Crane's "The Open Boat"

This past Monday evening our featured selection was "The Open Boat," by American author Stephen Crane, of "Red Badge of Courage" fame.

Crane in Greece in 1897

In "The Open Boat," four survivors of a shipwreck -- the captain, two crew members (a cook and an oiler), and a newspaperman (the "correspondent") who had been on his way to cover a story -- struggle over several days and nights to navigate safely to the shore.

The moods of the men on the boat seem to rise and fall with their prospects of survival.  Interspersed in the story are philosophical musings of the correspondent.  At a certain point, he sees "distant dunes," "black cottages, and a tall white windmill" on shore.

"The tower was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants."  It is reported that the tower represented to the correspondent, "the serenity of Nature amid the struggles of the individual."

Crane goes on:  "She [Nature] did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise.  But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent. It is, perhaps, plausible that a man in this situation, impressed with the unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his life, and have them taste wickedly in his mind, and wish for another chance. A distinction between right and wrong seems absurdly clear to him, then, in this new ignorance of the grave-edge [emphasis added], and he understands that if he were given another opportunity he would mend his conduct and his words, and be better and brighter during an introduction or at a tea."

Several of our participants were struck by Crane's depiction of the natural world as indifferent to the concerns of humans.  One pointed out how, on the other side of the coin, the humans in the story convey a great deal of emotionalism.  It's a stark contrast.

My takeaway: our moral sense becomes quickened in the "new ignorance of the grave-edge." The power of literature is that we needn't survive a shipwreck or have some other "near-death" experience in order to accept this.  With the narrator as our guide (and Crane himself went through a similar event in his life), we can be "armchair" survivors.