 Similar to other Naturalist works , " The Open Boat " scrutinizes the position of man , who has been isolated not only from society , but also from God and nature . The struggle between man and the natural world is the most apparent theme in the work , and while the characters at first believe the turbulent sea to be a hostile force set against them , they come to believe that nature is instead ambivalent . At the beginning of the last section , the correspondent rethinks his view of nature 's hostility : " the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual — nature in the wind , and nature in the vision of men . She did not seem cruel to him , nor beneficent , nor treacherous , nor wise . But she was indifferent , flatly indifferent . " The correspondent regularly refers to the sea with feminine pronouns , pitting the four men in the boat against an intangible , yet effeminate , threat ; critic <unk> <unk> further pointed to the story 's seeming denigration of women , noting the castaways ' personification of Fate as " an old <unk> @-@ woman " and " an old hen " . That nature is ultimately disinterested is an idea that appears in other works by Crane ; a poem from Crane 's 1899 collection War is Kind and Other Lines also echoes Crane 's common theme of universal indifference : 
