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."
On the other hand, in the vein of Realism, Crane focuses on the bleakness of life and impartial empirical observations. The men’s dismal situation is described matter-of-factly. Death is also described very plainly, without any flowery language. The narrator devotes two sentences to the oiler’s death, saying simply, "In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched sand that was periodically, between each wave, clear of the sea." These sentences are a very unembellished description of the story’s main tragedy.
By mixing the Romantic- and Realism-inspired styles into one, Crane can convey that the world is varied and unpredictable: sometimes dramatically beautiful and sometimes starkly grim.
