Comparing The Blue Hotel And The Open Boat By Stephen Crane

As one of the first American naturalist writers, Stephen Crane injected his own philosophy on life in his realist stories. Some of Crane’s short stories, including The Blue Hotel, and The Open Boat, all reflect his negative anthropology. Crane displays this in different ways in his short stories, for example, by not giving many of his characters names, switching narrative perspectives, and by frequently using self-importance as many of his character’s driving force. Crane thinks humans are ignorant and insignificant, but still fueled by their own conceit.
Crane uses the impressionist technique of switching frames of reference in his stories to emphasize the ignorance of his characters, and in turn, humankind. This impressionist technique