SOURCE: Hagemann, E. R. “‘Sadder than the End’: Another Look at ‘The Open Boat’.” In Stephen Crane in Transition: Centenary Essays, edited by Joseph Katz, pp. 66-85. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1972.

In the following essay, Hagemann provides an interpretation of the epigraph to “The Open Boat” and analyzes the ways in which the characters in the story perceive their situation.

I

Toward the end of “Stephen Crane's Own Story,” a newspaper account of the sinking of the filibustering S. S. Commodore, the newspaperman says:

The history of life in an open boat for thirty hours would no doubt be instructive for the young, but none is to be told here now. For my part I would prefer to tell the story at once, because from it would shine the splendid manhood of Captain Edward Murphy and of William Higgins, the oiler, but let it suffice at this...