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Ernest Hemingway Reading Suggestions: The Old Man and the Sea
Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after he
has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too [...].
--Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Both structurally and narratively, The Old Man and the Sea is the most simple piece of
fiction Ernest Hemingway ever created. Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman, completes his
eighty-fourth day without a catch. Among the superstitious folk of the fishing village, only
Manolin, a young boy and Santiago's one-time apprentice, remains friends with the old man
during the time of his bad luck, takes care of him, and brings the old man food to eat at
night. But after forty days without a catch, Manolin's parents tell him to join with one of
the larger, more successful boats. But even though he no longer fishes with the old man,
Manolin's friendship with Santiago never fails.
The following morning, Santiago takes his small boat past the coastal waters, avoiding the
commercial boats. He hooks a tremendous marlin, and when Santiago tries to bring him in, he
finds that the fish is too big, has too much life in him. Instead of making his catch,
Santiago is towed out to sea by the marlin.
Santiago's struggle is not confined to a battle with the fish. Minutes and hours pass,
lengthen into days. Because of the marlin's size, Santiago cannot simply tie off the line--the
fish would snap through the line's straight tension. Thus, through the strain of thirst and
hunger and the ceaseless heat of the sun, Santiago's old arms bear the burden of the fight
across the entirety of three days. As exhaustion and dehydration continue to eat away at the
old man, Santiago learns so deep a respect for this fish that he thinks, "there is no one
worthy of eating him from the manner of his behavior and his great dignity."
At last, on the third day the fish begins to tire, and the delirious old man is able to turn,
then pierce the marlin with his harpoon, and bring the long siege of his catchless, luckless
days to an end.
But the old man's trial has not ended. Only one hour passes before the first shark finds the
marlin's scent in the water, and other sharks follow the first. Santiago fights off each shark,
killing many, first with his harpoon until it is lost, then his knife, then with the rudder of
his own boat. Each shark attack costs him part of his fish. He knows he will lose his fish,
and still he fights with all the strength he still commands. Against all odds, he battles his
way through the sharks and his own delirium, and eventually he drags his boat to shore. But
only the naked skeleton of his marlin remains.
In 1928, Ernest Hemingway moved to Key West, Florida. He loved the Gulf and the Sea, and
immediately took to the fishing, learned to catch the great fish that lived in the Gulf
Stream.
Hemingway spent intermittent years in Key West during the 1930's, also spending time hunting
big game in Africa. In 1937, he went to Spain to report the Spanish Civil War for the North
American Newspaper Alliance.
When Hemingway returned from Spain, he moved to Havana, Cuba, where he began For Whom the Bell Tolls (see
discussion). For Whom the Bell Tolls was widely acclaimed by writers, readers,
critics, and even by the same Pulitzer Prize committee who refused to issue Hemingway their
Prize for political reasons (damn conservatives) as an instant classic--far and away the the
best piece of literature produced in 1940.
But after the publication and success of For Whom the Bell
Tolls, Ernest Hemingway was unable to produce any successful, lengthy work, and in 1950,
when he finally published Across the River and Into the Trees, criticssoundly and
thoroughly criticized Hemingway's writing and structural integrity--even to the extent of
believing him finished as a writer.
In 1952, however, Ernest Hemingway published his novella, The Old Man and the Sea, which
instantly resurrected his status among the literary elite: For The Old Man and the Sea,
Ernest Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953; and then, in 1954, the masterpiece
led to the ultimate prize: the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ernest Hemingway Reading Suggestions: The Old Man and the Sea
The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The
shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What
goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.
--Selected Letters, taken from Ernest Hemingway on Writing
(Spoiler Warning)
A community dismisses a man in his time of bad luck and old age. His bad luck confirms his old
age--perhaps, even if his catchless streak were to end, then he would still be
dismissed--because he is old. Everyone dies, but the mark is visible on Santiago's face and
therefore his defeat is a public fact.
Santiago knows he is old, and he knows that soon he will die. This is the primary condition in
which the story takes place. His one remaining friend, Manolin, a young boy, is no longer
permitted to fish with the old man. He is alone with his age, his bad luck, and the fact of
his death.
But he takes his ragged boat out into the world he knows, the unknowable sea, to face the
elemental, irreversible truths of his existence. And, in fact, he comes face to face with the
greatest fish he's seen in all the years of his fishing experience. His courageous heart
provides the strength Santiago needs to fight the marlin well beyond the scope of his physical
strength--Santiago succeeds when his failure was already a foregone conclusion.
But he cannot win. The sea is too much for an old man, and the sharks strip him of his
victory. But he never quits the fight. He knew he was defeated before he encountered the
marlin, and still he fought, and still he refused to quit. His fight and his persistence are
futile, and he knows it, and still he fights. When he drags his boat at last upon the shore,
and stumbles off to pass out in his lonely home, the villagers marvel at the unparalleled
skeleton of the marlin. The young Manolin sees the skeleton, too, and intuits the story of
what the old man has done. The old man's defeat was certain from the beginning; and his
triumph is inarguable. The effect on Manolin is Truth.
Old Man . . . Not So Simple?
Theme (Spoiler Warning)
Because Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea with a pure, simple language and
structure, each of the story's elements seems to contain a manifest power, some transcendent
meaning beyond the novella's own scope.
The surface story tells of an old man struggling with, in narrative order: age, luck,
loneliness, commercial fishing boats, the marlin, hunger and dehydration and endurance, the
sea, and the sharks.
Do these elements possess a meaning beyond the surface narrative? The critic first considers
theme: is the old man fighting with nature? With the human condition of aging? With life, or
with death? What is the larger story, here? A casual reading tells the critic that the old
man is fighting against fate: against all of his inevitable failures at the hands of nature and
death. However, a closer, more careful reading should show the critic that Santiago's true
fight is not against anything; rather, his fight is to find his place within the inevitable
order.
Imagery
CHRIST IMAGERY
Once the critic feels comfortable with the thematic environment of The Old Man and the
Sea, how Santiago (and therefore every human being) fought to determine his place in the
natural order, the critic turns to the imagery Hemingway chooses to describe the action of his
scenes. Why does Santiago liken his own heart to the beating heart of a butchered turtle?
Why, in his terrible exhaustion after bringing his boat back to shore, does Santiago flop down
on his sleeping pad with his arms extended, palms up, in fact just like Christ upon the
Crucifix? The critic then recalls the wounds his fishing line cut into Santiago's hands, and
Santiago's struggle with the mast of his boat.
And just like that, the critic has uncovered the Christ imagery that Hemingway intended to show
how Santiago courageously accepted his martyrdom, his lot and fate, the sacrifice he made in
order to be reborn in the form of new courage and endurace within Manolin (Manolin, man, son of
man . . .). An important moment to note takes place on the night before Santiago begins his
voyage: we see the old man through Manolin's eyes. The boy loves the old man, but when the old
man claims to have washed before their shared supper, the boy questions the truth of Santiago's
claim. The boy is almost a man, and soon he must decide to either follow in the path of the
commercial fishers, or the path of the old man. This questioning that takes place is rarely
discussed by the critic. Instead, the critic chooses to make the story a universal metaphor:
resurrected from his inevitable death, Santiago will live on as a figurehead, a redeemer, for
those who have faith in his transcendent sacrifice. But though the story focuses on Santiago's
struggle, the real story is the one that will pass on through Manolin's life. How will Manolin
see that story?
"THE OLD MAN WAS DREAMING ABOUT THE LIONS"
Santiago dreams several times throughout The Old Man and the Sea. During three of the
dreams, the old man is dreaming about the lions. Dreaming about the lions--with their strength
and youthful vigor written into their bodies as they play along the beaches--brings Santiago a
deep, potent feeling of peace and order. He loves the dream lions in the same way that he
loves the boy, Manolin, though he never dreams about the boy.
LIONS AND SHARKS
The critic notes that lions are predators, kings among beasts, and the contentedness that
Santiago experiences in the wake of dreaming about such predators must signify the lasting
truth of Santiago's own meritorious triumph. But why does the critic forget to compare the
lions to those predators Santiago encounters while awake? The critic has plenty to say about
these kings of the sea, these sharks who assure Santiago's eventual failure. Sharks are
mindless mouths, says the critic, untempered forces of decay and destruction. It means nothing
if Santiago kills two or three of them because sharks are inevitable. Killing a shark has no
value, the critic says. Killing a lion, notes the critic who has also read Hemingway's
biography, is a proud, courageous accomplishment. Hemingway loves the safari; therefore, he
can respect, then kill, a lion. But sharks are unworthy of their own status as predators.
But the sharks aren't mindless, nor does Santiago feel any lack of respect for sharks, as a
whole. "The [shark] is cruel and able and strong," Santiago thinks. Later, he compares
himself to that first, Mako shark: "He lives on the live fish as you do. He is not a scavenger
nor just a moving appetite as some sharks are. He is beautiful and noble and knows no fear of
anything." However, when the galanos come, the shovel-nosed sharks that arrive in
packs, Santiago thinks of these as bad-smelling scavengers.
The lions are different, though, and it has nothing to do with sharks living as scavengers or
mindless mouths. In this respect, sharks are no different than people. They try to live and
then they die. Some make their lives respectable before death takes them; others are like pigs
slobbering at the trough.
The difference is this: sharks, like people, are made for death. So? says the critic. Lions,
too, are made for death. This is true, but when the critic makes symbols and imagery from
sharks, he loses sight of Santiago. Santiago dreams of the lions on beaches he remembers from
his own childhood. He loves the lions the way he loves Manolin. Lions are young, playful, and
strong. They are not made for death, though they will eventually die. They are, within
Santiago's ordering of nature, the pinnacle--the highest attainable goal. They are young,
strong, and without fear. They cannot be questioned. Santiago fights against his own age, his
waning strength, and his fear of inevitable failure. Because failure, death, is inevitable.
But pride in those things that you have--courage, a heart that refuses to quit, and strength
beyond the toll that time takes--earns you the dream about the lions.
Since he wrote the real story first, he said, the destruction and changing of it
that he did at the end did him no harm. I could not believe this and I wanted to
argue him out of it but I needed a novel to back up my faith and to show him and
convince him, and I had not yet written any such novel.
--Hemingway on F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway aficionados have a hard time picking and choosing when it comes to
creating
"essential Hemingway" lists. However, while this particular aficionado believes
Hemingway's genius
shines most truly through some of the other formats in which he chose to write,
I'll also suggest there are three
Hemingway novels that deserve their place as some of the most important works of
American fiction.
Hemingway's whittled, declarative prose makes reading any of his work a compelling,
intuitive
experience. True, the value of his commitment to simple, true sentences and the
recognition of omission
in fiction is found most clearly in his short fiction; and this revolutionary style
dramatically
affected the course of American Literature. Ernest Hemingway's contribution,
however, provides much
more than a stylistic sensibility. Hemingway produced three potent, occasionally
flawed but unwaveringly brilliant
novels that not only demonstrate the concise, focused power of his prose, but also
isolate,
embody, and eventually immortalize the post World War I ex-patriot scene, and what
is now known as
the "Lost Generation."
The Sun Also Rises was first published in
1926, a few months after Hemingway published the parody,
The Torrents of Spring. The Sun Also Rises describes, through action rather than
modifiers, the
post World War I ex-patriot scene. We follow what is essentially the inverted, hopeless post-war
love story
of the injured Jake Barnes. Jake is in love with Brett Ashley, and she, in turn, loves Jake;
however, Jake's
war injury has rendered him impotent. In various ways, everyone in The Sun Also Rises is
impotent with
the exception of Jake's friend, Robert Cohn, a young and eager writer from New York.
The Sun Also Rises gives us the world of the disenchanted, "lost" generation facing life
after hope has died. Those who haven't lost hope are distrusted, even despised, by those like
Jake who have lost their capacity for redemption. The Lost speak a language of petty bigotry and
spite. As Jake learns to live with his despair, he learns to hate those who do not, or will not,
know despair.
Critics identify this attitude as Hemingway's own failure--perhaps noting a lack of narrative
distance between author and narrator. In fact, there is plenty of sexism, anti-semetism, and
racism
throughout The Sun Also Rises. While unfriendly critics look to Hemingway for the source,
friendly
critics suggest that Jake (rather than Hemingway) and his ex-patriot community are the wounded,
abandoned source of this bigotry.
One last critical note: Perhaps because of Ernest Hemingway's preoccupation with eliminating
every unnecessary
word from his prose, critics have occasionally taken Hemingway to task for the first chapter of
this
novel. Hemingway devotes the entire chapter to introducing Robert Cohn. The second chapter does
the same, though this time Hemingway grounds the introduction as the temporal beginning of the
story.
Critics argue the following: having two introductory Cohn chapters is nothing more than
redundancy;
the second chapter, grounded in the present-moment of the narrative, brings the reader directly
into
the story's action while providing all the necessary background information of the first chapter;
and
finally, the bulk of the novel's action, while never completely forgetting him, proceeds with
fewer and
fewer Cohn-driven scenes (until the end).
These are reasonable arguments; however, I believe the first chapter supports the novel as a
whole in two
distinct ways that the second chapter, even with some editing, could never achieve on its
own.
Chapter One serves the purpose of a true introduction: this is the only place in the novel that
exists outside of the story's moment, and the only place where Jake Barnes as narrator
separates
himself from Jake Barnes as character. Every other chapter proceeds chronologically, and
if the narrator were to separate himself throughout the novel, then the tension would too easily
flutter and die. In the discussion of For Whom the Bell Tolls
I'll explore some fundamental differences between the necessity of narrative distance in
first-person
narratives (in novels such as The Sun Also Rises and
A Farewell to Arms) compared to the narrative distance required by third-person narratives
(in
novels such as For
Whom the Bell Tolls). In this particular novel, the reader needs an orderly progression of
events to
maintain a grasp on the story's sensibilities. Therefore, this first chapter allows the reader
to manage a tantalizing glimpse of where Jake Barnes as narrator is telling the story; in
the end, this chapter allows us to see how fundamentally Jake has changed.
This ties directly into the other significant affect this chapter has on the novel's whole. The
narrative distance we experience only in the first chapter allows the reader to see why Robert
Cohn is so significant to Jake Barnes. The scorn and bigotry Jake uses to describe Robert here
is bitter and resentful--rather than justified. Only through the narrative distance can we
understand the self-judgment this implies: the first chapter, rather than judging Cohn, actually
is an admission of Jake's own terrible limitations.
