In his short story “The Open Boat,” Stephen Crane tells a tale that centers around four men in a small dinghy, attempting to reach land after a shipwreck. Sura Rath and Mary Shaw write that “[a] commonplace of Crane criticism is to read ‘The Open Boat’ as a classic story of man’s battle against the malevolent, indifferent, and unpredictable forces of nature” (3). Many of … Continue reading When God Waves Goodbye: Crane’s Theme of the Indifference of God in “The Open Boat”