Sample Commentary An Open Boat

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This passage is an extract from the novel “The Open Boat, A Tale of the Sea” written by Stephen crane during the 1890’s. The author in this passage acts as a 3rd person, omniscient point of view. This passage gives a gist that a group of men are stuck in the sea and desperately want to reach the shore. The setting in the passage portrayed by the author is that a dinghy floats upon a rowdy ocean near the coast in the late 1800’s. It seems that everything on the sea is grey weighing heavily on the feeling of the men. There is a tired and frustrated feeling among the men as they want to leave the boat and return to land. There is no real central character in this story. All the men on the boat are spoken about more or less equally and no prominent character jumps out at the reader as being the protagonist. Crane has used some cosmic irony in her passage; she has used a symbol of isolation in her extract. Isolation is being held in captivity or lack of contact with the world or universe. The little boat in a vast sea versus the people on the shore is symbolic of isolation. The small bowl seems so large and important to the people on it, while the people on the shore just see this small boat as one of many objects in that vast sea. This is prime example of man versus society. The imagery used in "The Open Boat" brings a vivid image to the reader's mind. As four men are in a boat being tossed by the sea with no hope of life, the boat is approaching. With the men's view of the land from the crest of each wave, the description of the land gives the reader an actual picture in his or her mind of not only the approach of land but also the approach of a hope to continue life. When she says that “Four scowling men sat in the dinghy and surpassed records in the invention of epithets”, she means that they have surpassed the invention of curses. The basic theme used in

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