What are the strengths and weaknesses of the characters in "The Open Boat"?

In Stephen Crane's short story, "The Open Boat," the captain is portrayed as a natural leader who assumes captaincy of the lifeboat after the sinking of the Commodore, and he is largely responsible for the survival of the three men. He is self-sacrificing and honorable and feels conscience-stricken at having failed to save his ship and passengers. He is also coolheaded in moments of crisis and shows a resourceful intelligence, making a sail out of his coat so that the boat will go faster. His main weakness is a nervous tendency to brood on his loss and his failures, which is understandable given what has happened.

The correspondent is the most sensitive of the three men and perhaps the most intelligent. He is somewhat impractical, inclined to philosophical speculation about the nature of the universe rather than attending to the present moment. In a situation where lives are at stake, his sensitivity is both a strength and a weakness. He is unflinching in his determination to face the truth, however terrible it may be.

The cook is the most optimistic and least thoughtful member of the lifeboat's crew. He begins by arguing that they are close to a lighthouse and are bound to be saved. Throughout the narrative, he continues to assume that they are bound to be rescued soon, despite the lack of evidence for this. He is resilient but not particularly intelligent.

Analyze the characters in "The Open Boat".

The captain is the definitive leader of this lost group of men. He grieves for the ship he has lost and is determined to lead this group of survivors to safety. He encourages the rest of the men, and they trust his guidance. When they fail to see the lighthouse in the distance, for example, he keeps urging them to see what his eyes of experience have already spotted. He won't let them give up, and when the men ask him if he thinks their boat will reach the lighthouse, he hopefully responds, "If this wind stays steady and the boat doesn’t sink, we can’t do much else." The captain understands that it is his duty to guide the men, both in their physical direction and in their mental spirits. He remains steadfastly focused on those efforts despite being injured himself.

The only man to be named in the story is the oiler, Billie. This is significant because Billie is also the only person in the story who dies. He staunchly supports the captain's orders, and while the rest of the group chooses to believe in unrealistic expectations of a rescue, Billie is more reasonable, commenting that

None of those other boats could have reached shore to give word of our ship...or the lifeboat would be out hunting for us.

As the men bail from the sinking boat to try and save themselves, Billie doesn't jump quite far enough. He is killed by the same boat that the injured captain clings to for survival in the cold January water. His death indicates that the benefits inherent in belonging to a group are limited and that ultimately, each man is in charge of his own survival.

The correspondent serves to provide the detailed experience of the men. He is a thinker, and from the opening of the story he "wonder[s] why he [is] there." He has been taught to be a "hard judge of men," and he struggles to make make sense of surviving a shipwreck only to potentially die in the little boat. The correspondent considers the way nature remains "calm" against the struggles of humanity, considering her a completely disinterested force who doesn't care about human suffering.

The cook represents the world of manual labor within this small group of men. Although he does a bulk of the heavy rowing for the group, the cook does not present the steady sense of reasoning that is seen in the correspondent's character. He does retain an optimistic outlook, but his dreams of impending rescue are consistently proven wrong. After finding himself in the cold water, he only survives because of the captain's instructions to float on his back and to utilize his oar to maneuver through the water. The cook exists as a foil to the captain's ability to recognize potentially disastrous outcomes. The cook's character demonstrates that optimism without a balance of reason can prove deadly.

What is an analysis of "The Open Boat"?

One way to go about analyzing this powerful short story is by examining its genre of Naturalism and how it goes about conveying Naturalist principles. Literary Naturalism began in the late nineteenth century as a sort of pessimistic offshoot of Realism: in a Naturalist story, characters are impacted by natural forces, and their decisions are determined by those forces. Often, such characters are portrayed as relatively insignificant in the face of a natural world that is indifferent to them. Nature does not adhere to our ideas about justice or fairness, so characters' fates often seem arbitrary or even unfair.

In this story, the insignificance of the characters is signified by the fact that all but one are unnamed. Billie, the oiler, is the most prepared for the kind of labor that being in a lifeboat demands—he is young, fit, and uninjured, and his usual work is likewise difficult—unlike the correspondent (who is not accustomed to hard labor), the captain (who is injured), or the cook (who is out of shape). The story's Naturalism is displayed when Billie is the one man who actually dies in the end. In naming Billie, and only Billie, Crane seems to encourage readers to grow even closer to him, which makes it all the more shocking when he, of all the others, dies.

In addition, the depiction of the sea as an uncaring force, doing what it does, completely oblivious to the men in the boat, further characterizes the story as a Naturalist text.

Many a man ought to have a bath-tub 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.

The waves keep coming and coming, regardless of the men and their feelings or the irony of the fact that they survived their ship sinking and might still die in their "life" boat. There is no fairness, and no God intercedes on the men's behalf; in the end, the story shows that we only have each other to rely on.