Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Open Boat
    The Open Boat
    The Open Boat
    Audiobook1 hour

    The Open Boat

    Written by Stephen Crane

    Narrated by Deaver Brown

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    "The Open Boat" is considered Stephen Crane's finest work and one of the great short stories of all time. The story begins with four men in an open boat, subject to the vagaries of the sea after their ship went down. The Captain, though injured, retains control over the boat and its occupants by force of habit and uncanny skills. In this trial, he proves his worth, putting his men first, guiding them at every step of the way. When they finally have to swim for it because they can't land the boat on shore, the Captain subordinates his own interests in being saved to go after another. Each man is called only by his title, the Correspondent, the Oiler, and the Cook. The oiler rises up to prominence and called by name, the only one that is honored so. He is clearly set up to fail and die as he does, and did in the real life event as well.

    Nature is indifferent to these men bobbing on the surface of the sea. Yes, the sea threatens, but in no unusual way and they make it to land ultimately. A shark circles the boat, almost playing with it, but then moves on. This is the home of the sea and the shark and Crane treats them this way. The interesting part is nature is not in conflict with the men; nature is indifferent to them. The people on shore don't help much but they help enough to help save three of the four men. Crane tells his story as a painter would, with the most marvelous descriptions of color, the scene, and the internal movements. The story comes through better in the listening than the writing for these reasons as you can sit back and listen to the word pictures Crane paints. Many later authors used this story for their own learning and purposes. Perhaps the most interesting is fellow poet, James Dickey, who also has an event over water with four men, with three surviving. In both cases the others declare the best of them died. A landmark American story.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimply Magazine Inc.
    Release dateDec 30, 2010
    ISBN9781614961147
    Author

    Stephen Crane

    Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900) was a war correspondent, novelist, short story writer and poet. He is the author of Maggie, The Red Badge of Courage, George's Mother and The Black Riders. Ernest Hemingway on The Red Badge of Courage: "One of the finest books of our literature…it is all as much of one piece as a great poem is."

    More audiobooks from Stephen Crane

    Related to The Open Boat

    Related audiobooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Joshua Ferris Writes a Work of Hope

      Aug 2, 2021

      This was always going to be about Joshua Ferris’s dad. “You catch me pretty fresh,” the author deadpans over Zoom. “I haven’t talked about it.” The “it” refers to his long-awaited new novel, A Calling for Charlie Barnes, which publishes in September.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon

      Apr 11, 2022

      I had a dystopian idea in the beginning, and in the end the dystopia caught up with me. The post The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Sep 5, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Memory Police

      Aug 14, 2019

      The Memory Police
      1 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      Golden Gate Park As any poet will tell you, the weight of the lineis essential, but here these practitioners havemore on their minds than poems. The weight of their lines is uniformly light, the line selectedto land and then rest gently on the surfac

      2 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      May 1, 2020

      Hemingway: a real man’s man; red wine, bulls and wrestling with fish were all central themes of a life of unremitting machismo. Having read a bit of Ernest in my time, I generally find that he spends a good deal of time droning on about death, impote

      6 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      May 1, 2020

      Time Out
      6 min read

    • Article

      Top Ten Sea Books

      Jun 5, 2020

      SJ AND SMH In the October of 1991, a storm of rare wickedness hit the North Atlantic. Caught up in it was the sword-fishing boat Andrea Gail, which went down with the loss of all hands. At that time, the author was working as a tree surgeon in the bo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      Jun 5, 2020

      Time Out
      5 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      Jun 5, 2020

      Time Out
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tempting Fate

      May 11, 2023

      Read about sailing all your life and you won’t find another book quite like Bound for Cape Horn, with its interesting subtitle Skills for Expedition Cruising. Any suggestion this might be yet another text book on how to do it is dissipated in the ope

      7 min read

    • Article

      Paul Heiney

      Oct 28, 2022

      Paul Heiney
      3 min read

    • Article

      Paul Heiney

      Oct 28, 2022

      Paul Heiney
      3 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      Aug 30, 2019

      E.F Knight’s Cruise of the Alerte is one of those sailing books that has all the classic ingredients for a ripping yarn. A cruise in a small boat to an exotic location, a few rows along the way and a fruitless hunt for treasure at the end of it. Knig

      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Nov 6, 2020

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Nov 6, 2020

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      More Things In Heaven

      Dec 10, 2021

      It’s the deep mid-winter, when sailors check their warps, settle down in lamp-lit saloons, top up their bogey stoves and pour themselves a dram. If they’re in tune with the outside world, they’ll also shut off the flickering screens, kill the music m

      5 min read

    • Article

      Taken By Surprise

      Jan 17, 2018

      Taken By Surprise
      5 min read

    • Article

      Holding Power

      Sep 11, 2020

      Holding Power
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Feb 23, 2024

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Feb 23, 2024

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Armchair Angler

      Apr 18, 2023

      By Steven Bird Swing the Fly Press From America’s premier spey-casting magazine, Swing the Fly, comes the new authority of trout spey fishing. Typically viewed as an Atlantic and Pacific salmon tactic, spey casting uses two-handed rods, shooting line

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Hermit Of Suvarov

      Jul 30, 2020

      The Hermit Of Suvarov
      5 min read

    • Article

      McCARTHY AND THE MOUSE

      Nov 13, 2018

      McCARTHY AND THE MOUSE
      7 min read

    • Article

      Rock Hard

      Sep 10, 2020

      Rock Hard
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Open Boat

    3.5/5

    43 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      The Open Boat may be a classic, and at some point I might re-read it. Mr. Brown's narration, however, is so horrendous that I'm seriously annoyed after having finished this book. In the introduction, Mr. Brown proclaims how fantastic a short-story The Open Boat is. He still manages to sound so bored that he's about to fall asleep while reading it. There is no flow, no eagerness, no separation between the characters. He might as well be reading a user manual.

      If you want a good audio version of this story, keep looking.
    • 3/5
      I wasn’t previously familiar with the work of Stephen Crane. This is about four men in a dinghy that is in danger of overturning. These men are the cook, the oiler, the correspondent and the injured captain. They are trying to get safely to land, but this is easier said than done. They come from the steamer Commodore. The ship had gone down, but it is not explained how or why. The story is exquisitely written. At the start, the oiler steered with one of the two oars while the correspondent “pulled at the other oar”. Why was the correspondent aboard the ship and what is an oiler? We don’t know whether there are other members of the crew in another dinghy. The cook thinks there’s a house of refuge “just north of the Mosquito Inlet Light that has a crew that will come and pick them up, whereas the correspondent says houses of refuge don’t have crews. The cook is squatting in the bottom of the boat and the injured captain is lying in the bow. The oiler is in the stern. The boat bounces from the top of each wave and the spray splashes past the men. “It was probably splendid. It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights of emerald and white and amber.” The oiler and the correspondent rowed. The men saw the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet. The captain says they’ll make it if the wind holds and the boat doesn’t swamp. The cook bails the water. A ”subtle brotherhood of men” was established. The lighthouse grew slowly larger. The cook recalls that the life-saving station was abandoned a year ago. The surf’s roar was ”thunderous and mighty”. ’We’ll swamp sure’, said everybody.” Nobody seemed to see them. Sometimes the men are desperate, sometimes hopeful. Men on the land waved at them. “”If I am going to be drowned --- why, in the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come this far and contemplate sand and trees?” A shark was following the boat. They “try a run through the surf”. They picture their chances of survival. “Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.” I won’t reveal the ending.
    • 4/5
      A great example of the genre Naturalism
    • 4/5
      An excellent short story. Crane writes in a clear and concise style that holds up remarkably well even by modern standards. The Open Boat is a captivating true life account of his and 3 others struggles to survive in the open sea in a tiny dingy. On a deeper level, Crane writes of the impersonal and arbitrary forces of nature. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I read Crane's "Red Badge of Courage" while in high school and without ever giving it a second thought over the years I've always recommended it highly to anyone who's ever asked. But after reading "The Open Boat," it seems I'd forgotten exactly how powerful a writer Crane really was.

      I've never quite shared in the ultimate philosophy of writers like London, Conrad, and Crane yet they perpetually rank among my favorites, mainly I think, because the masculine vocabulary and narrative of "naturalist" deism (and sometimes atheism) speaks so well to those like myself who are or have been in constant contact with the dangers of outdoor life and work; those who know that their fate rests primarily in their own hands; those who know that one slip-up could cost them not simply their daily meal but their very lives. The "naturalist" relies upon the observation that although there may be a "grand architect" behind all that we see in this world, he/she/it is indifferent to our cares. It is not an agnosticism, but really that the idea that revelation, miracles, or any type of divine relationship between man and his creator is nonexistant. It is the belief that in nature, we are at the mercy only of our own abilities. How Crane came to hold such views, especially at such a young age, I can't comprehend, yet they are very evident in "The Open Boat" and it makes for extraordinarily beautiful though lonely sentiment:

      "...During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude that it was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him, despite the abominable injustice of it. 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. Other people had drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still --

      When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.

      Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself."

      A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation..."

      Crane does not entirely discount that miracles happen, just that they are rather rare natural turns of luck that few men are fortunate to witness or partake in. Near the end of the story, when rescue is at hand, a wave carries the "correspondent" over the capsized boat, he makes it a point to call this "a miracle of the sea."

      However, Crane does give some hope in the story that even if we are at the mercy of nature, we are still worthy of survival because in the end we are capable of saving each other. For there are men, like the captain in the dinghy, that can still exhibit a duty toward other men as regards their cold station in life, and he paints a near messianic picture of his selflessness as he stood in the water with "a halo on his head" and shining "like a saint."

      I never did nor will I agree with the basis of deism/naturalism but it makes for incredible literature. 4.5 stars and another look at Stephen Crane.