Hello and welcome to the Discourse. The Old Man and the Sea was the last novel by Ernest Hemingway that was published in his lifetime. It is a short novel that he wrote in 1951 while he was living in Cayo Blanco, Cuba. 'The Old Man and the Sea' was published in 1952. Hemingway often used the real incidences and happenings in his life in his stories. While he dramatized his experiences of World War I and World War II in The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell To Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea is different because it is not a war novel. Yet, The Old Man and the Sea continues his autobiographical tradition as this story is figuratively based on his real-life experience. Hemingway was one of the most prolific and successful writers of the 1920s and 1930s, but in 1950, after nearly ten years without publishing a novel, Across the River and Into the Trees was published, and it was a disaster. For 10 years, Hemingway continued to face criticism of critics and was often considered as a fine writer of the past who has nothing new to say. Hemingway believed that Across The River and Into the Trees was also a nice novel, even better novel than his earlier novels that were highly popular. When he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, he was not confident that critics will like this novel too though he believed it was his best novel. The Old Man and The Sea attained huge success and re-established Hemingway as one of the finest authors of his time. In 1953, 'The Old Man and the Sea' was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.
The novella tells the story of a struggling old fisherman who used to be a fine and reputed catcher but has failed to catch any good fish for the last 84 days.
Characters
Santiago is an old dedicated fisherman who taught Manolin everything he knows about fishing, Santiago is now old and poor and has gone 84 days without a catch. Manolin is a young man from the fishing village who has fished with Santiago since the age of five and now cares for the old man. Manolin recently began fishing with another fisherman whom his parents consider luckier than Santiago. Martin is the owner of the Terrace where tourists stay. He appreciates Santiago and sends food and drink to Santiago through Manolin. Rogelio is another fisherman of the village who occasionally helps Santiago with the fishing net. Marlin is an eighteen-foot bluish billfish and a catch of legendary proportions that Santiago succeeds to catch on the 85th day. While Santiago successfully catches Marlin, he fails to save it from voracious Mako sharks and shovel-nosed sharks. Pedricko is another fisherman of the village who buys Marlin’s head to use in the fish trap. There are Tourists (a man and a woman) enjoying their holidays at the Terrace.
Summary
Santiago is a lonely old fisherman whose wife died years ago. He lives alone and while he is an experienced fisherman, he has caught nothing for 84 days. Other fishermen of the village now consider him ‘salao’ which means the worst type of unlucky. Manolin is a young fisherman who has been with Santiago as his trainee since he was five years old. Since Santiago is failing to catch anything for long, Manolin’s parents force him to leave Santiago’s boat and join the boat of some other luckier fisherman. Manolin is sad about it and though he joins another boat, he remains dedicated to Santiago, visiting his shack each night, hauling his fishing gear, preparing food, and talking about American baseball and Santiago's favorite player, Joe DiMaggio.
Santiago too mises Manolin and though he has not made any significant catch for a long, he is confident of his skills and believes that his streak of bad luck is going to end soon. He decides to go far out into the Gulf Stream, north of Cuba in the Straits of Florida to fish.
It was his 85th unlucky day when in the morning he takes his skiff (a small fishing boat) into the sea. He fails to get any catch for long and as a result, he continues to row his skiff far away. In search of an epic catch, he eventually does snag a marlin of epic proportions. He hooked a big fish, but he is unable to haul it in. He is unwilling to tie the line to the boat for fear that a sudden jerk from the fish would break the line. With his back, shoulders, and hands, he holds the line for two days and nights. He gives slack as needed while the marlin pulls him far from land. He is hungry with no food, trapped in the middle of the sea, struggling against a mighty marlin, determined to control it. He misses Manolin and feels it could have been easy if the young man had been with him and continues to say “I wish I had the boy.” He uses his other spare hooks to catch a small fish and a dolphin fish to eat and satiate his hunger. Despite all these troubles, he expresses compassion and appreciation for the marlin, often referring to him as a brother. The line has cut his hands and he is tired so he sleeps.
On the other hand, the fatigued Marlin starts circling the skiff. Santiago feels the movement and starts drawing the line inwards towards the skiff. As the Marlin reaches near the boat, he pulls the marlin to one side and kills it with his harpoon. He then tries to pull the fish into the skiff but realizes that the Marlin is too large to fit in his boat. He decides to lash the Marlin on one side of his boat and sets off to the shore. He is happy for his catch thinking of the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed.
However, the wound of Marlin caused by the harpoon leaves a trail of blood from the dead marlin and it attracts sharks. Santiago berates himself for having gone out too far. He kills a great mako shark with his harpoon but loses the weapon. He makes a spear by strapping his knife to the end of an oar. He kills three more sharks before the blade of the knife snaps, and he clubs two more sharks into submission. But each shark has bitten the great marlin, increasing the flow of blood. That night, an entire school of sharks arrives. Santiago attempts to beat them back. When the oar breaks, Santiago rips out the skiff's tiller and continues fighting. Upon seeing a shark attempt to eat the marlin's head, Santiago realizes the fish has been completely devoured. He tells the sharks they have killed his dreams.
Santiago reaches shore before dawn the next day. He struggles to his shack, leaving the fish head and skeleton with his skiff. Once home, he falls into a deep sleep. In the morning, Manolin finds Santiago. As he leaves to get coffee for Santiago, he cries. A group of fishermen has gathered around the remains of the marlin. One of the fishermen measures it at 18 feet from nose to tail. The fishermen tell Manolin to tell Santiago how sorry they are. A pair of tourists at a nearby café see the marlin's skeleton waiting to go out with the tide and ask a waiter what it is. Trying to explain what happened to the marlin, the waiter replies, "Eshark," explaining that sharks have eaten the marlin. But the tourists misunderstand and assume that's what the skeleton is. The woman tourist exclaims that she didn’t know sharks have developed such a beautiful long tail.
When Santiago wakes, he donates the head of the fish to Pedrico. He and Manolin promise to fish together once again. Santiago returns to sleep, and he dreams of his youth and of lions on an African beach.
Analysis
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 to bring it close enough to harpoon. Through his struggle, Santiago demonstrates the ability of the human spirit to endure hardship and suffering to win. At the same time, he also expresses his own struggles after the failure of Across The River and Into the Trees as a writer. He depicts the unfriendly literary critics who rejected his previous novel as sharks while this novel is the Marlin that Santiago caught. After the reviews that he got for Across The River and Into the Trees, he believed that critics will do the same for The Old Man and The Sea as what the sharks did to the Marlin. However, this short novel proved to be the best and most successful work of Hemingway. Somehow, Hemingway expressed his dislike for women too as he described the Marlin as a male. Santiago believes that males have an abundance of self-control. He knows that the marlin he has hooked now is a male before he sees it. He says, "He took the bait like a male, and he pulls like a male, and his fight has no panic in it" Furthermore, the female tourist, which the only female character in the whole novel makes the silliest comment about the dead Marlin, mistaking it to be a shark.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.
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