The Open Boat Symbolism

The Open Boat by Stephen Crane is told from a third-person perspective. The only mind through out the book the narrator has insight to is the correspondent. The narrator suggests all four men are thinking and feeling the same things.
Throughout the book the oiler is the only character given a name. The oiler (Billy) has not eaten or slept in days like the others, right before the ship sank he worked double-watch in the engine-room, still he continues rowing. Any time the correspondent tries to talk to Billy he never responds with annoyance. When the men are tossed from the boat Billy darts ahead strong towards shore. The beginning of the book describes the captain as injured through out the book he can only give instructions to the other men. Common sense would say is anyone died in the end it would have been the injured captain not the strong named character that became the favorite of the story. …show more content…
When the correspondent sees the shark he is led to believe his situation could not get any worse, the shark finds no use for them. The men feel an alienation from the ocean, they even go as far to think the universe is being hostile, but the ocean and the shark are only performing normal activity of nature.
“No one knew the color of the sky” as the opening line throws readers into the severity of the men’s desperation of surviving their given situation, none of them have time to look up. The men have a limited perspective of what is going on in reality, they live alone in their own. The message is no one on the boat knows anything except the tasks they are up against. The narrator comments how the whole scene would have been picturesque if viewed from a distance. The men’s experience in the boat depends on the perspective from which they are