The Open Boat

Naturalism The application of principles of scientific determinism to

literature in the late 19th and early 20th century From Darwin: biological determinism From Marx: gain a view of history as a battlefield of

economic and social forces From Zola: view human existence according to the law of

scientific causality Zola: (Zola)French novelist and critic, the founder of

naturalist movement in literature. Zola redefined Naturalism as "Nature seen through a temperament." "I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation." (from My Hates, 1866)

Naturalism The rise of the industrial Revolution and the urban

movement many writers see individual free will as an illusion in

the face of larger forces The Amorality of the universe/morals matter less than

circumstances Movement outgrowth from realism Similarities: subject, plot development, language Difference: presentation of character: naturalist

characters are conceived as complex combinations of inherited attributes and habits conditioned by social and economic forces. These forces are operating beyond their control.

NaturalismFrank Norris (1870-1902)/Theodore Dreiser (187

1-1945)/ Stephen Crane(1899-1932)/Jack London (1976-1916)

Frank Norris:a pioneer of American literary naturalism: poverty, physical cruelty and animosity ignored by genteel writers (McTeague 1899)

Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie (1900): criticize American materialism

Naturalism came largely from scientific DETERMINISM. Darwinism was especially important, as the naturalists perceived a person’s fate as the product of blind external or biological forces, chiefly heredity and environment, but in the typical naturalistic novel chance played a large part as well, suggesting a formula something like H+E+C=F (Heredity plus Environment plus Chance equals Fate).

The naturalists started with the realists’ techniques, but they extended and applied them differently. Their pose as scientists allowed a different selection. Rather than a mirror reflecting all life, they chose a lens focused on what interested them.

Imitating the experimental scientists rather than the observer, they manipulated their CHARACTERS and PLOT, displaying a fondness for SYMBOL to clarify their social message. For all their claims of objectivity, the result was often a curious subjectivity of vision somewhat akin to earlier ROMANTICISM.

A distinct aesthetic response to the late nineteenth century, American naturalism continued the realist attempt to represent new and unfamiliar types of characters, but naturalists concentrated on lower-class, marginalized people and merged the realist attention to detail with a strong belief in social determinism rather than free will.

Stephen Crane’s Maggie (1893) was the first novel- designed, he wrote, “to show that environment is a tremendous thing in the world and frequently shapes lives regardless.”

Stephen Crane The eldest of fourteen children, Stephen Crane moved

numerous times with his family before settling in Asbury Park, New Jersey.

He entered Syracuse University but preferred baseball to academics and left after one semester. With a desire to pursue journalism, Crane moved to New York City, where he worked on his first book, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York), which he published at his own expense in 1893. After his novel about the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage (1894), was serialized in national newspapers, Crane took a job as a roving reporter for a newspaper syndicate.

In 1897 a ship he was on sank off the coast of Florida, and Crane used this experience in his story The Open Boat, which addresses the reactions of people under pressure and nature's indifference to humanity's plight.

That same year, deeply in debt, he moved to England, where he became seriously ill with tuberculosis. He increased his writing schedule in an attempt to make money, drafting thirteen stories and publishing his second volume of poetry, among other works, but his health failed him. Crane died at the age of twenty-eight, having produced enough articles, stories, novels, and poems to fill a twelve-volume set.

Universe=meaningless, indifferent toward humanity

His works insist that we live in a universe of vast and indifferent natural forces, not in a world of divine providence or a certain moral order.

Maggie: A girl of the Streets (1893)The Open Boat: fatalistic storyOmniscient author ChanceSea: indifferent (not hostile)No God or evil godSea/luck (good or bad)

A poem by Crane

A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However, “replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

The Open BoatPublished in 1897, ‘‘The Open Boat’’ is based

on an actual incident from Stephen Crane’s life in January of that year. While traveling to Cuba to work as a newspaper correspondent during the Cuban insurrection against Spain, Crane was stranded at sea for thirty hours after his ship, the Commodore, sank off the coast of Florida. Crane and three other men were forced to navigate their way to shore in a small boat. One of the men, an oiler named Billy Higgins, drowned while trying to swim to shore. Crane wrote the story ‘‘The Open Boat’’ soon afterward.

The story tells of the travails of four men shipwrecked at sea who must make their way to shore in a dinghy. Crane’s grippingly realistic depiction of their life-threatening ordeal captures the sensations and emotions of struggle for survival against the forces of nature.

Because of the work’s philosophical speculations, it is often classified as a work of Naturalism, a literary offshoot of the Realist movement. ‘‘The Open Boat’’ has proved an enduring classic that speaks to the timeless experience of suffering a close call with death.

Historical ContextSocial DarwinismEvery field of thought in the late nineteenth-

century was impacted by the theories of Charles Darwin. Although Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, its influence was felt most strongly in the United States in the 1880s and 1890s. A variety of thinkers in the social sciences began to apply Darwin’s evolutionary theories to explain the development of human societies.

Known as the ‘‘Social Darwinists,’’ these thinkers posited the existence of a process of evolution based on hereditary traits that predetermined the behavior of human beings. The most famous of these thinkers, an English social scientist named Herbert Spencer, popularized the phrase ‘‘survival of the fittest’’ to describe the omnipotent law of ‘‘natural selection’’ which determines the natural evolution of society.

Individual vs. NatureDuring the late nineteenth century, Americans

had come to expect that they could control and conquer their environment. With the technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution, humankind appeared to have demonstrated its ability to both understand and to dominate the forces of nature.

In ‘‘The Open Boat,’’ Crane questions these self-confident assumptions by describing the precarious situation of four shipwrecked men as they are tossed about on the sea.

The men seem to recognize that they are helpless in the face of nature. Their lives could be lost at any moment by the most common of natural phenomena: a wave, a current, the wind, a shark, or even simple starvation and exposure. The men are at the mercy of mere chance. This realization profoundly affects the correspondent, who is angered that he might be drowned despite all of his efforts to save himself.

Point of ViewPerhaps the literary technique most

remarked upon by critics of ‘‘The Open Boat’’ is Crane’s unusual use of a shifting point of view. The story is told alternatively from the perspective of each of the crew members, as well as from the vantage point of an objective observer. Often, it is not clear whose viewpoint is predominant at a given time.

There are passages of dialogue, too, in which the different speakers are never identified. In these ways, the reader is given the sense that all of the crew members share similar feelings about their predicament.

There is also the suggestion that their reactions are archetypal and universal; that is, that anyone would respond the same way to what they are going through. The correspondent is the only character whose inner thoughts are clearly identified — perhaps because he, being a writer, has the ability to articulate their experience best.