The Open Boat

Crane’s story introduces the theme of Humans Versus Nature in the first paragraph when his narrator says the eyes of his men are “fastened upon the waves that swept toward them” (213). The men in the boat have an adversary, and it’s the sea. They have to figure out how to rebuff nature’s attacks, and their battle with nature slides into another theme: Survival Versus Fate and Powerlessness. The men have to endure the waves to survive. Yet, at times, it seems like whether they live or die isn’t up to them but a matter of fate. At one point, the men concede their lack of agency when they bemoan the meanness of fate, thinking, “If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men’s fortunes” (222-23). Here, fate controls whether the men live, and they clearly don’t trust fate to make (what they regard as) the right decision.

The scornful tone with which the men describe fate fits in with the overall tone of the story. The men are in a hostile situation, and the narrator reinforces their adversarial