In Oliver Billingslea’s critical essay, “Why Does the Oiler ‘Drown’? Perception and Cosmic Chill in the ‘The Open Boat,’ he explores the question of why the oiler died and whether perception or experience can alter the ideas present in the “Open Boat.” In part one, Billingslea begins his critical analysis by stating that Crane is concerned with the “limitation of knowledge”. The “limitation of knowledge” that Billingslea specifically mentioned was the narration of the short story. The “omniscient point of view” of the narrator definitely “limits” the reader because the narrator will not necessarily tell everything that is said or done. For that reason, one could agree with Billingslea when he describes the narrator as “dispassionate” and that the narrator will only provide “no more than a glimpse” of what is happening within “The Open Boat.” This idea of “omniscient point of view” is also congruent with the idea of perception in this critical analysis. Billingslea describes that perception affects the “emotions of an observer to the degree that he alters what he sees.” Perception can be applied to the narrator because he tells the story and everything that is said within “The Open Boat” follows what the narrator perceives in his/her own life. Billingslea also mentioned the seagulls because the seagulls perceive the waves differently from the men. To the seagulls, the waves are harmless, but to the men, the waves are “wrongful” and “barbarous.” The waves by themselves are not “wrongful” and “barbarous”, but they are because they “seem so in the eyes of the men.”