While some writers do not reflect their real lives into characters, some authors like Stephen Crane often put their lives into their works. Stephen Crane describes his life in his journals, tales, and other works. In “The Open Boat,” both the correspondent and the oiler represent features of the author’s life.
First of all, the correspondent depicts Crane’s life. As a correspondent, Crane was on the way to Cuba, and the ship sank off the coast of Florida. It is exactly same setting in the story. Of course, this is not the only reason that the correspondent is Stephen Crane. Explicitly, the correspondent in the story and Crane are thinkers. Crane is an intellectual person, so he has lots of various works demonstrating his religious, social,
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The oiler is one who does his best to survive, but he dies before reaching the shore. When Stephen Crane wrote this story, he did not know when he would die. However, after three years, the young writer died at the age of twenty-eight. Also, the oiler includes philosophical mind of Crane. In his book The Pluralistic Philosophy of Stephen Crane, by Patrick K. Dooley explains, “Why should the hardest working, most experienced, most skilled seaman in the open boat perish?...What we must pay attention to is that three of four came ashore safely. Human actions, although efficacious, are limited; reality and true status quo have considerable resilience and potency” (Dooley 76-77). Even though the oiler does his best most among four men such as oaring when others take rest, he dies at the end of story. No matter how people put their effort into their lives, Crane shows they are nothing before the Nature. Through the event that the ship sank off, Crane could see how weak human beings are because he had nothing to do though he was an educated person and a thinker. Also, the oiler shows humans cannot defeat the nature even though they have voyage experience and realize what happens in them. Crane might put his identity into the correspondent, but the oiler also shows