Eng 48B
2/13/09
Stephen Crane Journal #2
“While en route to Cuba, Crane's ship sank off the coast of Florida, leaving him marooned for several days in a small dinghy. His ordeal was later described in his well-known short story, "The Open Boat".” www.wikipedia.org
Perhaps in a story about the indifference of nature to man’s existence, I like to look at this story, and Crane’s other works such as “Maggie”, as man’s struggle, not against nature and the indifference of the universe, but rather man’s struggle with society and the indifference of his fellow man (his of course in this case being a blanket statement for both men and women). While using the catalyst of man surviving against nature, Crane clearly delineates what it is like for man to face man’s nature, and having to deal with the harsh realities of ostracism and the need to fit into society. As a young man, it is quite obvious that Stephen Crane felt very connected to his fellow man caught in the plight of what might pass off as modern “civilization”, if it can be really called that. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of western civilization, he replied, “I think it would be an excellent idea.” Considering the fact that Stephen Crane was bitterly attacked by many folks for acting as a witness defending a prostitute, it is hardly difficult to consider that Stephen Crane’s metaphor of the merciless nature of the sea and the weather and its lack of compassion for the survivors’ dilemma is parallel to society isolating man on an “open boat” of indifference. When the poor are at the last rung of society, instead of offering them decent shelter and a job, the average passerby would rather give the bum a few quarters and perhaps a sigh of sympathy IF THAT. Instead of the cities and governments of the world funding huge war machines to flatten out other countries and massacre and ethnically cleanse the third world, couldn’t those very same cities and governments provide the homeless with housing and a decent job to get started? Of course this would all break down to socialism, which I despise because I feel man should be free and independent and not have to support others by the compulsory taxation of his own gains. In the so called land of liberty, Stephen Crane finds much to be cynical of. Our history of immigration is simply wave after wave of immigrants from different countries, and each ethnic group feels the need to stereotype and demonize the new wave of immigrants that has come after them in a never ending cycle of social stigma and ethnic hatred. So in a sobering sense, Stephen Crane’s “Open Boat”, and especially Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, is merely a Naturalists way of pointing out the fact that it is not nature and the universe that is indifferent to man but rather that man is indifferent to his fellow man.
20 points. "Perhaps in a story about the indifference of nature to man’s existence, I like to look at this story, and Crane’s other works such as “Maggie”, as man’s struggle, not against nature and the indifference of the universe, but rather man’s struggle with society and the indifference of his fellow man." I heartily agree.
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