Stephen Crane is considered one of the foremost American authors of the Realistic and
Naturalistic movements. Naturalistic writers were influenced by the evolution theory of
Charles Darwin They believed that one's heredity and social environment decide one's
character. Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, naturalism
also attempts to determine scientifically the underlying forces that affect a person’s
actions.
The Naturalists analyzed the omnipotent, natural forces that affected the person’s
“struggle for life.” These concerns are evident in “The Open Boat.” The fate of the four
men seems to rest mostly in the hands of forces beyond their control. A prime example of
this comes when the correspondent gets caught in a current while trying to swim to the
shore. He is trapped by an invisible force, an underwater current, which he can
neither understand nor escape. For unknown reasons, the current suddenly frees him and
he is washed ashore by a giant wave. Crane attributes the correspondent’s survival to the
uncontrollable forces of nature, not to his own efforts.
Crane also seems to depart from more naturalistic views because he does not assume
the existence of any distinct laws of nature. Nature, in the story, is unclear to man and
probably without ultimate meaning or purpose. In an ironic reversal of the
Darwinian rule of the “survival of the fittest,” the only member of the crew to perish in
the ordeal is the oiler, who had seemed the most physically fit to survive. While it is
easy to interpret the oiler’s death as a sacrifice , suggesting that he exhausted
himself rowing the boat for the others , it seems more in keeping with the theme of the
story that the oiler was simply unlucky. For Crane, nature is chaotic and takes no account
of human struggles. In another passage from the story, the correspondent imagines that a...