THE OLD MAN
and THE SEA
-Earnest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea is
one of the most popular and moving works of the twentieth century. The
excitement generated by the novella, rare for such a serious piece of
literature, can be traced to its unforgettable portrait of the old fisherman,
Santiago, and its vivid presentation of the novella's other principal presence:
the sea. The Old Man and the Sea probes basic questions of life and death, and
explores humankind's relationship with nature.
The Old Man and the
Sea, short novel by Ernest
Hemingway, published in 1952 and awarded the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for
fiction. It was a highly popular novella, published first in Life magazine
on September 1, 1952, to much acclaim, and the story helped revive interest in
his work in general. The book’s success made Hemingway a worldwide celebrity
and contributed to the honor he then received in 1954—the Nobel Prize for
Literature. It was Hemingway’s last major work of fiction.
The story, in sum, concerns
an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago who has not caught a fish for 84 days.
Even the family of his apprentice Manolin has encouraged the boy to leave the
old fisherman, though Manolin continues to support him with food and bait.
Santiago is mentor to the boy, who cherishes the old man and the life lessons
he can impart. Convinced that his luck must change, Santiago takes his skiff
far out into the Gulf Stream, where the water is very deep, and hooks a
giant marlin. With all his great experience and strength, he struggles
with the fish for three days, admiring its strength, dignity, and faithfulness
to its identity—its destiny is as true as Santiago’s as a fisherman. He finally
reels the fish in and lashes it to his boat, but his exhausting effort then
goes for naught—sharks eat the tethered fish before he can return to the harbor.
Within the circumscribed
frame of the novella are many of the themes that preoccupied Hemingway as a
writer and as a man. The routines of life in a Cuban fishing village are evoked
in the opening pages with a characteristic economy of language. The
stripped-down existence of the fisherman Santiago is crafted in a spare,
elemental style that is as eloquently dismissive as a shrug of the old man’s
powerful shoulders. With age and luck now against him, Santiago knows he must
row out “beyond other men,” away from land and into the deep waters of the Gulf
Stream, where one last drama would be played out, in an empty arena of sea and
sky.
Hemingway
was famously fascinated with ideas of men proving their worth by facing and
overcoming the challenges of nature. When the old man hooks a marlin longer
than his boat, he is tested to the limits as he works the line with bleeding
hands in an effort to bring it close enough to harpoon. Through his struggle he
demonstrates the ability of the human spirit to endure hardship and suffering
in order to win. It is also his deep love and knowledge of the sea, in her
impassive cruelty and beneficence that allows him to prevail. The essential
physicality of the story—the smells of tar and salt and fish blood, the cramp
and nausea and blind exhaustion of the old man, the terrifying death spasms of
the great fish—is set against the ethereal qualities of dazzling
light and water, isolation, and the swelling motion of the sea. And through it
all, the narrative is constantly tugging, unreeling a little more, then pulling
again, all in tandem with the old man’s struggle. It is a story that demands to
be read in a single sitting.
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