Stories of Ourselves: "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane used his real-life experiences as the inspiration for this tale of survival after a shipwreck.

Here are links to our lists for the short stories in Stories of Ourselves:
The Hollow of the Three Hills, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Signalman, The Happy Prince, The Yellow Wall Paper, The Son’s Veto, The Open Boat, The Moving Finger, The Door in the Wall, Sredni Vashtar, How It Happened, Her First Ball, The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection, The Fly in the Ointment, The Custody of the Pumpkin, An Englishman’s Home, The Phoenix, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Prison, The Destructors, Meteor, Billenium, The Lemon Orchard, The People Before, The Enemy, Five-Twenty, A Horse and Two Goats, Report on the Threatened City, The Rain Horse, Ming’s Biggest Prey, The Village Saint, Secrets, The Stoat, Games at Twilight, The Taste of Watermelon, Journey (Patricia Grace), The Bath, My Greatest Ambition, To Da-duh, in Memoriam, Of White Hairs and Cricket, Elephant, Sandpiper, Journey (Shirley Geok-Lin Um), The Third and Final Continent, Tyres, At Hiruharama, Real Time, On Her Knees, The Contest
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. dejection
    a state of melancholy depression
    The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down.
  2. surmount
    reach the highest point of
    A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.
  3. tumultuous
    characterized by unrest or disorder or insubordination
    The crest of each of these waves was a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad tumultuous expanse; shining and wind-riven.
  4. wrath
    intense anger
    The birds sat comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some in the dinghy, for the wrath of the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a thousand miles inland.
  5. wallow
    rise up as if in waves
    She seemed just a wee thing wallowing, miraculously, top-up, at the mercy of five oceans.
  6. subtle
    difficult to detect or grasp by the mind or analyze
    It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas.
  7. cynical
    believing the worst of human nature and motives
    And after this devotion to the commander of the boat there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his life.
  8. impetuous
    marked by violent force
    But the waves continued their old impetuous swooping at the dinghy, and the little craft, no longer under way, struggled woundily over them.
  9. apropos
    at an opportune time
    Shipwrecks are apropos of nothing. If men could only train for them and have them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there would be less drowning at sea.
  10. founder
    sink below the surface
    Of the four in the dinghy none had slept any time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous to embarking in the dinghy, and in the excitement of clambering about the deck of a foundering ship they had also forgotten to eat heartily.
  11. ingenuous
    characterized by an inability to mask your feelings
    The correspondent wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could there be people who thought it amusing to row a boat.
  12. aberration
    a disorder in one's mental state
    It was not an amusement; it was a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental aberrations could never conclude that it was anything but a horror to the muscles and a crime against the back.
  13. impending
    close in time; about to occur
    After a search, somebody produced three dry matches, and thereupon the four waifs rode in their little boat, and with an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at the big cigars and judged well and ill of all men.
  14. opprobrious
    expressing offensive reproach
    It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within twenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning the eyesight of the nation's life-savers.
  15. epithet
    a defamatory or abusive word or phrase
    Four scowling men sat in the dinghy and surpassed records in the invention of epithets.
  16. admonition
    cautionary advice about something imminent
    "If we don't all get ashore, I suppose you fellows know where to send news of my finish?" They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions.
  17. formidable
    inspiring fear or dread
    The billows that came at this time were more formidable.
  18. obstreperous
    boisterously and noisily aggressive
    His head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched him once more.
  19. haggard
    showing the wearing effects of overwork or care or suffering
    The cook's arm was around the oiler's shoulders, and, with their fragmentary clothing and haggard faces, they were the babes of the sea, a grotesque rendering of the old babes in the wood.
  20. maim
    injure or wound seriously and leave permanent disfiguration
    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.
  21. supplicant
    humbly entreating
    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."
  22. plight
    a situation from which extrication is difficult
    Myriads of his school-fellows had informed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturally ended by making him perfectly indifferent.
  23. profound
    showing intellectual penetration or emotional depth
    The correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slower movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and perfectly impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the Legion who lay dying in Algiers.
  24. respite
    a pause from doing something
    This plan enabled the oiler and the correspondent to get respite together.
  25. bequeath
    leave or give, especially by will after one's death
    Neither knew they had bequeathed to the cook the company of another shark, or perhaps the same shark.
  26. repose
    freedom from activity
    As the boat caroused on the waves, spray occasionally bumped over the side and gave them a fresh soaking, but this had no power to break their repose.
  27. acquiesce
    agree or express agreement
    If we stay out here much longer we will be too weak to do anything for ourselves at all." The others silently acquiesced in this reasoning.
  28. beneficent
    doing or producing good
    She did not seem cruel to him, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent.
  29. pallor
    an unnatural lack of color in the skin
    There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation.
  30. cessation
    a stopping
    In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected that when one gets properly wearied, drowning must really be a comfortable arrangement, a cessation of hostilities accompanied by a large degree of relief, and he was glad of it, for the main thing in his mind for some moments had been horror of the temporary agony.
Created on Mon Mar 05 14:17:33 EST 2018 (updated Fri Mar 23 15:14:28 EDT 2018)

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