Journal #12: Stephen Crane/The Open Boat

"When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples."


In Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat," the narrator often ponders the thoughts that run through a man's mind as he faces death. The quote above could be interpreted in many ways, one being that of an atheist or someone who has duddenly become a non-believer or thinks himself slighted by a higher power, whether that be God or "nature."
Throughout the story, there is a palpable sense of hope... or is that just based on the reader's knowledge that Crane will survive, given that he actually lived to tell the story? I'm uncertain. I almost think that the sense of positivity could even have been partially a reaction based on reading Maggie first. Maybe by placing the two pieces side by side, "Open Boat" seems all sunshine and roses, even if it is not quite that. Either way, I have to say that I loved Crane's writing. In Maggie, I loved the dark, raw feel of his language and settings, and I was especially impressed by his use of dialogue in a manner that so effectively made me "hear" it. In "Open Boat" I once again loved his language, but it was different that that of Maggie. I loved the way Crane wrote this account of a true event from a third person point of view, even though he was actually in it... I think it was a compelling way for an author to step back and look at a thing which had happened to him and tell it objectively, while still inserting, at just the right times, his personal feelings, in order to portray what was going through his mind and may have been going through the minds of the other men. I wonder what was going through the mind of the "oiler" at the end.