1 Introduction
My seminar paper deals with the analysis of the short-story The Open Boat by Stephen Crane. The Open Boat is a fascinating story of four shipwrecked men and their struggle for rescue and survival. Crane tells this story in a very realistic way and reflects more or less on his own experiences as a seaman when he was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida. Critics argue that the story definitely has autobiographical traits as well as Naturalist, Darwinist and Existentialist influences and these theories will be discussed and looked into very closely in this paper.
To make the story sound realistic, vivid and interesting, Crane uses an incredible number of symbols, metaphors and similes and I will give examples to support my findings and to make the reader aware of Crane’s brilliant use of these stylistic features. I have also included a short summary of the plot of the short-story to give the reader an introduction and an overall knowledge of the major events in the story.
Stephen Crane’s artistic ability to attract the reader’s attention to the plot and to sympathize with the main characters is, in my opinion, very unique and will also be discussed in the beginning of this paper.
2 Biography
Stephen Crane was a writer of fiction and poetry, whose realistic way of writing had great influence on American literature. Not just his texts were full of dramatic features; also his life was just as that.
Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey on November 1st, 1871. His father, Dr. Jonathan Townley Crane, was a Methodist minister and had fourteen children with his wife. Stephen Crane was the oldest and due to his father’s profession was the family forced to move around the state of New Jersey such as Paterson, NJ and Port Jervis, NJ which served as the setting for some of his stories. After his father’s death in 1880, the family moved to Ashbury Park, NJ and settled there. Even as a child, Crane was fascinated with military and attended a...