As the men in the dingy fight against the infinite waves
of the ocean in Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat," there is a sort of inner refrain which
collectively runs through their minds:
If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be
drowned--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 thus far and comtemplate sand and
trees?
This inner refrain
indicates the men's rational inclination to make sense out of an indifferent universe.
In Section 4, the men gain sight of a shore and think that there may be signs of life;
however, there are none because there is no life-saving station within twenty
miles. Yet, in their desperate hope, they
made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning the
eyesight of the nation's
life-savers.
Finally, the
captain tells the others that they will have to make a try for themselves. As the men
contemplate their plight, inwardly they wonder at the preposterousness of coming so far
for no reason. In their minds they are angry at "this old ninny-woman, Fate" who should
be deprived of managing men's fortunes if she can do no bettter. Railing against fate,
the men feel that there must be salvation--"She dare not drown me...Not after all this
work." If, then, they should indeed be saved, Crane writes that the men might have the
impulse to shake their fists at the clouds above the shore, as though uttering
an oath,
"Just
you drown me, now, and then hear what I call
you!"
Of course, it is but an
unreasoning universe against which the men rail. For, the irony of the threat to the
clouds is that the men are virtually helpless against the forces of an indifferent
nature. Crane expresses this helplessness by having the oiler die, as he is one who
should have survived over the others. With the oilers death, Crane expresses how the man
is betrayed by his inner refrain and the narrowness of his vision of the universe and
"Fate."
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