The Sea Around Them: A Blue Reading of Ecological Coexistence in Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat”

Stephen Crane’s short story “The Open Boat” is an important contribution to the world of maritime fiction and bears many of this literature’s hallmarks. Crane’s story describes four men, survivors from a shipwreck, as they struggle in a small dinghy against the forces of the waves. With no help in sight, they have nothing to rely on but their own will, discipline, and skills. The ocean is placed center stage in this short story and the men’s meeting with the implacable waves affects the way they perceive themselves and their place in the universe. Crane’s story is often read as depicting an existential battle between men and nature, an encounter with hostile elements that causes a feeling of alienation, loneliness, and of being cast out from the world. Relying on ecocriticism and new materialist thought, this article discusses not so much alienation and separation as the different forms of entanglement presented in the story and the four men’s experience of this entanglement. The aim is to show that the story is one of ecological embeddedness rather than separateness.