The Open Boat Symbolism

Stephan Crane's "The Open Boat," is based upon Crane’s own experience of being in a dinghy after the ship he was on sank. This story was largely about hope, working together, and not giving up despite the hardships you face. One of the expressed ideas in this story is the feeling of community and working together for a common good, survival! He communicates the importance of each individual's role within the group. Crane uses a frightening situation indicating that the lives of these individual men are in the hands of each other. Furthermore, demonstrating that without group togetherness no one would make it. Crane does a magnificent job illustrating how the crew must work together for achieving survival.
The reader is able to see that each
individual character is feeling the need of community, as well as the need to be part of something. When faced with these conditions, the men pull together because they realize that pulling together and working together as a whole is their best defense against the harshness of their circumstances. By creating a community they have, in a sense, formed an unspoken commitment to one another to survive.
Each crewmember represents part of a community or society.
The captain represents the leaders; the cook the followers; Billie the oiler, (the only character named) represents the hard working members in society. The correspondent represents the observers, with the correspondent being the voice of the story, although he himself wonders why he is caught on the ocean. (pg342) The correspondent talks about the “subtle brotherhood of men” that develops among the crew.
“It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common…there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it”.
(pg345)
The captain is the leader; he feels a great responsibility towards these men who have entrusted their safety to him. At the beginning of the story he loses his ship and seems to suffer more than the other survivors. Because of his dedication in bringing the men to safety, he is able to hold on to some degree of dignity. Sadly he doesn’t feel as though he has measured up to his own standards, yet he continues to fight for the others in the boat.
Billie, the oiler represents the hardworking members of the community.
The oiler functions as the glue of the crew, holding everyone together through his fearlessness. Billie the oiler maintains an image of strength, warmth, and integrity. He helps to reinforce the sense of community in the crew by instilling confidence in the others.
The cook, the only one wearing a life jacket maintains a positive outlook on their hopeful rescue. While he is not in the best physical shape to help the others with the rowing, he does make himself useful by bailing the water that’s flooding over the sides of the boat.
As the winds and waves push them toward the lighthouse, the crew soon realizes the danger that is before them. The correspondent describes that situation as a “thunderous and mighty churning of the surf which could swamp and drown them” (pg.347). The men soon realize that help is not coming, this daunting fact alone creates an immediate sense of kinship in these men that had very little in common to begin with. United in their common hope for survival, finds their individualism dissolve into feelings of
oneness.
These men become as brothers that face a future that is dreadfully uncertain. They cooperate with one another and do their “jobs” without complaining. Ultimately, your chances for survival or demise rest with yourself. What seems to be longed for is the companionship and togetherness of others. When facing nature who do we rely on, but the brotherhood of mankind. Ironically, Billie dies, the character that readers become attached to, the one with the strength. Obviously, in this story, the fittest don’t always survive.