THE GROUP

In throwing together the four men in “The Open Boat” chance plays a larger role than in Crane's other major tales, with the possible exception of “The Five White Mice.” This group is not spontaneous in Huizinga's sense, however, for it remains importantly connected, as Crane's small groups tend to be, with a larger collectivity. As in The Red Badge of Courage and most of the other war writings, that collectivity is an organization. Strongly structured though it may be, an organization is susceptible to local breaking up, and when the conditions are right it can dissolve into mere seriality. In Crane's war novel the best illustration is the military unit in rout, when it is “every man for himself.” In the present story the dissolving coincides with the foundering of the ship.

The central organization in “The Open Boat” is that of the ship's company, the most detailed picture of which is furnished in “Stephen Crane's Own Story,” the newspaper version of the incidents later reworked into the published tale. That version also offers details of action missing from the latter, such as the panicky behavior of the “colored stoker” (IX, 93) and the seven men waiting for death on the stern of the Commodore. Indeed, Crane as correspondent devotes most of his energies to the moments of dissolution and chaos, limiting his account of the four men in the boat to two paragraphs and an additional sentence: “And then by the men on the ten-foot dingy were words said that were still not words, something far beyond words” (IX, 94).