In "The Open Boat" Stephen Crane uses repeating themes of character experience, action and imagery to convey feelings of the overbearing vulnerability, and seeming futility, of the successful human race when placed in context and comparison to nature itself. Crane's depiction of four men in a dinghy that "many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than" guides a reader through alternating themes of hopelessness and hope during a dilemma that lends its support …showed first 75 words of 2413 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2413 total…world around us. At the beginning of the story, the men did not even know the color of the sky. However, after the correspondent recognizes nature's complexity, he begins to see the world differently. He becomes aware of images, such as "carmine and gold...painted upon the waters" (258). Only after two days on a dinghy could the men listen to "the sound of the great sea's voice" and feel "that they could...be interpreters" (Crane 261).