forehead touched sand that was
sometimes, between each wave, above the sea (Crane 2002:30).

Crane focuses on this incident to reinforce his theory of men lacking free will. Billie, the oiler,
regarded as the best swimmer, is the only one who dies while trying to swim to shore. The
oiler’s death has already been determined by environmental forces, in this case by the sea
(Kendir 37).

Certainly, the oiler’s death is a very representative example of deterministic fiction as Crane
presents a situation and a setting in which a character’s life is in danger and in turn he must
resort to basic human instinct and desperate behavior in order to survive, however, he is
completely devoid of his free will due to his fate is already determined by environmental
factors like the sea. In other words, the oiler’s fate is dictated by factors other than his own
free will, thus, he drowns despite of being a skilled swimmer.

Thus, as it has recently displayed, Stephen Crane’s fiction often centered on people
that live in a universe of vast and indifferent natural forces and “The Open Boat” is
unquestionably the work that best represent that perspective. Through nature elements like
the sea he attempted to demonstrate that indeed, environmental forces affect and govern
men’s lives and actions as it has been stated in the story. So in order to make his theory
effective he made use of the main tenets of naturalism like nature as an indifferent force,
that even though it doesn’t afflict men deliberately, it is indifferent to their plight. Besides, he
applied the concept of ‘lack of free will’ to the story, especially by presenting the oiler’s death
as the incident that best illustrates that notion. Undoubtedly, “The Open Boat” is a perfect
piece of naturalistic fiction since it encompasses all the elements a good naturalist work
must have.
 Works Cited

Bibliography

GOTTESMAN, Ronald et al, (1980). The Norton Anthology of American Literature, W.W.

Norton & Company, New York.

Webgraphy

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https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the-open-boat.pdf

KENDIR, Fatna, (2013). “The Study of the Major Principles of Naturalism through “The Open
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ZHANG, Xiaofen, (2010). “On the Influence of Naturalism on American Literature”.

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