Personification is a literary device where the author gives human characteristics to something nonhuman. In “The Open Boat,” Crane regularly gives the waves and the sea human traits to underscore the theme of People Versus Nature and to show how the men view the sea as more of an enemy combatant and less a creation of nature. As is typical in war, the men portray the opposing side as morally bankrupt, so the waves are “wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall” (213). The waves also “move with a terrible grace,” and they talk since the men hear the “snarling of the crests” (215).

The choice to use personification is especially noteworthy given the realization the men come to about the universe’s indifference. The sea is not out to get the men; it lacks that sort of human motivation. Emotionally and intellectually, however, this is a difficult idea for the men to grasp, so they fall back on personification despite themselves, as the narrator explicitly states:

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, […] he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no brick and no temples.