SOURCE: Marcus, Mordecai. “The Three-Fold View of Nature in ‘The Open Boat’.” Philological Quarterly 61, no. 2 (April 1962): 511-15.

In the following essay, Marcus delineates Crane's changing view of nature in “The Open Boat” as“malevolently hostile, then as thoughtlessly hostile, and finally as wholly indifferent.”

Most commentators on Stephen Crane's story “The Open Boat” remark that it shows nature as indifferent or as simultaneously indifferent and cruel. I believe, however, that the story's major themes and structure grow out of a slowly changing three-fold view of nature which is revealed in the characters' thoughts: they see nature first as malevolently hostile, then as thoughtlessly hostile, and finally as wholly indifferent. This progress of ideas also accompanies the men's deepening concept of brotherhood. Although three discussions of the story, one by Ray B. West, Jr. and Robert W. Stallman,¹ and the others by Richard P. Adams² and by Stanley Greenfield...