In Stephen Crane's short story "The Open Boat", the American literary school of

naturalism is used and three of the eight features are most apparent, making this
work, in my opinion, a good example of the school of naturalism. These three of the
eight features are determinism, objectivity, and pessimism. They show, some more
than others, how Stephen Crane viewed the world and the environment around him.
Determinism is of course the most obvious of the three features. Throughout
the entire story, the reader gets a sense that the fate of the four main
characters, the cook, the oiler, the correspondent, and the captain are totally
pre-determined by nature and that they were not their own moral agents. "The little
boat, lifted by each towering sea and splashed viciously by the crests, made
progress that in the absence of seaweed was not apparent to those in her." The
characters had no control over their boat, rather nature was totally in control.
"She seemed just a wee thing wallowing, miraculously top up, at the mercy of the
five oceans. Occasionally a great spread of water, like white flames, swarmed into
her." (pg.145) There is also a sense that man is totally not important to the
natural forces controlling his fate. "When it occurs to 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 that there are no bricks and no temples."(pg156) The one character who
perishes, the oiler, is of course a victim of determinism. Even as he was so close
to land and no longer out in the open sea, nature still takes its role in
determining his fate.

Objectivity refers to how the author describes reality as it exists, that is,
not glorifying something, but rather simply stating the observation. The fact that
the narrator is the correspondent in itself give an impression on how the story is
going to be told in a more journalistic sense, describing actual events instead of
feelings or ideas. " In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed. They
sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the oiler took both
oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the oiler; then the
correspondent. They rowed and they rowed." (pg144) Writing something repeatedly in
the manner Crane does in this passage gives the reader a sense of the
repetitiveness and frustration the four main characters faced being lost out at
sea.
Pessimism, in my opinion, is apparent throughout the entire story. Although
the four men do have the will to survive, it always seems as if nature is always
playing the most important role. " 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." This
passage is said not once, but twice in the short story, strengthening the fact that
a sense of pessimism is present throughout the story while also expressing the
anger the characters feel toward the ever present fate of nature.

The entire story in itself is a portrayal not of the conflict between man and
nature, but rather the effect and control nature has on human fate, strengthening
the naturalistic ideas and views through this tale of four stranded men. The fact
that the waves, the tides, the freezing water and all the other characteristics of
the controlling force are ever present, make, in my opinion, the sea the most
important character in "The Open Boat", the four men are just the way in which this
is brought through to the reader.