The Open Boat

The correspondent is arguably the main character, and the partiality the narrator shows to the correspondent probably reflects the fact that Stephen Crane was also a journalist. Although the narration is omniscient and third person, it tends to focus on the correspondent’s thoughts. As a man who writes for a living, the correspondent is a fitting character through whom to present philosophical ideas.

Crane grants the correspondent a backstory and complexity the other characters lack; he is imaginative and reflective. The narrator takes the reader back into the correspondent’s childhood, discussing how the correspondent “had been acquainted with the fact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers” through a rhyme he and his classmates learned at school (231-32). The correspondent is also the character who realizes that the idea of People Versus Nature is a false dichotomy; nature isn’t good or bad but simply “flatly indifferent” (234). At the same time, the correspondent’s characterization conforms to the detached tone of the story because many details about him remain unknown, including his name.