“The Open Boat” is a short story in the genre of American naturalism. The story’s content is typical of American Naturalism, as it touches on themes of fate, nature, and randomness. American Naturalism is anti-"just world theory.” That is, in American Naturalist stories, the good guy oftentimes loses in order to balance out all the stories in which the good guy wins despite all odds. The choice to give morally good characters a bad or unfair outcome demonstrates the arbitrary nature of the world. Since Naturalistic fiction is mostly atheistic, it has no divine judge. As Crane writes:
For it was certainly an abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard. The man felt it would be a crime most unnatural.
Naturalist stories often feature humans being overpowered or ruled by the world they live in. In Naturalist fiction, there is very little place for free will. The Naturalists were influenced by the biologist Charles Darwin and the sociologist Émile Zola, two thinkers who posited that underlying physical laws reliably govern human behavior.
It is worth noting, however, that the ending of "The Open Boat" is somewhat anti-Darwinist. Darwinists often believe that the strongest organism will survive, but in “The Open Boat,” the strongest character (the oiler) dies. Crane’s choice to have the strongest perish demonstrates that although the world seems to be governed by certain laws, there are still many possible random outcomes.
