Stephen Crane's story "The Open Boat" is a masterful example of Naturalistic storytelling that evokes the characters of four men stranded on a small boat as well as character of the sea itself. By the end of this long short story, despite the fact that Crane has provided us with only the most elliptical clues about these four men, we have came to understand a great deal about their characters. Crane what must be seen as almost a stereotypical stratagem of the Naturalistic writer (Hill 1989) in placing people in a situation in which their characters are laid bare by the fact that the raw force of Nature is arrayed against them and this paper examines how Crane provides us with clues about how the proximity of danger peels away carefully constructed outer layers of our personalities.

Each of these men may die from exposure or drowning or thirst, and...
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