SOURCE: Iheakaram, Paul O. “John Pepper Clark and Stephen Crane: An Investigation of Source and Influence.” Research in African Literatures 13, no. 1 (spring 1982): 53-9.

In the following essay, Iheakaram investigates the influence of “The Open Boat” on J. P. Clark's short play The Raft.

Stephen Crane seems to have influenced J. P. Clark's short play, The Raft, whose title also may have been suggested by one of Crane's nine sea stories, “The Raft Story” (1895). Since Clark got his B. A. Honours degree in English in 1960 from the University of Ibadan and was in 1963 a Parvin Fellow at Princeton University (New Jersey is Stephen Crane's home state), it is possible he read some of Crane's sea stories, especially “The Open Boat” (1897), before writing The Raft (1964). It is significant that Clark's controversial America, Their America and The Raft were both published in 1964 after he had returned from Princeton. “The Open Boat...