Stephen Crane’s the Open Boat, A tale of the Sea

In the extract taken from Stephen Crane’s the Open Boat, A tale of the Sea, portrays four men stranded at sea contemplating every second, as the shore is within reach but not reachable with the impossible distance of lifesaving station twenty miles either direction. The infuriating proximity heightens and sustains the tension of the story, as the men 's frustration and desperation boil up inside they continue to cling on to the hope for someone to discover their existence and bring them to safety as they float on the dinghy. Crane illustrates the corpse of the calm sea’s surface rippling away in contrast to the refuge of solid ground. This highlights the predicament the men have found themselves in, left abandon waiting to get picked apart. Hope lingers in the extract in deciding their fate. A taunting and aghast tone drifts throughout the extract personifying, the ocean, mocking their chances of survival especially as their chances with fate start to become clear. Although, their chances of fate are mocked Crane does not provoke the dangers surrounding them and takes the men stranded in the ocean seriously and neither does make light of it.

The sense of hope of survival derived in the opening lines of the extract when the captain states “there don’t seem to be any signs of life” on the shore. Cranes choice of the phrase “signs of life” is commonly referred to loss of life which suggests their course of fate is closer than