Stephen Crane

’s “The Open Book”: Determinism, Objectivity, And Pessimism Essay, Research Paper

Stephen Crane’s “The Open Book”: Determinism, Objectivity, and Pessimism

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.