The Open Boat

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The Open Boat: My Literary Analysis Stephen Crane's short story ,"The Open Boat", contains a very powerful and effective use of the setting as its cardinal literary element. The narrative displays incredible utilization of the aforementioned element along with a recurrent representation of repetition that one could easily see as rather unexampled. An interesting component of this tale is the manner in which the author portrays thoughts, emotions and subconscious workings of the characters, sometimes as spoken quotes, often not specifying which character in particular or simply implying the expression is coming from the group as a whole. Considering nearly the entire story consists only of four crewmen on a small boat in the ocean, the author…show more content…
Instead of the most commonly seen application of this tool, giving background information and occasionally time period and geographical information to start you off before proceeding and letting the story develop from there, one could see this story as having one big evolving setting. In other words, the setting essentially is the story; the story and setting are combined as one element and as the setting evolves the story also progresses. When thinking about it this way, the author did a fantastic job executing this writing style that many people have most likely never seen or come to understand before. Crane first starts out with the statement "None of them knew the color of the sky" (1), which can be seen as a sort of emotional or psychological setting that entails uncertainty and possibly despair. He then follows up with a more physical setting by writing "Their eyes glanced level, and remained upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were gray, except for the tops, which were white, and all the men knew the color of the sea" (Crane 1), that provides a decent visual to help better understand the current scene while using the last phrase to contrast the very first in order to give more information on the psychological setting. One might look at it…show more content…
An example of this can be observed in this paragraph: "The oiler and the correspondent rowed the tiny boat. Ant they 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." (Crane 2). This instance of repetition was used to deliver the idea that these men were doing the tedious and exhausting work of rowing a boat for an undesirable amount of time. One can also appreciate that repetition is somewhat relative to one of the main hazards faced in the story. "A particular danger of the sea is the fact that after successfully getting through one wave, you discover that there is another behind it. The next wave is just as nervously anxious and purposeful to overturn boats." (Crane 2). A slightly different purpose for repetition is used by Crane when he says, "No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it....But no one said it was so. No one mentioned it." (3 , 4) to show the solemn and serious aura of such a "secure bond" (Crain 3) that had been forged on the
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