What are the ironic circumstances in "The Open Boat"?

Stephen Crane is a Naturalistic writer. Naturalistic
writers texts focused upon the power of nature over mankind, characters who failed to
see that they possessed no free will, and settings which provided environments which
were, typically, placed in grottoes, mines, and lower class immigrant workers. During
the search for their dream, to succeed/ or make life better for themselves or others,
the protagonist fails to accept that they do not have the power to overcome nature. The
texts were also written from an objective perspective. What this means is that the
author simply is an observer and writes their text from a scientific
point-of-view.

This being said, Crane's short story "The
Open Boat" provides many distinctly ironic situation.

The
corespondent speaks of nature as if it is a "she." (This is typical of the Naturalistic
writer- nature is ofter personified.) While a reader comes to understand the
relationship between the corespondent and nature as a harmonious one, in the end, the
corespondent realizes that he simply does not really know nature. The "relationship"
that he imagines with nature is false. The corespondent's thoughts that he could
converse with nature offers no solution. The men are always under the threat of
nature.

Another ironic situation is the fact that the man
thought to be the strongest on the boat is the man to die. The oiler, seen by the other
men as the strongest, fails to make it to the shore with the
survivors.

One last ironic example from the story is the
men in the boat believed the people on the shore where there to save them. The people on
the shore believed the men to be fisherman, not in need of
saving.