Evi Wulandari

2012130050

Table of Contents

Tables of Contents i

Chapter 1 : Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Summary The Open Boat
1.3 Theory
1.3.1 Defintion of History and Periods
1.3.2 Definition of American literature and Short story

Chapter 2 : Analysis
2.1 Biography of Stephen Crane
2.2 Characterization of Stephen Cranes work
2.3 American Literary History: Naturalism
2.4 The relationship between The Characterization of Stephen Crane

and his work in The Open Boat

Chapter 3 : Conclusion

Bibliography

Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Background
Our lives as human beings can not be separated from the name of history. Because of
the history we come to know what has happened in the past. I wrote this paper to
analyze from a short story by Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat". In this case to support
the analysis, I also have presented ranging from the definition of what is history, what is
the period, definition of American literature and Short story , The Late 19th century of American
literature, and also the history of American literature: Naturalism. These things are used
to determine the "relationship between the work of Stephen Crane The Open Boat and
the characteristics of his work" and also "between his work The Open Boat with the
characteristics of naturalism.

1.2 Summary The Open Boat

Main Characters:
The Cook: A cook who was on the ship. He is now on the lifeboat and his job is to empty all the
water that is in the lifeboat.
The Oiler: Another person who was working on the ship. He is on the lifeboat now and is one of
the guys paddling
The Correspondent: He was on the ship. He is now paddling on the lifeboat.
Captain: He is the captain of the ship. He is injured though and cant paddle. He is giving
directions on the lifeboat.
The Open Boat is a dramatic short story based on Stephen Cranes own real-life
experience, when a ship he was sailing on to Cuba sank in high seas off the coast of Florida. He
was a correspondent for an American newspaper and he was on his way to write about
problems that led up to The Spanish-American War in 1898.
As the story opens, four men: a cook, a correspondent, an oiler and a captain, are in a
lifeboat in stormy seas. They are off the coast of Florida, just after their ship has sunk. Soon,
they spot the light of a lighthouse somewhere in the distance, so they know they are near land.
Although they can eventually see the shore, the waves are so big that it is too dangerous to try

to take the boat in to land. The waves will destroy the lifeboat and possibly crash hard on the
men in the surf, maybe killing them.
People on the shore see the lifeboat and try to signal to the men to come in, but the sea
is just too rough. The four men in the boat hope that the people on land will send a bigger boat
out to rescue them, but that does not happen. Instead, the men are forced to take the boat
further out to sea, where the waves are not quite as big and dangerous. They spend a total of
two nights in the lifeboat and take turns rowing and then resting. They are not sure if they will
survive and they have exchanged addresses in case any of them should die.
On the morning after their second night, the men are weak and no fishing boat has
come to rescue them. The captain decides that they must try to take the lifeboat as close to
shore as possible and then be ready to swim when the surf inevitably turns the boat over and
throws the men into the cold sea. This is exactly what happens. As they get closer to land, the
waves get bigger and bigger. Just as they expect, a big wave comes and all the men are thrown
into the sea. The lifeboat turns over and the four men must swim into shore. There are rescuers
waiting on shore who help the men out of the water.
Strangely, as the cook, captain and correspondent reach the shore safely and are helped out
of the water, they discover that, somehow, the oiler, the strongest man and best swimmer, has
drowned after being smashed in the surf by a huge wave. As night comes, the men still hear the
pounding of the waves on the shore the voice of the sea. Now, they understand the power of
the sea, and how easily it can claim even the strongest mans life.

1.3 Theory
1.3.1 Defintion of History and Periods

History
History (from Greek , historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation")
is the study of the past, specifically how it relates to humans. It is an umbrella term that relates
to past events as well as the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of
information about these events. The term includes cosmic, geologic, and organic history, but is
often generically implied to mean human history. Scholars who write about history are called
historians. Events occurring prior to written record are considered prehistory.
History can also refer to the academic discipline which uses a narrative to examine and analyse
a sequence of past events, and objectively determine the patterns of cause and effect that
determine them. Historians sometimes debate the nature of history and its usefulness by
discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective"
on the problems of the present.

Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the
tales surrounding King Arthur) are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends, because
they do not support the "disinterested investigation" required of the discipline of history.
Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian is considered within the Western tradition to be
the "father of history", and, along with his contemporary Thucydides, helped form the
foundations for the modern study of human history. Their work continues to be read today and
the divide between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides
remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In the Eastern tradition,
a state chronicle the Spring and Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from as early as 722
BC although only 2nd century BC texts survived.
Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which
have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is
wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or
thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and
secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in University
studies.

Periods
Historical study often focuses on events and developments that occur in particular blocks of
time. Historians give these periods of time names in order to allow "organising ideas and
classificatory generalisations" to be used by historians. The names given to a period can vary
with geographical location, as can the dates of the start and end of a particular period.
Centuries and decades are commonly used periods and the time they represent depends on the
dating system used. Most periods are constructed retrospectively and so reflect value
judgments made about the past. The way periods are constructed and the names given to them
can affect the way they are viewed and studied.
Note : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History#Periods

1.3.2 Definition of American literature and Short story

American literature
American literature is the written or literature produced in the area of the United States and its
preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the
United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of
British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States. Therefore, its literary
tradition begins as linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, unique
American characteristics and the breadth of its production usually now cause it to be
considered a separate path and tradition.
Note : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_literature

A short story
A short story is a brief work of literature, usually written in narrative prose. Emerging from
earlier oral storytelling traditions in the 17th century, the short story has grown to encompass a
body of work so diverse as to defy easy characterization. At its most prototypical the short story
features a small cast of named characters, and focuses on a self-contained incident with the
intent of evoking a "single effect" or mood.[2] In doing so, short stories make use of plot,
resonance, and other dynamic components to a far greater degree than is typical of an
anecdote, yet to a far lesser degree than a novel. While the short story is largely distinct from
the novel, authors of both generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques.
Short stories have no set length. In terms of word count there is no official demarcation
between an anecdote, a short story, and a novel. Rather, the form's parameters are given by
the rhetorical and practical context in which a given story is produced and considered, so that
what constitutes a short story may differ between genres, countries, eras, and commentators.
Like the novel, the short story's predominant shape reflects the demands of the available
markets for publication, and the evolution of the form seems closely tied to the evolution of the
publishing industry and the submission guidelines of its constituent houses.
The short story has been considered both an apprenticeship form preceding more lengthy
works, and a crafted form in its own right, collected together in books of similar length, price,
and distribution as novels. Short story writers may define their works as part of the artistic and
personal expression of the form. They may also attempt to resist categorization by genre and
fixed form.
Note : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story

Chapter II
Analysis

2.1 Biography of Stephen Crane

Born in November 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane was the youngest of fourteen
children. The Crane family moved to Port Jervis, New York, where Crane first began his
education. His father, a strict Methodist minister, died in 1880, leaving his devout, strong
mother to raise the children. Mary H. P. Crane moved her family back to New Jersey, where
they lived in Asbury Park. Mrs. Crane herself was an active writer who contributed to various
Methodist papers.
Crane attended a Methodist boarding school for two years from 1885 to 1887. Later, he
attended Claverack College and the Hudson River Institute. Ultimately, Crane spent less than
two years in college. At Syracuse University, he excelled in baseball and enjoyed a much more
successful social life than an academic life. During his brief stint at college, Crane came into
contact with Hamlin Garland, an author whose style would influence Cranes own works.
While Crane was in college, his mother passed away; afterwards he dropped out and moved to
New York City. In this urban setting, he worked as a freelance writer and eventually completed
his first novel, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. He published this novel, a study of an innocent
slum girl and her downfall into a world of prostitution and abuse, in 1893 at his own expense. It
was especially scandalous for the times, and Crane used the pseudonym Johnson Smith. It
sold few copies but did attract the attention of other critics and writers, most notably William
Dean Howells, who helped Crane receive backing for his next project, The Red Badge of
Courage.

Cranes time in New York City was split between his apartment in Manhattans Bowery slums
and the home of a wealthy family in the nearby town of Port Jervis. It was his fate never to
have a hometown or even, in the sense of place, a home. Strong inner activity, such as his own
reading, must have compensated (Cady 34).
While working on what is arguably his most well-known work, The Red Badge of Courage, Crane
also wrote poems and short stories, including An Experiment in Misery and In the Depths of
a Coal Mine. His collection of poems was published under the title Black Riders and Other
Lines.
The Red Badge (1895) was quite different from Maggie in style and approach, and it brought
Crane international fame and quite a bit of money. Rather than plod through moral tropes, the
book is subtle and imagistic, while still being firmly entrenched in the realism of late 1890s
America. Cranes rich portrayal of Henry Flemings growth through the trials and terrors of a
Civil War battle betrays the fact that Crane himself had not yet seen any fighting or battles
when he wrote the book. Many veterans of the Civil War (only thirty years had gone by since its
end) praised the book, however, for capturing the feelings and pictures of actual combat.
Bolstered by the success of The Red Badge and his book of poetry, Crane published another
novel, Georges Mother. In 1896, he also prepared a revised edition of Maggie for publication
by D. Appleton and Company.
In the meantime, Crane became subsumed with ideas of war. In 1897, he was hired to go to
Cuba as a journalist to report on the rebellion there against the Spanish. On the way to the
island, however, Crane was in a shipwreck - he was originally reported dead, but he rowed to
shore in a dinghy with three other men. He swam to shore and had to drop his money in the
sea to avoid drowning. This experience directly led to his most famous short story, The Open
Boat (1897). Crane also wrote a newspaper account of his experience only a few days after the
incident, Stephen Cranes Own Story.

In 1897, Cranes novel The Third Violet was published. During the same year, while in
Jacksonville, Florida, he met the owner of a brothel, Cora Taylor. She accompanied him to
Greece, where he reported on the Greco-Turkish War for New York newspapers, and stayed
with him until the end of his life. At this point, rumors abounded about Crane, few of them
good. There was talk of drug addiction, rampant promiscuity, and even Satanism, none of which
were true. Crane was disgusted with the rumors and eventually relocated to England.
After reporting on the Spanish-American War and Theodore Roosevelts famed Rough Riders,
Crane moved to England. He then drove himself deeply into debt by throwing huge, expensive
parties, reportedly at Cora Taylors insistence. While he could now count Joseph Conrad, H. G.
Wells, and other authors in his circle, most people sponged off of Crane and his lavishness. He
worked on a novel about the Greek war and continued writing short stories and poetry, at this
point to pay off his large debts. While in England, Crane wrote The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
and The Blue Hotel. These two short stories, along with Maggie and The Open Boat, were
compiled and published together in 1898 as The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure.
The year 1899 saw the publication of another collection of poetry, War Is Kind, and one of short
stories, The Monster and Other Stories. Furthermore, Crane had based a novel, Active Service,
on his time in Greece during the war. Crane continued to write prolifically until his death.
The stress of his lifestyle, compounded by an almost blatant disregard for his own health, led to
Crane contracting tuberculosis. In fact, he collapsed during a party due to a tubercular
hemorrhage in December 1899. He died on June 5, 1900 while in Baden, Germany trying to
recover from this illness. Even on his deathbed, Crane was dictating what would become The
ORuddy. He was not yet 29 years old.
A number of works by Crane were published posthumously. These include: Whilomville Stories;
Wounds in the Rain; Great Battles of the World; Last Words; The ORuddy.

2.2 Characteristics of Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane's fiction is typically categorized as representative of Naturalism,
American realism, Impressionism or a mixture of the three.
The theme is about the naturalism experience. Man vs Universal
And then, about the anecsation conflic.
The work is about social critic.
Based on his experience.
Crane writes about extreme experiences that are confronted by ordinary people. His
characters are not larger-than-life, but they touch the mysterious edges of their
capacities for perception, action, and understanding.
Crane's writing is characterized by vivid intensity, distinctive dialects, and irony.

2.3 American Literary History: Naturalism

American Literary History: Naturalism
Naturalism (1890 - 1915): The term Naturalism describes a type of literature that
attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human
beings. Unlike, Realism which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical
position: for naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human
beasts," characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings. The
Naturalist believed in studying human beings as though they were "products" that are to be
studied impartially, without moralizing about their natures.
Naturalistic writers believed that the laws of behind the forces that govern human lives
might be studied and understood through the objective study of human beings. Naturalistic
writers used a version of the scientific method to write their novels; they studied human beings
governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives were
governed by forces of heredity and environment. This is a logical extension of Realism. The
term was invented by Emile Zola partially because he was seeking for a striking platform from
which to convince the reading public that it was getting something new and modern in his
fiction. Naturalism is considered as a movement to be beyond Realism. Naturalism is based
more on scientific studies. Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a basis for the Naturalist writer.
Natural selection and survival of the fittest help to depict the struggle against nature as a
hopeless fight.

Characteristics of Naturalism:

Objective
Darwinistic--survival of the fittest
Detached method of narration
Language--formal; piling on of images ("wretched excess")
Human beings unable to stand up against enormous weight of circumstances.
Deterministic--natural and socioeconomic forces stronger than man.
Heredity determines character
Violence--force against force
Taboo topics
Animal imagery
Attention to setting to the point of saturation
Characters--lower socioeconomic class
Static characters
Naturalists observe, then write. Often about the black, darker side of life.
"Pessimistic materialistic determinism" (Pizer)
Characters conditioned or controlled by environment, heredity, instinct or chance but
they have a compensating humanistic value that affirms the significance of the
individual (Pizer).
Characters do not have free will (determinism)
Themes "The conflict in naturalistic novels is often 'man against nature' or 'man against
himself' as characters struggle to retain a 'veneer of civilization' despite external
pressures that threaten to release the 'brute within' " (Campbell). Nature is indifferent
to man. The universe is deterministic.

2.4 The relation between The Characterization of Stephen Crane and his work in
The Open Boat
The Open Boat is based on his experience and and included in the naturalism experience.

The Open Boat is a dramatic short story based on Stephen Cranes own real-life
experience, when a ship he was sailing on to Cuba sank in high seas off the coast of
Florida. He was a correspondent for an American newspaper and he was on his way to
write about problems that led up to The Spanish-American War in 1898.
Quotes:
The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it was colder than he had
expected to find it on the coast of Florida.

 Crane's writing is characterized by vivid intensity. This quote is actually from the
opening paragraphs. It gives you an idea of how vivid and haunting Cranes descriptions
can be.
Quotes:
None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the
waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which
were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and
widened and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed
thrust up in points like rocks. Many a man ought to have a bathtub larger than the boat which
here rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and
each froth-top was a problem in small-boat navigation.

Crane's writing is characterized by irony. In its broadest sense, is a rhetorical device,

literary technique, or event characterized by an incongruity, or contrast, between what
the expectations of a situation are and what is really the case, with a third element, that
defines that what is really the case is ironic because of the situation that led to it.
Quotes :
This appeared to his dazed mind as a fact important enough to be noted at the time. The
coldness of the water was sad; it was tragic. This fact was somehow so mixed and confused with
his opinion of his own situation that it seemed almost a proper reason for tears. The water was
cold.

This short story The Open Boat relevant with characteristics of naturalism Darwinistic-survival of the fittest . Because this story about survive in sea with a big wave, that four
people keep themselves to be able to maintain their boat with keep rowing.

Quotes :
In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed And also they rowed. They sat together
in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the oiler took both oars; then the correspondent
took both oars; then the oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The very
ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining one in the stern to take his
turn at the oars. By the very last star of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it
was to change seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand along the thwart and
moved with care, as if he were of Svres. Then the man in the rowing seat slid his hand along the
other thwart. It was all done with most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each other, the
whole party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the captain cried: "Look out now!
Steady there!".

 There is pessimistic, determinism in this story, as they oscillated in big waves there is a
sense of pessimism in them to get to the mainland.
Quotes:
"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why, in
the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and
contemplate sand and trees?".
The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously by the crests, made progress
that in the absence of seaweed was not apparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing
wallowing, miraculously top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a great spread of
water, like white flames, swarmed into her.