Catharine Garbo
Mr. Salsich
English 8
23 November 2008

The Open Boat
An essay on the main point or the theme of the story “The Open Boat”


Do you ever think of something and get a small idea, but if you think about it the ideas just start fitting together like puzzle peaces. When I think of a theme of a book I usually just think about it for a few minutes, not very long. But if I think about the theme for a while, a few things might come to me. That happened with this story The Open Boat.

(TS) After thinking about the theme of The Open Boat for a while, I came up with a few different themes. (SD) The first theme that I thought of was that even if times get rough you could still pull through them. (CM) This is an example of a theme in the book, because even though the boat is very small, and there are four people on that small boat, they still made it through. (CM) An example of personification of this theme is when the author says, “not unlike a seat upon a bucking bronco.” Personification explains this quote, because they are comparing the seat with the bucking bronco. (SD) The second theme that I found is, teamwork is always a good thing. (CM) If the sailors didn’t have teamwork when they were on the boat a lot of things would have been different. (CM) If the sailors hadn’t have used teamwork they probably wouldn’t have gotten much sleep, also they would have never gotten through the trip. (CM) These are two examples of teamwork, because if they didn’t take shifts and work together something bad could of happened and they would have never made it back. (SD) The third theme, witch is similar to the second theme is you should always help each other and you will get through tuff times. (CM) One way that the sailors helped each other would be when they had sleeping shifts; sometimes they couldn’t stay awake so the other sailors helped them by waking them up. (CM) If they didn’t help each other by doing little things like this something could of happened and they wouldn’t have made it. (CS) There could probably be lots more themes in this story.

If you think about the theme of a book you could probably get a few themes out of just that story. Even if, like the three themes that I found they could be similar and fit together like a puzzle, just like this story does. I think if I thought about the theme more I could still get some more ideas.



SELF ESSESMENT

1. What part of this paper took you the most time?

The body paragraph took me the longest time.

2. What is the difference between your first and second draft?
The difference is that there are a lot less mistakes.
3. What do you think is the best part of your paper?
I think that by body paragraph is better than the introducing paragraph and the conclusion
4. What part of this paper could still be improved?I think that my conclusion could be improved.