The Open Boat Personification

The universe that humans currently exist in is so enormous that our minds cannot grasp how immense it is. There are terms that were invented to help us understand it more efficiently, however, even with our modern technology, we only get about half way to comprehending our universe. For example, the nearest star is Alpha Centauri, it is approximately twenty-five trillion miles away from Earth. Light travels over one-hundred and eighty thousand miles per second, even then, it would take light over four years to arrive there if it left from our planet. Does this not make you feel small and insignificant? This is precisely how the narrator felt in Stephen Crane’s, “The Open Boat”, as he and his men were floating among the vast sea, in a thrilling yet dangerous experience. One of the most fervent metaphysical questions about life and the universe is the notion explored in this
For example, this story states “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” (Crane 33). This line means that nature is indifferent towards the man, and that it would not affect the universe by getting rid of him. Hilfer supports this by stating, “The discomfiting thing about nature is that though we can address it, our messages can only come back stamped with ‘return to sender’” (251). Although the narrator respectively gives nature an identity, she does not care to listen to his pleas for mercy. For instance, “This tower was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to a correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual – nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent” (40). The windmill represented tranquility regardless of how uninteresting it