Criticism > Short Story Criticism > The Open Boat, Stephen Crane - Peter Buitenhuis (essay date autumn 1959)

The Open Boat, Stephen Crane - Peter Buitenhuis (essay date autumn 1959)

Peter Buitenhuis (essay date autumn 1959)

SOURCE: Buitenhuis, Peter. “The Essentials of Life: ‘The Open Boat’ as Existential Fiction.” Modern Fiction Studies 5, no. 3 (autumn 1959): 243-50.

[In the following essay, Buitenhuis discusses “The Open Boat” as existentialist fiction, contending that “no story of Crane more profoundly embodies within its structure, style, and symbolism the meaning of experience.”]

Stephen Crane's “The Open Boat” is not a naturalistic story, although it has often been labelled as such.1 The protagonist, in the interpretation of his own experience in the boat, transcends the limits of naturalistic philosophy and makes the kind of affirmation that has become familiar to us from the work of Albert Camus and other existentialist writers. No story of Crane more profoundly embodies within its structure, style, and symbolism the meaning of experience. Several critics have examined these...

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