Modernist Doubt in James Hanley’s The Ocean

Abstract

This paper examines James Hanley’s novel The Ocean (1941). The novel falls into the genre of open-boat stories, of which several modernist examples exist. Hanley interrogates and develops modernist concerns established in previous texts such as Stephen Crane’s ‘The Open Boat’ (1897). Hanley’s working-class context and his reference to the events of World War II are key to understanding how he differs from Crane. Specifically, Hanley includes an incident where a lifeboat is machine-gunned by a submarine. Some historical context is provided for this incident, and this paper suggests its importance in terms of a modernist preoccupation with meaninglessness. This paper pays special attention to Hanley’s use of shifting narrative perspectives in order to examine psychological trauma. In part, this paper argues that Hanley’s radical materialism distinguishes him from other modernist writers of the ocean such as Stephen Crane, and, more generally, Joseph Conrad.