The Open Boat by Steven Crane - Book Report/Review Example

The most vivid example of man's relationship to a higher power is a description of the moral health of people and their values. Crane points out that: "the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any open suggestion of hopelessness" (Crane, n.d.). A correspondent is a person who fights with his own imperfection trying to apply ethical standards in this very situation. We know that he: "had been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his life" (1993).

From the very beginning, Crane gives a hint to readers: using settings of nature, the author prepares the readers for something unacceptable. It is illogical, but Crane underlines that human life depends upon natural phenomena much more than we think. The setting of unbroken snow can be interpreted as the theme of universal constancy and non-intervention of a human into laws of natureThorough personal tragedies and grievances faced by the main characters, Crane shows that nature lacks concern for their problems.

He describes nature: "these waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small-boat navigation" (Crane n.d.). The plot reflects the desire of every human being to survive and find a better place to live, but, in spite of psychological and emotional changes, the characters cannot change escape their fate. "A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats" (Carne n.d.).

In spite of all the negative life lessons the correspondent understands what it is to be an individual, but God's punishment seems inevitable. This choice of events creates a sense of despair and disillusion. People cannot predict and foresee their future: they are helpless to change something in their lives. Crane depicts that everyone and everything is submitted to destiny. The irony is that people try to escape their fate but fail. Insults, desire to take revenge, cruelty, and desperation ruin the world of the heroes who cannot submit to destiny.

As the most important, Crane depicts that neither political priorities nor social position can help to avoid fate. In sum, The Open Boat vividly portrays that a man is a helpless victim of fate. The life experience and struggle with nature depict that some types and manifestations of human feeling are gross self-indulgence and are not at all the thing they appeared to be. The theme of struggle shows the hopelessness and futility of people's dreams when life is to be taken as the true image of the human condition: frightened, lonely, Godless, thrown unwillingly into a world made miserable by human irrationality.