In the story the Open Boat, Crane uses four characters from different social status. There is a captain, a correspondent, a cook and an oiler, all stranded in the middle of a sea in a small boat. The ranking of these characters according to their social class begins from the captain who is the most powerful, then the correspondent with education, followed by the cook and then the oiler. The oiler who is the only named character in the story does most of the rowing throughout the story as he is considered physically strongest and used to the manual labor (Crane, 2016). Billie who is weakened by too much rowing ends up dying. Apparently, he is the only character who dies among the four. Marxist reading would show that the people with the lowest class and with the least power would do the most work, and suffer the worst fate. In this case, Billie who has the least power and is of the lowest class is burdened by too much work which ultimately results in his death.
Marxist reading would also explain that the perceived social differences amongst people become meaningless when people are faced with deep problems which cannot be solved by power (SAFITRI, 2010). In this case of the open boat, when the characters are faced by challenges like lack of water in the lifeboat, the presence of sharks and incessant waves, their social differences which would be so significant outside the boat seem to be meaningless.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Amongst the four characters, I would choose to identify more with the oiler. He represents the average man and the lowest in the ladder of the social class. When he finally dies out of too much work, he attracts sympathy. His death gives a lot of meaning to the message Crane wanted to drive home. The captain does not draw any sympathy. He represents the highest ranked in the social class. He does the least work and survives death.
At some point of the journey, the captain says “… she is an old hen, who knows her intention if she decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all this trouble?” His thoughts about fate are shared amongst the other characters. This reflects life as most people who struggle and endure a lot of pain do not get rewarded and end up dying miserably.
References
Crane, S. (2016). The open boat (Vol. 46). Lulu. com.
SAFITRI, R. Y. (2010). CLASS STRUGGLE IN FRANK LLOYD’S MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935): A MARXIST APPROACH (Doctoral dissertation, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta).
