The Open Boat

The style of “The Open Boat”—typical of American naturalism—is somewhere between Romanticism and Realism. Crane, in the vein of Romanticism, uses lush language to describe nature’s beauty. The sea is described beautifully. Crane often invokes gemstones, like amber or emerald, to describe the sea’s color at different times of the day. Even when a shark, an animal that is often considered terrifying, comes and swims alongside the boat, the narrator describes its strength as “to be admired,” demonstrating that the story holds a certain Romantic reverence for nature. Also in the vein of the Romantic school, Crane gives the world an almost magical quality by invoking mythology, particularly Greco-Roman mythology. For example, he personifies Fate as a deity in the form of an old woman and the “seven mad gods of the sea."