"The Open Boat" has got to be my second favorite work we've read so far. Crane weaves such a total visual and emotional tapestry here--you're on that boat with those men, and you feel their hunger and the pain in their backs as they take turns rowing the open boat, and it reads more real than anything. The story takes place in a small boat cast out in the middle of the ocean, and opens "after the fact, being the experience of four men from the sunk steamer commodore."
It's the story of four men, a captain, a chef, a correspondent, and an oilier name Billie Higgins (the only character with an actual name) who have just survived a shipwreck and are now stranded out in the middle of the ocean in a small boat. The correspondent and the oilier take turns rowing to keep the boat moving and stable while the chef constantly throws water from the boat to keep it afloat. The captain is hurt, but yet totally provides support in his own way, with leadership and respect for his mean and their current situation. Eventually, they catch sight of the coast, and, after some time, decide to abandon their boat and make a mad dash for the shore. All of the make it except for the oilier, whose found dead face down on the shore-side.
"The Open Boat" was heavily (almost entirely) based off of Crane own real experience surviving a ship wreck which resulted in Crane and three other men, including the captain of the SS Commodore, getting stranded on a life boat, which eventually got overturned in the surf, forcing them to swim to shore--all of them made it to the shore except for one, an oilier named Billie Higgins. Crane, in a way, is actually the correspondent in "The Open Boat."
It's an amazing, incomparable work because of it's unrivaled honesty. The men cast astray aren't characters--they don't represent men, they are men. The writing captures the moments shared on the lonely boat cast off into the blue, when life it at it's most uncertain. The men see how indifferent nature sees their lives, and contemplate fate--yet they are there for each other, and, as bleak and uncertain as it gets, none of them fold, none of them give up or run away, or even complain--they fight on, for their lives that nature and the world has given up on. They show true human strength when it's most called for, and it's mind blowing and heart breaking to read.
It's the story of four men, a captain, a chef, a correspondent, and an oilier name Billie Higgins (the only character with an actual name) who have just survived a shipwreck and are now stranded out in the middle of the ocean in a small boat. The correspondent and the oilier take turns rowing to keep the boat moving and stable while the chef constantly throws water from the boat to keep it afloat. The captain is hurt, but yet totally provides support in his own way, with leadership and respect for his mean and their current situation. Eventually, they catch sight of the coast, and, after some time, decide to abandon their boat and make a mad dash for the shore. All of the make it except for the oilier, whose found dead face down on the shore-side.
"The Open Boat" was heavily (almost entirely) based off of Crane own real experience surviving a ship wreck which resulted in Crane and three other men, including the captain of the SS Commodore, getting stranded on a life boat, which eventually got overturned in the surf, forcing them to swim to shore--all of them made it to the shore except for one, an oilier named Billie Higgins. Crane, in a way, is actually the correspondent in "The Open Boat."
It's an amazing, incomparable work because of it's unrivaled honesty. The men cast astray aren't characters--they don't represent men, they are men. The writing captures the moments shared on the lonely boat cast off into the blue, when life it at it's most uncertain. The men see how indifferent nature sees their lives, and contemplate fate--yet they are there for each other, and, as bleak and uncertain as it gets, none of them fold, none of them give up or run away, or even complain--they fight on, for their lives that nature and the world has given up on. They show true human strength when it's most called for, and it's mind blowing and heart breaking to read.
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