Journal 13: Stephen Crane

Michelle Romero
Eng 48B
Dr. Scott Lankford

A THEMATIC COMPARISON OF 3 WORKS

“The Open Boat” pg. 907

"Shipwrecks are apropos of nothing. If men could only train for them and them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there would be less drowning at sea."

In several of Crane's works, we see a struggle between the men in his stories trying to conquer the world, and them getting their butts kicked. In the above quote, Crane reveals that shipwrecks are meaningless, the event itself is meaningless. Then he goes on to suggest that humans might actually be able to take control of these events by training better for them. The irony is that training or not, nature would have to yield to the preparedness of man and this of course is not going to happen. Therefore, the force of nature acting in the wrecking of a ship really is something. It is a testimonial to what we as humans cannot control. Regardless of what we can control, nature will always have the element of surprise which often times determines the outcome.

Likewise, in "An Episode of War" Crane places a similar quote: "It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence, the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing, and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little" (947-948). In this story, the man who is wounded was unexpectedly hit while preparing the simple routine of preparing coffee, another unfortunate and unexpected event which got the better of man.

No wonder Stephen Crane is labeled a cynic. It is not so much that he believes in nothing, for he certainly acknowledges the power of nature, but this belief is one which leaves his audience feeling powerless, a feeling they can not accept.

“The Blue Hotel” deters from this idea only slightly when Crane writes, “This poor gambler isn’t even a noun. He is kind of an adverb. Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have collaborated in the murder of this Swede” (946). Here, he shows us again how one man is affected by the events of things he can not control. In this case the consequence just happened to be murder. Unlike the usual placement of blame, Crane has now placed it on the other characters rather than one nature. This seems like more of a fair fight now, man against man. However, ironically the consequences of this conflict are far greater than the consequences in his other dramas. In “The Open Boat” the main characters were able to survive though they suffered many losses including death, and in “An Episode of War” the man loses an arm, but at the same time gains some dignity being able to cheat death. These losses while great are not quite the same as the overt targeting and murdering of an innocent man by his peers, at least not in the American sense of law. Murder is cruel and intentional.

It is possible, if Crane in some way did this intentionally, that he was showing his readers how yes, nature takes its toll on the human race, but how humans can and do destroy each other. The latter is of greater significance because it is in the realm of what we can control. Crane may have come across very cynical, but I think he, like most humans, understood and believed generally that humans have the ability to be good. He just also happened to recognize the realities which occurred when they were not.