Principles Of Nature example essay topic

MAN vs. NATURE "None of them knew the color of the sky". This first sentence in Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" implies the overall relationship between the individual and nature. This sentence also implies the limitations of anyone's perspective. The men in the boat concentrate so much on the danger they are in, that they are oblivious and unaware to everything else; in other words, maybe lacking experience.

"The Open Boat" begins with a description of four men aboard a small boat on a rough sea. The central theme of this story is about confronting Nature itself. "The Open Boat' is Stephen Crane's account from an outsider's point of view of the two days spent in a small boat. The correspondent is autobiographical in nature; Stephen Crane was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida while working as a war correspondent. The correspondent in "The Open Boat" portrays the author. Mainly through the correspondent, Crane shows the power of nature and how one man's struggle to survive ultimately depends on fate.

The character of the correspondent learns that the principles of Nature is unpredictable by accident or by fate just as life itself is unpredictable. Stephen Crane pays special attention to the correspondent, who shares the painful chore of rowing the boat with the strong oiler. While rowing, he contemplates his situation and the part that nature plays in it. All of the men seem to know they are helpless in the face of nature. their lives, at any given moment, could be lost by practically anything; a shark, a big wave, the wind, or starvation.

These men are at the mercy of chance; the forces of nature versus the struggles of man. Each of the men is faced with the likelihood of his own death. This realization deeply affects the men who feel that their death would be unfair despite all of their efforts to save themselves. It also affects the correspondent, who questions his own life: "He thought: 'Am I going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be possible?' Perhaps and individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature" (421).

This statement may suggest the meaningless or irrelevance of an individual's sense of self-importance against the power of nature. The human voyage into life is basically uncontrollable and unpredictable. In the beginning, the men in the boat view nature as evil and unjust; nature's own personal vendetta. Since the crew on a dangerous sea without hope are depicted as 'the babes of the sea", we can assume that we are likely to be unknowing strangers in the universe. In addition to the danger we face, we have to also overcome the new challenges of the "waves" in daily life. These waves are 'most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall", requiring 'a new leap, and a leap.

' Are we powerless against nature? Can we control our own fate? Although the men struggle to survive and make it to shore, we never really know until the end, if they are going to drown. Their fate seems to fall into the hands of forces beyond their control. A perfect example is when the correspondent gets caught in a current while trying to swim to shore. He is trapped by an invisible force, a current, which he can not understand or escape.

Suddenly, the current frees him, and he is washed ashore by a huge wave. This is an unexpected turn of events being that the strongest rower, the oiler, does not survive yet he seemed the most physically able and the most determined to survive. The correspondent, troubled by his impressions and realities, learns that nature is random, and senseless, by having the oiler drown. Does the correspondent realize nature's own indifference to it's own laws and principles? The oiler seemed the most logical choice to survive, him being the most physically fit.

His death implies that the other men's survival is that of luck. However, after the correspondent recognizes nature's complexity, he begins to see the world differently. He becomes aware of images such as "carmine and gold [... ] painted upon the waters" (419). Only after two days on a boat could the men listen to "the sound of the great sea's voice" and feel "that they could [... ] be interpreters" (422). With the death of the oiler and the rescue of the others, the bond is broken between the men each is left to believe that his experience and reason for survival has some larger meaning. Their brief moment of brotherhood and understanding ends with their rescue.

Were they interpreters? Or was is wishful thinking? These men were determined with the will to survive.