Exploring Stephen Crane's 'The Open Boat'

Good morning class. I wanted to bring you a short lecture about Stephen Crane's The Open Boat. Last week I think my lecture went slightly over time allotted for Blackboard to let you manage that file so this time I'll try to stay in that 30 minutes. So hopefully you know based on the discussion board I can tell that. You guys are reading and thinking about the stories. And I should mention, although we might talk about the discussion questions or the discussion questions might be part of one of the prompts for you to post, I don't collect them. So I've said this a bunch of times. They're for you. You know, sometimes when you're approaching a text, if you have a few questions to look at first, it helps to focus that reading. And it's also a good place to make sure that, you know, if you can answer those questions, you probably would be prepared to say answer a question on an exam. So for the midterm and the final. But I do not collect them. I probably said it, I don't know, a bunch of times. So please, you know, keep those, you know, fill them out. You know, keep them somewhere where when it's time for the midterm, you could review what were your answers to some of those questions. in a way to refresh your memory and get you prepared for a test. Now, Stephen Crane. So he is pretty amazing. And, you know, you're reading one of his short stories. He has many. He has a few novels. He's probably most famous for The Red Badge of Courage. And I don't know if you ever had a chance to read that. Sometimes in high school. might be something that you read when you're talking about things like the Civil War. Stephen Crane grew up, well, he moved around a little, but they kind of, the family settled in New Jersey. And he was pretty bright. And, you know, he made his way through some college work, and then he wanted to be a correspondent. And he started publishing things in like New York magazines, you know, newspapers, doing a little traveling, reporting. And although he himself wasn't in the Civil War, he wasn't born until 1871, he really had a sense of what had transpired. Like he read a lot of journals of the day, like people who had been in the Civil War and had written about it. He's credited with being able to communicate what you might call like the psychology of battle, the emotional toll, you know, the hurry up and wait. Watching other people be killed and, you know, having to muster up the courage and feeling like you never really will, like everyone else must be more brave than you are. And you'll be found out that you're, you know, this whole internal battle until you finally kind of let go of all of that and you become that. fighter you know in that moment when you let all those things finally go and you just sort of sink into the moment you know and people who had you know so he had read what other people's experiences were and then he wrote the red badge of courage with the main character being in the civil war and it's just over a weekend about three day weekends the length of the span of the the story starting from like him enlisting and then getting his first minutes on the battlefield like that but when people who had been through the war read his work they were just really blown away like how did this young man 20s capture so well exactly what these men had experienced when he was never in the war so his ability to really tap into that is what brought him you But he also wrote all these other short stories. And we have, you know, we put him in this category of, like, naturalism, determinism. Like, for him, the human has all these external, you know, forces that can determine things beyond the control of that individual. One of them being nature, you know. And so the story that we read really highlights this idea of. Not just man versus nature, because that would oversimplify it. Yes, these men are in a boat and nature is kind of running the show. But I think he moves us beyond that. So it's not necessarily Mother Nature is trying to get these men. It's just Mother Nature does Mother Nature. And she's indifferent to the plight of the human being. So she's not making those waves just to drown some men. You know, Mother Nature, we don't just have a hurricane to affect a certain population in a city, right? Mother Nature is doing her thing. And it's irrespective of what humans are doing. Like, it's just not concerned. Mother Nature is not concerned. And so that indifference is, you know, what we see here. So they're really struggled. They're like in the fight of their lives. And she's just carrying on, you know. And these four men, you know, they come to be as one. And I asked you and some of you did comment on the discussion board about this idea of no names. So. when you break it down to like survival, right? It is. you know, it's not each man for himself, but in this situation, does it matter if one of them is a cook, or one of them is a correspondent, or one of them is an oiler, right? They're men, they're human beings, they're in this little boat together, and in their mind, they all survive, or maybe none survive, you know? So their egos, you know, their names and what they, you know, is really irrelevant. So I think the author, Stephen Crane, wants us to just see them as men, as human beings, working at this force of nature, trying to survive. And yes, the one that we actually learn, Billy, happens to be the one that... pays the ultimate price. And, you know, so people think, well, like, it doesn't seem fair. He seemed to do most of the rowing. He tried the hardest. And then so we can come up with all these little themes, like, see, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you know. And I think, you know, maybe there's some truth to that. But I think it still comes back to, like, nature is indifferent. It's not like if you really work hard, and if you do everything right, and you try your hardest. then you'll be the one who survives, you know? It's like she's indifferent. If Mother Nature's indifferent, it means she's indifferent to all of that. She's indifferent to whether that boat gets to shore. She's indifferent to whether they survive. She's just Mother Nature, you know? And so we are the ones who attach all of these other ideas to it. So the fact that Billy tries so hard and maybe commits to working... you know, the most when they're on the ship, doesn't necessarily pay off. So I think there is an unsympathetic response from nature. Like, it's like, oh, this man, he really gave it his all, so we're going to make sure we help him to shore. It's like Mother Nature isn't punishing, and she's also... not doling out sympathy. She's indifferent, which is kind of the overall point. I should have mentioned, too, with Stephen Crane, because he really, I mean, his work is pretty profound for, he was 28 when he died. So he died of tuberculosis. And so all of this work, if you look at his body of work, is all accomplished, like, in his 20s. So that alone is just I always think like, wow, you know, we have others, you know, John Keats, Percy Shelley, other authors that, you know, met similar fates. And so it's remarkable, like what a body of work for for his age. Thinking about the discussion questions, just to kind of, you know, add some of the. These places like where there is that animal imagery, you know, like describing the raft going over the waves, you know, like a bucking bronco. Like he, Stephen Crane uses really strong imagery, these visuals. Like you may have some of you mentioned about the colors and he creates this weirdly like picturesque. for the person reading this visual of what this ocean looked like. I would challenge you to find more words to describe the color gray than he uses. It's flannel, it's slate, it's a shadow, it's gray sometimes. All these, this use of color and and contrast to like the white foaming tops of the waves. This whole time that they're in this raft, you get a visual. When they have the encounter with the shark, right? You've just got the correspondent up, you know, they're all sleeping. He's there rowing by himself. And all of a sudden the whir of a fin kind of circling. And you know how when you touch the top of the water, like if you go... a boat, you know, the motor stirs up the top where that motion is gets like white. And he talks about that, like everything that he gives us, all of these colors, the darkness, the different tones of different shades. bring a really great visual for the reader, you know. And so all of this is part of this time of what we call realism, too. So we should mention that Romanticism, which is the literary movement that realism kind of pushes back on. So, you know, in. you know, a few weeks from now, we'll be talking about some poetry. And, you know, romanticism expresses more of a connection with nature. It's a different, it's entirely different than realism, because romanticism sees a relationship, a connection to perhaps humans in nature, you know, like in the poems, you know. If the sun's out and you feel the warmth on your shoulder, you feel that connection. In dancing with the daffodil, this idea of like bringing joy, like seeing these beautiful flowers, seeing like they're dancing. Later on, that human who saw that closes their eyes and can just kind of like visualize it and still feel joy. All these different ways in romanticism, it's like things are, there's a beauty in it, and some of them will use words like a truth, and realism is really saying like, life isn't all, you know, roses, like the real world is dark, you know, it's harsh, it's like one of Stephen Crane's... novels. You know, it's about a street woman like who's prostituting herself and like this hard, like the hard reality of life. And so he's part of this realism. And, you know, people criticize, when they did criticize Stephen Crane, it was mostly to say things like, you know, not everything in the world is filth. and like drunkenness you know like his novel maggie and you know sometimes depicting things as they really are can be a bit harsh right the world can be this way like this man can really try his hardest and mother nature doesn't care and he dies anyway right when he's right when he's on the shore, like when the wave comes in and out, his body is not even submerged, like he was right there to safety, you know. So ideas like this separate the two literary movements, so we'll see a difference as we go into poetry. And also poetry had its elements, so there were poets who also incorporated some of these ideas into poetry, but it starts, you know, as a romantic movement. And so Stephen Crane is part of that. Like, when you, if you ever get a chance to read The Red Badge of Courage, you know, it doesn't sugarcoat things, you know, in the battle, you know, Henry Fleming, he's the main character, you know, he goes up to this first man that he sees that's dead like he had never seen a dead man before you know when he looks at the man and the way he's laying and the way his eyes look and he sees like a bug i think it's like an ant or i forget but you know crawls over him while he's looking at him and like like people are really dying on this battlefield and um this is what a dead man looks like and that kind of reaction you know so he for a young man really gets this well and um all right so let's people say he's a fan of like darwin you know survival of the fittest you know kind of goes along with some of these ideas um but as you read the story We'll look at just a couple of places. I know we don't have tons of time, but I hope that you noted some of these. So just the opening. So actually, and you may have read this. if you looked anything up about the piece, but he was actually a survivor of the Commodore, which was this ship off the coast of Florida that sunk. And I forget how many hours it was. I had it written down somewhere. It was like, you know, less than a day, but he was trapped on this raft. So he says at the beginning when he starts it that... A tale intended to be after the fact, being the experience of four men from the sunk steamer Commodore. So he sort of uses his real life, but that isn't actually what happened to him. They didn't lose one of the crew and all of that, but it was at least what got him maybe thinking about this fictional tale. So he starts it off these couple of sentences. None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tips which were of foaming white, and all the men knew the colors of the sea. So they're kind of fixed on the water right nobody knows the color of the sky they're they're in they're in this moment they're in this small raft looking at the ocean like what they're dealing with four of them he describes that this it's like the size of a bathtub i mean maybe slightly bigger right but not much bigger and you have four men when they were abruptly kind of you know had to to get off of their ship and abruptly get into the raft and hurry. They didn't have time to like bring things so they're men with not much on them. You know they don't have supplies. This wasn't like a planned little trip out on a raft and they have picnic and you know food and it was an emergency. They got into this raft with just basically what they had on them. And he talks about this movement. And some of you have maybe been on boats, small boats. And if you hit just the right wave, right, the way that the nose comes up and comes back down, right, you have to hit waves at a certain angle. Or if it comes like the length of your raft, for example, you'll. tip over. So typically it's nose into the wave. And so he's describing it's almost like this idea of an animal. A seat in his boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking bronco. And by the same token, a bronco is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for it. She seemed like a horse making out a fence outrageously high. So as a horse would jump over, the front paws would, those front hoofs would come up and it would lean way back, right? So this visual, and it's funny, like a couple of times he says something that He's got a really good sense of humor and he does this in all of his works. But like in this sentence where he's talking about a couple of paragraphs after that one, he says in a 10 foot dinghy, one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves. That is not probable to the average experience, which is never at sea in a dinghy. So most people are not out in the middle of sea in a dinghy. So like it wouldn't be most people's experience. Experience who understands so the resources of nature so she doesn't run out of energy She doesn't get tired She just keeps like, you know sending the waves their way like her resources are enormous Never-ending and most men wouldn't think about that because they're not out in the middle of it in the dinghy You know And so as you go through the story, so much use of color, so much, you know, there's a lot of dialogue where you just hear them talking to one another, but no one, there's no signal phrases as we call it in writing. It's not like said the correspondent, replied the captain, right? It just, it kind of like. one after the other after the other. It's written like dialogue so you know it's not the same person talking the whole time, right? It's indented each line, you can see it's dialogue, but Stephen Crane isn't saying who said which of these lines. Again, why not? Because they're all men in here for their survival. Does it matter? You know, it's like they're humankind. They're mankind. It doesn't matter. And so those things kind of drop away. We don't need to say who's saying whatever. They're all kind of fighting here for their lives. He describes, you know, the seagulls with the black beady eyes that kind of hover over them, like all these things he notices and describes. Overcast and the gray shadows in the sky. They've got no food. They've had no sleep. Another time he says that it's impossible in this moment. We hear most of this from the correspondence perspective, right? That it's impossible in this moment to think about ever going in a boat for pleasure. Like when you're here fighting for your life, you can't imagine how anyone would think this activity would be pleasurable. that people thought it was amusing to go in a rowboat. At this moment it's not possible. So they're all kind of settling into this wild ride and then we get to this part in the story where they're going to think they see somewhere along the shore at a far distance this refuge where at one point in time maybe there were people like You know how lighthouses would often look out for ships and things like that? Maybe that there's someone there that sees them. And so they start almost getting into this. They're not delusional, but they each can't be certain of what they see. Oh, I think that might be a person. I think they're waving something at us. And, you know, these various, I think, hopeful, wishful thinking. There's a couple of lines that are repeated. several times and it is this it's almost like the psychology of battle but here in this battle against mother nature right if we talk about the psychology of battle here he's thinking to himself if you were going to drown me why not just do it when the boat and the ship sank why let me get into this raft and then why let me get this far And then why let me just to like drag my nose to the sand before I'm dead? You know, it's a questioning of of Mother Nature and of just kind of universal like reason. He says he said, perchance they might be formulated thus. So this is what they're all kind of thinking. 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? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny woman fate cannot do better than this, She should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. And he goes on for a little bit. So what he's asking is why, you know, why now? Why is she making this choice? And so fate is always perceived as a female as well. Fate is... in charge of men's lives you know and this is part of that determinism that crane is part of which is there are outside forces that determine things largely beyond human control and so what he's asking now is why let them get this far why not have just let them go down with the ship you know and so he's saying if she's this you know whimsical like she doesn't deserve to be You know, in charge of men's faith. So eventually, you know, this goes, it's not the shortest of short stories, but we have a lot of that dialogue that, you know, when they're, especially when they think they see what really doesn't turn out to be anything. And there's this discussion of how the small raft is moving, too, because if you think about it, there's that place you have to get out beyond, right? So where those waves come in and break is a dangerous place. So it's okay if you're further out, but once you try to make for the shore, you better know and time it where you could get in or else you will get toppled over. I don't know if any of you remember the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks. I mean, that was his thing with the raft there at the end while he's trying to get off the island is it was treacherous to get past that break. Once he gets past the break, but... you know, who can get past there. So they're trying to make sure before they head all the way in because then they're, they won't have any luck after that. So they end up having to head back out because it isn't whatever they thought they saw, it doesn't appear to actually be a refuge. And so after it, you know, once they know that it is not going to pan out and they have to head back out, we get that verse again about if I am going to be drowned. So this is sentiment of all the men throughout. It's like, why did we get so close? We thought we saw people. We thought we saw them waving at us. And no, it's no one back out to the sea. And then they keep going. If you imagine the coast of Florida, there are opportunities to come in, right? But this is 19th century. And, you know, so it's not as populated as it is now. And so they're looking to get a sense that if they do make it in, there's going to be, you know, help. So there are times where the oiler, we can sense that he's not really getting a break. The captain is almost useless, right, because he's injured. And they take turns, but. As everyone gets a little tired, they ask the oiler to take over. And so we get the scene with the shark and it's kind of a little creepy. And, you know, just imagining that the visual, you're in this little raft at night in the middle of the ocean. And to just have something like that circling you to just feel so that determinism, right? So many. external forces against you um you he doesn't panic he doesn't even wake anyone else up as a matter of fact the next morning when billy's like wow that was some kind of big shark or whatever he he says oh i wish i had known you were awake you know the poor guy panicked the whole time alone because he didn't want to disturb him so eventually you know we get This verse that comes from, so unless our life is on the line, it is hard to sometimes relate to things like people in those predicaments. You know, Tolstoy does this really well in the death of Ivan Ilyich. Like it's these syllogisms like John. is immortal. All mortals die. John will die, right? Or making those, it's always easy to look at those when they are at a distance. Then I am immortal, right? Like, so it's a different thing. So he is talking about this one verse where you have the soldier in Algiers, and he just happens to come to his mind. He remembers reading that. And so there's a soldier of the legion that lay dying in Algiers. There was a lack of woman's nursing. There was a dearth of woman's tears. But a comrade stood beside him, and he took the comrade's hand, and he said, I nevermore shall see my own, my native land. So in this moment, this man is dying. He has no women around, no one crying for him. He'll never... Never... returned home again, and he just has one of his fellow comrades to hold his hand. So he remembers, the correspondent remembers reading that, but not really connecting to it. So here in this predicament. He thinks back to that and he says he was sorry for the soldier of the legion who lay dying in Algiers. So he said he never comprehended it when he originally read it because right his life wasn't threatened. But now here he is in this moment thinking I get it. No women around, nobody crying over me. I'll probably never see my home again and it's over. You know, so this, you know, feeling in the same thing in Tolstoy's work, and that's in the death of Ivan Ilyich when he really gets it that he is immortal. He is a man and that it means that he also will die. So these kind of little heavy notes of sentiment. throughout. Eventually they find a time to come in. They know that there's help on the shore, but they've got to make it through that tumultuous shoreline. So they exit the raft, the raft gets tossed. And now it's just a struggle for survival. Like what strength do they have? They haven't slept, haven't eaten. Well, some of them sleep here and there throughout the struggle, but... They've got to swim for it. That's it. And so they just sort of go for it. And somebody comes off the shore to come out and help, like pull them in. The captain waves them off. No, go help him. The correspondent looks ahead. Now he can see someone sort of face down. He's like, no, go help him. And so as they come in and then of course they look and it's Billy, the oiler, who had done the most work, probably exerted the most energy, probably had the littlest amount of sleep. And he makes it right to the edge of the shore. And he's face down and he dies. So the end, at the very end, so the rest of them make it, the other three men. And they kind of look at night. They've gotten blankets and food and they're being cared for. When they look at the night, the white waves coming in and out of the moonlight. They hear the sound that people just love, right? Being on the edge of the ocean. And he writes, and they felt that they could then be interpreters. Like they had been out there, you know, in it, in those sounds of the ocean. They had contended with Mother Nature. And so looking out from a safe shore, they feel like they kind of understand something that maybe the average person doesn't. And so this book is, I mean, this short story is really one for the idea of realism, determinism, naturalism, all those things that we talked about. And he does it so well. And that use of color, the tone of the story is set, right, with gray flannel, slate, shadow, you know, all of those gloomy cues that build the... visual for the reader. And so hopefully this helps you to digest that piece and next week we're moving on to a couple other short stories. So I'll see you in the next video.

So hopefully you know based on the discussion board I can tell that. You guys are reading and thinking about the stories. And I should mention, although we might talk about the discussion questions or the discussion questions might be part of one of the prompts for you to post, I don't collect them.

So I've said this a bunch of times. They're for you. You know, sometimes when you're approaching a text, if you have a few questions to look at first, it helps to focus that reading. And it's also a good place to make sure that, you know, if you can answer those questions, you probably would be prepared to say answer a question on an exam.

So for the midterm and the final. But I do not collect them. I probably said it, I don't know, a bunch of times.

So please, you know, keep those, you know, fill them out. You know, keep them somewhere where when it's time for the midterm, you could review what were your answers to some of those questions. in a way to refresh your memory and get you prepared for a test.

Now, Stephen Crane. So he is pretty amazing. And, you know, you're reading one of his short stories. He has many.

He has a few novels. He's probably most famous for The Red Badge of Courage. And I don't know if you ever had a chance to read that.

Sometimes in high school. might be something that you read when you're talking about things like the Civil War. Stephen Crane grew up, well, he moved around a little, but they kind of, the family settled in New Jersey.

And he was pretty bright. And, you know, he made his way through some college work, and then he wanted to be a correspondent. And he started publishing things in like New York magazines, you know, newspapers, doing a little traveling, reporting.

And although he himself wasn't in the Civil War, he wasn't born until 1871, he really had a sense of what had transpired. Like he read a lot of journals of the day, like people who had been in the Civil War and had written about it. He's credited with being able to communicate what you might call like the psychology of battle, the emotional toll, you know, the hurry up and wait.

Watching other people be killed and, you know, having to muster up the courage and feeling like you never really will, like everyone else must be more brave than you are. And you'll be found out that you're, you know, this whole internal battle until you finally kind of let go of all of that and you become that. fighter you know in that moment when you let all those things finally go and you just sort of sink into the moment you know and people who had you know so he had read what other people's experiences were and then he wrote the red badge of courage with the main character being in the civil war and it's just over a weekend about three day weekends the length of the span of the the story starting from like him enlisting and then getting his first minutes on the battlefield like that but when people who had been through the war read his work they were just really blown away like how did this young man 20s capture so well exactly what these men had experienced when he was never in the war so his ability to really tap into that is what brought him you But he also wrote all these other short stories. And we have, you know, we put him in this category of, like, naturalism, determinism. Like, for him, the human has all these external, you know, forces that can determine things beyond the control of that individual.

One of them being nature, you know. And so the story that we read really highlights this idea of. Not just man versus nature, because that would oversimplify it.

Yes, these men are in a boat and nature is kind of running the show. But I think he moves us beyond that. So it's not necessarily Mother Nature is trying to get these men. It's just Mother Nature does Mother Nature.

And she's indifferent to the plight of the human being. So she's not making those waves just to drown some men. You know, Mother Nature, we don't just have a hurricane to affect a certain population in a city, right?

Mother Nature is doing her thing. And it's irrespective of what humans are doing. Like, it's just not concerned.

Mother Nature is not concerned. And so that indifference is, you know, what we see here. So they're really struggled. They're like in the fight of their lives. And she's just carrying on, you know.

And these four men, you know, they come to be as one. And I asked you and some of you did comment on the discussion board about this idea of no names. So. when you break it down to like survival, right?

It is. you know, it's not each man for himself, but in this situation, does it matter if one of them is a cook, or one of them is a correspondent, or one of them is an oiler, right? They're men, they're human beings, they're in this little boat together, and in their mind, they all survive, or maybe none survive, you know? So their egos, you know, their names and what they, you know, is really irrelevant.

So I think the author, Stephen Crane, wants us to just see them as men, as human beings, working at this force of nature, trying to survive. And yes, the one that we actually learn, Billy, happens to be the one that... pays the ultimate price.

And, you know, so people think, well, like, it doesn't seem fair. He seemed to do most of the rowing. He tried the hardest.

And then so we can come up with all these little themes, like, see, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you know. And I think, you know, maybe there's some truth to that. But I think it still comes back to, like, nature is indifferent. It's not like if you really work hard, and if you do everything right, and you try your hardest. then you'll be the one who survives, you know?

It's like she's indifferent. If Mother Nature's indifferent, it means she's indifferent to all of that. She's indifferent to whether that boat gets to shore. She's indifferent to whether they survive.

She's just Mother Nature, you know? And so we are the ones who attach all of these other ideas to it. So the fact that Billy tries so hard and maybe commits to working...

you know, the most when they're on the ship, doesn't necessarily pay off. So I think there is an unsympathetic response from nature. Like, it's like, oh, this man, he really gave it his all, so we're going to make sure we help him to shore.

It's like Mother Nature isn't punishing, and she's also... not doling out sympathy. She's indifferent, which is kind of the overall point.

I should have mentioned, too, with Stephen Crane, because he really, I mean, his work is pretty profound for, he was 28 when he died. So he died of tuberculosis. And so all of this work, if you look at his body of work, is all accomplished, like, in his 20s. So that alone is just I always think like, wow, you know, we have others, you know, John Keats, Percy Shelley, other authors that, you know, met similar fates.

And so it's remarkable, like what a body of work for for his age. Thinking about the discussion questions, just to kind of, you know, add some of the. These places like where there is that animal imagery, you know, like describing the raft going over the waves, you know, like a bucking bronco. Like he, Stephen Crane uses really strong imagery, these visuals.

Like you may have some of you mentioned about the colors and he creates this weirdly like picturesque. for the person reading this visual of what this ocean looked like. I would challenge you to find more words to describe the color gray than he uses. It's flannel, it's slate, it's a shadow, it's gray sometimes.

All these, this use of color and and contrast to like the white foaming tops of the waves. This whole time that they're in this raft, you get a visual. When they have the encounter with the shark, right? You've just got the correspondent up, you know, they're all sleeping.

He's there rowing by himself. And all of a sudden the whir of a fin kind of circling. And you know how when you touch the top of the water, like if you go... a boat, you know, the motor stirs up the top where that motion is gets like white. And he talks about that, like everything that he gives us, all of these colors, the darkness, the different tones of different shades.

bring a really great visual for the reader, you know. And so all of this is part of this time of what we call realism, too. So we should mention that Romanticism, which is the literary movement that realism kind of pushes back on.

So, you know, in. you know, a few weeks from now, we'll be talking about some poetry. And, you know, romanticism expresses more of a connection with nature.

It's a different, it's entirely different than realism, because romanticism sees a relationship, a connection to perhaps humans in nature, you know, like in the poems, you know. If the sun's out and you feel the warmth on your shoulder, you feel that connection. In dancing with the daffodil, this idea of like bringing joy, like seeing these beautiful flowers, seeing like they're dancing. Later on, that human who saw that closes their eyes and can just kind of like visualize it and still feel joy. All these different ways in romanticism, it's like things are, there's a beauty in it, and some of them will use words like a truth, and realism is really saying like, life isn't all, you know, roses, like the real world is dark, you know, it's harsh, it's like one of Stephen Crane's...

novels. You know, it's about a street woman like who's prostituting herself and like this hard, like the hard reality of life. And so he's part of this realism.

And, you know, people criticize, when they did criticize Stephen Crane, it was mostly to say things like, you know, not everything in the world is filth. and like drunkenness you know like his novel maggie and you know sometimes depicting things as they really are can be a bit harsh right the world can be this way like this man can really try his hardest and mother nature doesn't care and he dies anyway right when he's right when he's on the shore, like when the wave comes in and out, his body is not even submerged, like he was right there to safety, you know. So ideas like this separate the two literary movements, so we'll see a difference as we go into poetry. And also poetry had its elements, so there were poets who also incorporated some of these ideas into poetry, but it starts, you know, as a romantic movement. And so Stephen Crane is part of that.

Like, when you, if you ever get a chance to read The Red Badge of Courage, you know, it doesn't sugarcoat things, you know, in the battle, you know, Henry Fleming, he's the main character, you know, he goes up to this first man that he sees that's dead like he had never seen a dead man before you know when he looks at the man and the way he's laying and the way his eyes look and he sees like a bug i think it's like an ant or i forget but you know crawls over him while he's looking at him and like like people are really dying on this battlefield and um this is what a dead man looks like and that kind of reaction you know so he for a young man really gets this well and um all right so let's people say he's a fan of like darwin you know survival of the fittest you know kind of goes along with some of these ideas um but as you read the story We'll look at just a couple of places. I know we don't have tons of time, but I hope that you noted some of these. So just the opening.

So actually, and you may have read this. if you looked anything up about the piece, but he was actually a survivor of the Commodore, which was this ship off the coast of Florida that sunk. And I forget how many hours it was.

I had it written down somewhere. It was like, you know, less than a day, but he was trapped on this raft. So he says at the beginning when he starts it that... A tale intended to be after the fact, being the experience of four men from the sunk steamer Commodore.

So he sort of uses his real life, but that isn't actually what happened to him. They didn't lose one of the crew and all of that, but it was at least what got him maybe thinking about this fictional tale. So he starts it off these couple of sentences. None of them knew the color of the sky.

Their eyes glanced level and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tips which were of foaming white, and all the men knew the colors of the sea. So they're kind of fixed on the water right nobody knows the color of the sky they're they're in they're in this moment they're in this small raft looking at the ocean like what they're dealing with four of them he describes that this it's like the size of a bathtub i mean maybe slightly bigger right but not much bigger and you have four men when they were abruptly kind of you know had to to get off of their ship and abruptly get into the raft and hurry. They didn't have time to like bring things so they're men with not much on them. You know they don't have supplies.

This wasn't like a planned little trip out on a raft and they have picnic and you know food and it was an emergency. They got into this raft with just basically what they had on them. And he talks about this movement. And some of you have maybe been on boats, small boats.

And if you hit just the right wave, right, the way that the nose comes up and comes back down, right, you have to hit waves at a certain angle. Or if it comes like the length of your raft, for example, you'll. tip over.

So typically it's nose into the wave. And so he's describing it's almost like this idea of an animal. A seat in his boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking bronco. And by the same token, a bronco is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared and plunged like an animal.

As each wave came, and she rose for it. She seemed like a horse making out a fence outrageously high. So as a horse would jump over, the front paws would, those front hoofs would come up and it would lean way back, right?

So this visual, and it's funny, like a couple of times he says something that He's got a really good sense of humor and he does this in all of his works. But like in this sentence where he's talking about a couple of paragraphs after that one, he says in a 10 foot dinghy, one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves. That is not probable to the average experience, which is never at sea in a dinghy.

So most people are not out in the middle of sea in a dinghy. So like it wouldn't be most people's experience. Experience who understands so the resources of nature so she doesn't run out of energy She doesn't get tired She just keeps like, you know sending the waves their way like her resources are enormous Never-ending and most men wouldn't think about that because they're not out in the middle of it in the dinghy You know And so as you go through the story, so much use of color, so much, you know, there's a lot of dialogue where you just hear them talking to one another, but no one, there's no signal phrases as we call it in writing. It's not like said the correspondent, replied the captain, right? It just, it kind of like.

one after the other after the other. It's written like dialogue so you know it's not the same person talking the whole time, right? It's indented each line, you can see it's dialogue, but Stephen Crane isn't saying who said which of these lines.

Again, why not? Because they're all men in here for their survival. Does it matter? You know, it's like they're humankind. They're mankind.

It doesn't matter. And so those things kind of drop away. We don't need to say who's saying whatever.

They're all kind of fighting here for their lives. He describes, you know, the seagulls with the black beady eyes that kind of hover over them, like all these things he notices and describes. Overcast and the gray shadows in the sky.

They've got no food. They've had no sleep. Another time he says that it's impossible in this moment. We hear most of this from the correspondence perspective, right? That it's impossible in this moment to think about ever going in a boat for pleasure.

Like when you're here fighting for your life, you can't imagine how anyone would think this activity would be pleasurable. that people thought it was amusing to go in a rowboat. At this moment it's not possible. So they're all kind of settling into this wild ride and then we get to this part in the story where they're going to think they see somewhere along the shore at a far distance this refuge where at one point in time maybe there were people like You know how lighthouses would often look out for ships and things like that?

Maybe that there's someone there that sees them. And so they start almost getting into this. They're not delusional, but they each can't be certain of what they see.

Oh, I think that might be a person. I think they're waving something at us. And, you know, these various, I think, hopeful, wishful thinking. There's a couple of lines that are repeated.

several times and it is this it's almost like the psychology of battle but here in this battle against mother nature right if we talk about the psychology of battle here he's thinking to himself if you were going to drown me why not just do it when the boat and the ship sank why let me get into this raft and then why let me get this far And then why let me just to like drag my nose to the sand before I'm dead? You know, it's a questioning of of Mother Nature and of just kind of universal like reason. He says he said, perchance they might be formulated thus. So this is what they're all kind of thinking.

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? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?

It is preposterous. If this old ninny woman fate cannot do better than this, She should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. And he goes on for a little bit. So what he's asking is why, you know, why now?

Why is she making this choice? And so fate is always perceived as a female as well. Fate is... in charge of men's lives you know and this is part of that determinism that crane is part of which is there are outside forces that determine things largely beyond human control and so what he's asking now is why let them get this far why not have just let them go down with the ship you know and so he's saying if she's this you know whimsical like she doesn't deserve to be You know, in charge of men's faith.

So eventually, you know, this goes, it's not the shortest of short stories, but we have a lot of that dialogue that, you know, when they're, especially when they think they see what really doesn't turn out to be anything. And there's this discussion of how the small raft is moving, too, because if you think about it, there's that place you have to get out beyond, right? So where those waves come in and break is a dangerous place. So it's okay if you're further out, but once you try to make for the shore, you better know and time it where you could get in or else you will get toppled over.

I don't know if any of you remember the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks. I mean, that was his thing with the raft there at the end while he's trying to get off the island is it was treacherous to get past that break. Once he gets past the break, but...

you know, who can get past there. So they're trying to make sure before they head all the way in because then they're, they won't have any luck after that. So they end up having to head back out because it isn't whatever they thought they saw, it doesn't appear to actually be a refuge.

And so after it, you know, once they know that it is not going to pan out and they have to head back out, we get that verse again about if I am going to be drowned. So this is sentiment of all the men throughout. It's like, why did we get so close?

We thought we saw people. We thought we saw them waving at us. And no, it's no one back out to the sea.

And then they keep going. If you imagine the coast of Florida, there are opportunities to come in, right? But this is 19th century.

And, you know, so it's not as populated as it is now. And so they're looking to get a sense that if they do make it in, there's going to be, you know, help. So there are times where the oiler, we can sense that he's not really getting a break. The captain is almost useless, right, because he's injured.

And they take turns, but. As everyone gets a little tired, they ask the oiler to take over. And so we get the scene with the shark and it's kind of a little creepy.

And, you know, just imagining that the visual, you're in this little raft at night in the middle of the ocean. And to just have something like that circling you to just feel so that determinism, right? So many.

external forces against you um you he doesn't panic he doesn't even wake anyone else up as a matter of fact the next morning when billy's like wow that was some kind of big shark or whatever he he says oh i wish i had known you were awake you know the poor guy panicked the whole time alone because he didn't want to disturb him so eventually you know we get This verse that comes from, so unless our life is on the line, it is hard to sometimes relate to things like people in those predicaments. You know, Tolstoy does this really well in the death of Ivan Ilyich. Like it's these syllogisms like John.

is immortal. All mortals die. John will die, right?

Or making those, it's always easy to look at those when they are at a distance. Then I am immortal, right? Like, so it's a different thing.

So he is talking about this one verse where you have the soldier in Algiers, and he just happens to come to his mind. He remembers reading that. And so there's a soldier of the legion that lay dying in Algiers.

There was a lack of woman's nursing. There was a dearth of woman's tears. But a comrade stood beside him, and he took the comrade's hand, and he said, I nevermore shall see my own, my native land.

So in this moment, this man is dying. He has no women around, no one crying for him. He'll never... Never...

returned home again, and he just has one of his fellow comrades to hold his hand. So he remembers, the correspondent remembers reading that, but not really connecting to it. So here in this predicament. He thinks back to that and he says he was sorry for the soldier of the legion who lay dying in Algiers.

So he said he never comprehended it when he originally read it because right his life wasn't threatened. But now here he is in this moment thinking I get it. No women around, nobody crying over me. I'll probably never see my home again and it's over. You know, so this, you know, feeling in the same thing in Tolstoy's work, and that's in the death of Ivan Ilyich when he really gets it that he is immortal.

He is a man and that it means that he also will die. So these kind of little heavy notes of sentiment. throughout.

Eventually they find a time to come in. They know that there's help on the shore, but they've got to make it through that tumultuous shoreline. So they exit the raft, the raft gets tossed. And now it's just a struggle for survival.

Like what strength do they have? They haven't slept, haven't eaten. Well, some of them sleep here and there throughout the struggle, but...

They've got to swim for it. That's it. And so they just sort of go for it.

And somebody comes off the shore to come out and help, like pull them in. The captain waves them off. No, go help him. The correspondent looks ahead.

Now he can see someone sort of face down. He's like, no, go help him. And so as they come in and then of course they look and it's Billy, the oiler, who had done the most work, probably exerted the most energy, probably had the littlest amount of sleep. And he makes it right to the edge of the shore. And he's face down and he dies.

So the end, at the very end, so the rest of them make it, the other three men. And they kind of look at night. They've gotten blankets and food and they're being cared for.

When they look at the night, the white waves coming in and out of the moonlight. They hear the sound that people just love, right? Being on the edge of the ocean. And he writes, and they felt that they could then be interpreters. Like they had been out there, you know, in it, in those sounds of the ocean.

They had contended with Mother Nature. And so looking out from a safe shore, they feel like they kind of understand something that maybe the average person doesn't. And so this book is, I mean, this short story is really one for the idea of realism, determinism, naturalism, all those things that we talked about. And he does it so well. And that use of color, the tone of the story is set, right, with gray flannel, slate, shadow, you know, all of those gloomy cues that build the...

visual for the reader. And so hopefully this helps you to digest that piece and next week we're moving on to a couple other short stories. So I'll see you in the next video.

Transcript for:Exploring Stephen Crane's 'The Open Boat'

Transcript for:
Exploring Stephen Crane's 'The Open Boat'