Suddenly, there is no longer a chain of command among these men as they work with one another against the forces of nature in a battle for their lives. The correspondent and the oiler take turns rowing the boat and fighting against the huge waves to keep it aright. The cook bails out the cold Atlantic seawater from beneath the feet of the men rowing. The captain remains a calm commander of the tired crew as he lies injured in the bow. The team heads toward a small lighthouse, in hopes of being rescued.
They run out of water while the weather gets really hot. Everyone blames him for killing the albatross that they replace the cross with dead albatross around his neck to remind him of his error. Next, he indirectly get everyone on the ship dead because of the sin he commits. Feeling guilty, the Mariner wants to pray because he is still be cursed. But the Mariner escapes his curse by unconsciously blessing the water snakes, and the albatross drops off his neck into the ocean.
The men start to feel angry towards nature and to them it seems that nature has the same feeling towards them. The men think that all odds are against them in their journey to save themselves. "[The waves were] nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats. "() This action, however, is just nature on a normal basis, not an act of hostility toward the
The authors writing was able to make me imagine what it would be like to be stuck swimming for my life while bullets and cannons fired at me with little hope of escaping before being hit. Then after surviving a hanging, guns, and cannons he is then thrown into the woods where he has to find his way home with no water, no food, and no rest.
And although “The Open Boat” and “To Build a Fire” are written in different styles, they equally exemplify the power of nature set against man through the characters struggles for survival in addition to lose of hope. The stories express how nature never chooses sides, therefore is always apathetic to man. In Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” the character is traveling along the Yukon trail with the weather below zero degrees. On his journey he encounters an old timer who warns him about traveling any father if the weather was below fifty, yet he ignores his warnings and chooses to continue. He could have easily avoided the situation unlike the crew in “The Open Boat” who were already in that situation.
Another point of comparison is how the stress was handled by the children and the adults. LOTF and Lost have shared themes. Both movies are stories of survival, both take place on a tropical deserted island where the chance of rescue is remote and in both, the characters arrive on the island following a plane crash. The fight for survival is foremost. Following the plane crash, the characters find themselves needing to establish a sense of order so that they may survive this extreme situation.
This explains his bravery presented when he hears of the violent crimes committed by the evil demon Grendel. Beowulf hurriedly commands a bout fitted out to sail across the sea to Hrothgar. In lines (109-119), when Beowolf does decide to go to Hrothgar to help the Danes, he is encouraged by the Geats to go with the adventure. “None of the wise ones regretted his going, much as he was loved by the Geats.” I would consider Beowulf to be an arrogant character, because when he battles Grendel he doesn’t use a sword claiming it to be an “unfair advantage” due to Grendel not having a weapon. Throughout the poem, Beowulf is considered an honorable hero.
However, they have no way of knowing whether there will even be a crew present to save them. Crane says, “As each slatey wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water” (227). The men cannot even see their surroundings, as the ocean completely dominates every direction they look. This has a very disheartening and morale lowering effect on the men. When out in the ocean, the only thing the men want is to catch a glimpse of the shore.
Initially, all goes well and the ship smoothly sails across the seas. However, misfortune strikes as the voyage darkens and the ship is caught in a labyrinth of ice. An albatross appears in the scene and it leads the ship out of the ice. However, the mariner shoots the bird for reasons unknown. This act of killing the bird invites the wrath of the supernatural spirits who then pursue the ship.
This was to make sure the captain did not become too powerful. Once a crew member broke a rule the entire crew would gather and would vote on a fitting punishment. Pirates were ahead of their time in the fact that they held a vote, instead of one crew member simply being in charge of everything. To keep order on ships pirates would even assign a terrible