Journal entry# 27 Stephen Crane

Siu Faat Jimmy Wong
English 48b
February 22, 2008
Professor Lankford

Quote:

A tale intended to be after the fact, being the experience of four men from the Sunk Steamer Commodore

Summary:

It is a prologue or maybe a subtitle of “the Open Boat”.

Response:

In the quote, “the fact” shows me that Stephen Crane does not make up a story himself from his imagination, but he actually shows his own experience about the Sunk Steamer Commodore. The “four men” are the captain, the oiler, the cook, and the correspondent. Since Stephen Crane writes this “tale” after “the fact”, he should be in either of these positions. After I finished this “tale”, I found out that Stephen Crane is actually the correspondent on the floating boat. It is because throughout the text, he kept using the word “wonder” to describe the thinking of the correspondent. For instance, “the correspondent…. wondered why he was there” and “the correspondent wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane… to row a boat” (Norton1000-1004). However, he did not use the word “wonder” to describe the other people in the boat, but he just wrote their conversations in the story. It is actually so obvious that Stephen Crane is the one who “wonders” about these things. Therefore, there is no doubt that he is the correspondent who writes this story. Indeed, in the introduction of Stephen Crane, it also shows that he was shipwrecked off the Florida coast while working as a war correspondent. Therefore, he intended to use this story to explain his experience of suffering in the roaring sea and showed us the brotherhood of men.