The Open Boat
In the lifeboat (Original The Open Boat) is a story by American author Stephen Crane ( 1871-1900 ), originally published in June 1897 in Scribner 's Magazine in New York and later with The Red Badge of Courage (Eng. The red decoration for bravery, the red and bravery medal ) was included in the anthology The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Prose and Poetry. A German translation by Hans Reisiger first appeared in 1948 under the title In the lifeboat. In the story Crane processes his own experience as a survivor after the sinking of the tug Commodore on January 2, 1897.
Content
After the shipwreck of the tug Commodore near the Florida coast, the captain of the ship, the ship's cook, a machinist and one of the passengers, an unnamed newspaper correspondent trying to reach the saving coast of Florida in a small open boat. The story portrays vividly their thirty -hour struggle for survival on raging seas. Her initial hopes of getting noticed by a controlled lighthouse and get help batters after a short time. Despite the pervasive despair yet not give the four shipwrecked their seemingly hopeless struggle against the forces of nature. Just before they manage to reach the land, wrecked her life boat in the surf. With almost heroic effort to mobilize their last four forces to swim through the surf. While the captain, the cook and the rapporteur manages to reach the safety of the shore, is the engineer his death at the very moment in which he reaches land.
Interpretation
The story begins abruptly with the sentence: ". Neither of them had a look left for the color of the sky " over the situation in which the protagonist of the short story are, are only the second set of information: "Her eyes peered only flat. outside and did not come away from the waves, the zujagten incessantly on them, " the impact of paradox, as Oppel notes in his interpretation of the short story, unmistakable: all of the water and sky surrounded, see the castaways probably the one, but not the other. The sky remains invisible to them and, as will be shown later, "mute". The personal narrator initially holds firmly to see the situation through the eyes of the castaways who are concerned exclusively with the impending waves. In addition antithetical the slate-colored waves are compared with their white foamy crests of the colors of the sea, who knew the men. With the help of poetic elements, the intense reliving of the story is saved from the beginning effective. What is to be as told and relived by the reader, is the fate of people who are in a " are delivered community of fate the raging sea. " Heaven marked in concrete spatial visualization a region that is hidden from view of the encircled by the storm waves men remains, in metaphorical use but - according to Oppel - shows that none of them has a certain knowledge about the relationship of the individual to the universe or cosmic forces such as God, fate or providence. At the end of history " eliminating it to understand something absolutely Reliable about the possibility of people, nature and the universe, to want to testify. " Is
The lifeboat is by Oppel by " a high degree of compositional unity " and a " high [n ] degree of craftsmanship " in the narrative structure with an " unusual [n ] focus on the situation of castaways " marked; the short story is in line with the previously defined by EA Poe characteristic requirements of this narrative form to the achievement of a "single effects" (ie, a unique effect ) was applied and differs very fact of a purely journalistic report. The entire history of the shipwreck is hidden; the perspective is narrowed only to the four occupants of the boat and its thirty -hour storm ride, everything is presented as if seen from inside.
The narrator keeps himself in the background, there are few passages in which storytelling can find an authorial comment; the reader alone some guidance in order to understand the world of sensation of the figures can. So it is, for example, in the entryway of the story: " Some people might have a bathtub larger than the boat that danced here on the lake. " This almost sarcastic comparison with the bath corresponds to the feeling of being lost, the castaways, the comes over, and creates an ironic tension with the aim to demonstrate the contradiction between human hope and unwavering reality.
Furthermore, the narrator decided not to differentiate the four companions in misfortune to the nature and character significantly. The four men are at the mercy dependent on each other in their common effort to save her life despite the adverse circumstances; Differences between rank and education play no role. It is purely a matter still to turn in a desperate struggle against the forces of nature the tide in their favor. The increasing desperation comes in the question of "why " to express that - once touched upon - the story runs through to the end. The castaways met them the hostile fate in the form of the unleashed forces of nature, against which man can only do little; the focus is on the question of the meaning of human existence and the human dominant laws.
However, it is not just about Crane man's relationship to nature, but also about his relationship with his peers: "It would be difficult to describe the modest fraternity that had awakened here amid the waste of waters between the four men. No one spoke of it. But she was there in the little boat, and everyone felt it somewhat heated [ ... ] and they were friends - friends in a stronger sense than usual, iron federated companions in misfortune. "
In the profound tension between solitude and mitmenschlicher connectedness, the rapporteur reminded of the verses of the dying legionnaire in Caroline E. S. Norton's poem Bingen on the Rhine, in which a soldier experienced his death as absurd as his mistress in the home to him waiting and ends his life before the actual performance. The death of the stranger Legionnaire is for the rapporteur another sign of " the appalling indifference of the universe, the relentless circling moves, without being impressed by the anxiety and hope of mortal creatures ," Oppel writes in his interpretation of this key passage of the narrative.
In the end it is the engineer, the boldest swimmer among the four castaways in the surf, the place of death; he had it not less but rather more deserving than the other to survive; his death is absolutely pointless. Apparently, so Oppel, Crane wants to show that " ethical or other qualities are quite irrelevant if the person in the wheel train gets out of human powers. "
Criticism
In German-speaking Manfred Durzak praises in 1980, Crane was in his short story Furthermore he writes, " compresses the battle of the four castaways with the inexorability of fallen into turmoil sea to one of the classic texts in the history of the American Short Story. ": " The unprecedented fascination that radiates the text of Crane, is that he without the struggle for survival of the men who stubbornly oppose the uproar of the elements, yet tame the barely exuberant lifeboat shed with the endless battle against storms and waves of the sea, very concretely patch tendencies on the parable of an existential confrontation of man increases with nature. The nature is declared to be a monstrous enemy of the people not only from the perspective of the hopeless combatants and shown from the psychological perspective of those affected, but in its grandiose inhuman force, yes captured in its beauty in images of poetic precision and unparalleled impression strength. "
When Daniela Götzfried it says 2008: " Stephen Crane, a contemporary O'Henrys, made specifically for the task of further developing journalistic reportage so that a prose arises that show through precise process description an ambiguous course and provide a lasting impression of reality can. In his master narrative in the lifeboat him this conception seems to have succeeded. The precise description of the external situation he conveys an implicit existential situation and an associated superficial not to be recognized Done ".
Effect story
In the oeuvre of Crane presents The lifeboat is the one of his works, which is equally often praised in the Anglo-American world of literary scholars, critics and other poets and has been included in several anthologies. So was The Open Boat, for example, 1927 in Wilson Follett's twelfth volume of the collected works of Crane, 1952 by Robert Stallman Stephen Crane: An Omnibus and 2000 again by M. Myers in Stephen Crane: an anthology in memoriam ( 1871-1900 ) published. In the English-language press, there are numerous reviews that highlight the particular importance of this story, for example, in the New York Times, where it is said Crane 'm already because of this short story a high priority in American literature of the 19th and 20th century.
As Manfred Durzak turns out, the poetic genealogy ranges from in the lifeboat back to Poe's A Descent into the Maelstroem (Eng. The fall in the Maelstroem, even in the vortex of Maelstöm ) and is resumed in the post-war German literature, such as Ernst Schnabel's short story hundred Bangkok hours before or Siegfried Lenz ' moods of the lake.
Dietmar Haack points out in his comparative analysis of Cranes narrative with the short stories of Ernest Hemingway on the "parallel presentation technical principles Cranes and Hemingway " and sees in this respect Crane as the precursor of a development that reached its peak with Hemingway.
Hemingway himself expressed in an interview specifically its interest in acquiring Cranes oeuvre and especially at The Open Boat. So he said in an interview with Kandinsky, who put him on a safari questions about American writer to Crane as follows: " [ He] wrote two fine stories, ' The Open Boat' and ' The Blue Hotel'. " (Eng. mutatis mutandis: [ He ] wrote two excellent stories, ' The lifeboat ' and ' The Blue Hotel' )
Historical Background
When first published in Scribner 's Magazine in June 1897, the story was subtitled " A Tale Intended to be after the fact" (that is a story that wants to create a reference to the original actual experience ), but it could not be determined beyond all doubt whether this addition is really from Crane himself. "
The subtitle alluding to the historically documented event in which Crane witnessed the sinking of the tug "Commodore" at dawn on January 2, 1897 as a passenger even while he was a correspondent of Bacheller Syndicate 's on the way to Cuba via to report to the local rebellion. Of the 27 passengers and crew members only survived the Captain Edward Murphy, the engineer Billy Higgins, the chef Charles Montgomery and the rapporteur Stephen Crane, the exhausted reached the country at noon of January 3 in a tiny lifeboat.
After a sensational set put press report in the New York Press Crane his own version of events, in the edition of the New York Press on January 7, 1897, entitled " Stephen Crane 's Own Story" ( published himself, " Stephen Cranes own story " ) was printed. Crane reduced in this newspaper report its own role to that of a pure observer and focused on the Captain Murphy and the Machinists Higgins, he posed as a hero in the article.
According to his own experiences in the lifeboat Stephen Crane left after its early history An Experiment in Misery in The Open Boat the realm of speculation; the position indicated in the subtitle relationship to the original factual Experience on with this Notice of speculation. This does not mean, however, as Haack emphasizes in his analysis of the narrative that Crane " slavishly a facticity appends, which can only be ideal anyway. " Haack According to Crane tries to process his experience in the narrative, however, is striving this " without compromising the veracity of transport in a literary short form which, although does not necessarily provide ' objective ' facts, but the truth does not want to deliver a manipulation by the writers. "
Others
James Thurber in 1950 published the story MS Found in a book. This plan aimed ostensibly at a first edition of Stephen Cranes The Open Boat, the Thurber had allegedly received from a friend, she earned his hand for a quarter in a used book store book store in Columbus. In the nested encryption this story Thurber explained the issue to be authentic, there is a still sealed letter was included, the CN Bean had sent to Mr. Remo, in which he described a discussion with Crane in Havana in 1898. However, Thurber involved in this narrative primarily on Edgar Allan Poe's short story The second manuscript in the bottle (also in a Bottle; Original Title: MS Found in a Bottle. ).