The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, 1952
The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic struggle between an old fisherman and a huge marlin. Thus starts every review ever written of The Old Man and the Sea and who am I to break with tradition. The novella is short and because it has been seen as a representative sample of Hemingway’s prose, the text is commonly taught in schools and is therefore arguably his best known work. Partly for this reason, and partly because of Hemingway’s status as one of America’s most important novelists, the book comes weighted down with a burden of analysis long before the reader opens the pages. Every detail and nuance is overloaded with interpretation to the extent that the merits of the story itself can be lost.
Which would be a pity because at its heart this is the simplest of stories. Santiago, a Cuban fisherman, is suffering a run of bad luck and is not catching any fish. Things are so bad that the parents of his apprentice Manolin have made him leave the old man and go to work in another boat. The relationship between the old man and the boy is touching and gentle, with Manolin caring for the old man while at the same time allowing him to retain his self-respect. He admires his wisdom and his indefatigability. They share an interest in American baseball which allows them to bond outside the daily struggle for subsistence.
The heart of the story focusses on the day Santiago’s luck turns, when he catches a massive fish. The detail of the catch consumes more than half of the narrative, with the struggle to land the fish being described in intimate and totally believable, immersive detail. The reader shares the old man’s fight with the marlin, confident that his wisdom and experience will help him win. And eventually he does, killing the marlin with a harpoon after a three day battle. But this is where his problems come into focus, because the fish is so huge that he cannot bring it aboard his small fishing boat. He is three days away from the shore, with very few resources, and very little chance of bringing his catch home. It would be worth a lot of money were he to be able to get it into harbour, but the boost to his reputation as a fisherman is just as important. He ties the fish to the side of his boat and heads for home.
Inevitably the blood trail in the water attracts sharks. A series of attacks follow and while Santiago does his best to fight them off, the end result is unavoidable, and the fish is all but lost, with only the skeleton, head, and tail remaining. Santiago finally makes it back to the shore and stumbles back to his shack. His catch, or what remains of it, causes amazement among the fishermen when they arrive for work in the morning. The scale of the fish is obvious and Santiago’s reputation is restored. The novel ends with the old man being cared for by his young, newly-returned apprentice.
This is a simple and engrossing story which assumes the symbolic weight of its narrative effortlessly. Hemingway doesn’t have to point out that this is a tale about the struggles we face in life and how to overcome them, nor the pointlessness of it all at the end of the day, but it is the struggle itself which is worthwhile. His admiration for the fishermen of this community is self-evident, the way they work together, respect one another and value the experience that comes with old age. The story played a significant part in Hemingway being awarded the 1954 Nobel prize for Literature, and rightly so. The citation said he was being given the award “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style”. This is a reference to that fact that Hemingway was feted for his bare, stripped down narrative style. While this is certainly a feature of this novella, it does not dominate the text – one doesn’t read the story looking for all the missing adverbs and descriptions, marvelling at the economy of the prose. The novella’s ending is never really in any doubt – we know Santiago’s luck will change, but also that it will not be as simple as ‘old man catches fish’. I read quite a bit of Hemingway in years gone past (prior to the blog) and I am not sure this was enough to take me back to the longer works, given how many unread novels there are out there – but this novella fully deserves its reputation as one of the great American short stories.
The Reading Bug 