The Open Boat :: essays research papers

The Open Boat is a particularly interesting story because of the great head that author extends and because of the lone(a) reflections of the characters in consideration of their demise.The story possesses amazingly vivid description. This attention to detail affords the reader the greatest degree of reading pleasure. Crane paints such(prenominal) vivid images in readers mind with his eloquence. "The morning appeared finally, in its splendor, with a sky of small blue, and the sunlight flamed on the tips of waves"(387). Artistic sentences of such caliber are not often found. The reader is left with a terrific vision of the precarious sea maintaining its beauty amongst the violence of the wind. "Their back- bones had become thoroughly utilize to balancing in the boat and they now rode this wild colt of a dory like circus men"(378). Here, again, Crane uses splendid detail to arrest the essence of the chaotic situation.Another attribute to the story is the insight which the terce person narrator offers to the reader regarding the sailors state of mind. Particularly interesting, is the reference to the verse form "Bingen on the Rhine". Until the correspondent must contemplate his own death on the cold and desolate seas, he does not realize the tragedy of a soldier of the legion dying in Algiers. Also, not only did he not realize the significance, he says that, "it was less to him than the breaking of a pencils even out"(385). Again, towards the end of the story, the narrator describes the bitterness the correspondent feels towards nature when he realizes that afterwards all his efforts he may not live to appreciate his being. Observations such as these are not encountered frequently until confronted with death and the conveyance of these thoughts is insightful and meaningful to the reader.The only depreciative factor in the story is the length.