Criticism > Short Story Criticism > The Open Boat, Stephen Crane - George Monteiro (essay date July 1984)

The Open Boat, Stephen Crane - George Monteiro (essay date July 1984)

George Monteiro (essay date July 1984)

SOURCE: Monteiro, George. “Text and Picture in ‘The Open Boat’.” Journal of Modern Literature 11, no. 2 (July 1984): 307-11.

[In the following essay, Monteiro considers three possible sources for “The Open Boat.”]

Only the most primitive critical response would insist that Crane's fictional treatment of his experience of shipwreck off the Florida coast on New Year's Day 1897 could have been drawn directly and transparently from immediate life, that the author, moreover, had only to recall the details of existence aboard the small open boat, along with his moment-by-moment reactions to his plight and situation, to produce his “tale intended to be after the fact,” as he described the story. In this note I shall attempt to show how in two key instances in “The Open Boat” Crane drew upon memories of his reactions to three texts: one poetic, one expository, and one visual.

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