SOURCE: Metress, Christopher. “From Indifference to Anxiety: Knowledge and the Reader in ‘The Open Boat.’” Studies in Short Fiction 28, no. 1 (winter 1991): 47-53.

In the following essay, Metress examines how the structure of “The Open Boat” creates an epistemological dilemma that directs the reader from indifference to anxiety.

In recent years, critical response to Stephen Crane's “The Open Boat” has shifted dramatically, focusing less on the tale's philosophical agendas than on its epistemological implications. The story no longer stands as merely a naturalistic depiction of nature's monumental indifference or as simply an existential affirmation of life's absurdity. Instead, we have slowly come to realize a new level of the text, one that, according to Donna Gerstenberger, explores “man's limited capacities for knowing reality” (557). Gerstenberger's conclusion that the tale “may be best viewed as a story with an epistemological emphasis, one which constantly reminds its reader of the impossibility of...