Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Stefanie Bates Eye

Critical Essay by Stefanie Bates Eye

SOURCE: Eye, Stefanie Bates. “Fact, Not Fiction: Questioning Our Assumptions about Crane's ‘The Open Boat’.” Studies in Short Fiction 35, no. 1 (fall 1998): 65-76.

In the following essay, Eye questions the prevailing critical opinion of “The Open Boat” as a work of fiction, viewing it as a prime example of literary nonfiction.

In January 1897, Stephen Crane was shipwrecked and lost at sea on a 10-foot lifeboat for 30 hours. Once rescued, he produced three separate accounts of the same event. “Stephen Crane's Own Story,” which functions as a journalistic piece, was published in the New York Press a few days after he was rescued. “The Open Boat,” written several weeks later, has been hailed as literature and anthologized as a short story in countless collections of American fiction. The third, little-known work is another short story entitled “Flanagan and His Short Filibustering Adventure,” which was published a few...
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