The Correspondent
In The Open Boat by Stephen Crane, the correspondent is, without a doubt, a very dynamic character. In the beginning of the story, his focus in life is mainly on himself and what feels right to him, rather than on the well being of others, or on the way he lives his life. Through his near-death experience on the “Commodore”, he comes to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around him, and that there are other people in the world that have it much worse than he does at the present moment.
In the first line of the story, it says that “none of them knew the color of the sky.” The correspondent didn’t view life as anything more than himself, and he didn’t see the bigger picture. He didn’t have any basis for the way he should live his life either. He didn’t think that he deserved to die, and he “wondered why he was even there.” He thought very highly of himself, and for some reason thought that he was above death. “She (Fate) dare not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work.” He was very prideful as well. He argued with the cook “as to the difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge.” This is not a subject that must be argued. The correspondent didn’t like to be proven wrong about anything, so he argued about this unimportant issue anyway. He was also prideful, along with the other men in the boat, when it came to admitting that the men on the boat were all very close friends. “There was a 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. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it.” He didn’t have any many morals either. For example, the correspondent thought it acceptable to swear. “The cook and the correspondent swore darkly to the creature.”
