“The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane

Discuss the naturalist theme of indifference of the universe to human life in Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat”. Address the crew’s loneliness and where it may come from – their comradery and interconnectedness serves them well and makes them an ideal team (they are like working parts of one machine), but their collective sense of hopelessness while at the mercy of the ocean leads them to the understanding that humans are irrelevant to the universe’s innerworkings.