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The Old man and the sea

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

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About Hemingway

• Literature Nobel (1954)• American novelist, short story writer,

journalist.• World war I veteran.• Pulitzer prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the

Sea

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Works• A Farewell to Arms (1929) is regarded as the best novel ever

written about World War I. • Death in the Afternoon (1932) – about bullfighting, • Green Hills of Africa (1935) – a recounting of his African Safari.• His experiences as a war correspondent for the North

American Newspaper Alliance would inspire his other great war novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).

• Short stories: “Hills like White Elephants”, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”.

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Hemingway’s Work• After a disappointing reception of his 1950 novel, Across the

River and into the Trees , Hemingway rallied producing The old man and the Sea (1952), a short work that earned him a 1953 Pulitzer Prize and ultimately the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.

• Written in Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952, it tells the story of an aging Cuban fisherman Santiago and his attempt to catch a big fish. He eventually catches a marlin – a fast-swimming fish.

What The Story is Based On

• Santiago’s character is believed to have been based on the first mates on Hemingway’s boat – the Pilar – either Gregorio Fuentes or Carlos Gutierrez.

• In a letter to his editor, Hemingway talked about how Gutierrez’s assistance was vital to the writing of this novella:

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Hemingway’s Letter to his Editor

• "One (story) about the old commercial fisherman who fought the swordfish all alone in his skiff for 4 days and four nights and the sharks finally eating it after he had it alongside and could not get into the boat. That's a wonderful story of the Cuban coast. I'm going out with old Carlos in his skiff so as to get it all right. Everything he does and everything he thinks in all that long fight with the boat out of sight of all the other boats all alone on the sea. It's a great story if I can get it right. One that would make the book."

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Style

• Hemingway was known for his economy of style and his “naturalistic” writing (which was actually something he strived at, deliberately).

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Influences and Themes

• The influence of a boyhood spent fishing, swimming and playing football influences his writing.

• Meticulously detailed account of fishing in The Old Man and the Sea.

• Masculine, tough, rugged heroes who excel when they are outdoors.

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Excerpts

• Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

• Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? May be today. Everyday is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

• Anyone can be a fisherman in May.

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Excerpts

• He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women , nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy.

• Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.

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Excerpts

• But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.

• Now is the time to think of only one thing. That which I was born for.

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Excerpts

• I wish I had the boy.

• Santiago longs for the companionship of the boy Manolin, his loyal friend.

• He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely... He cannot know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what will he bring in the market if the flesh is good.

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Excerpts

• My choice was to go there and find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either of us.

• Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.

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Excerpts

• The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.

• If I were him I would put in everything now and go until something broke. But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.

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Excerpts

• But I must have the confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.

• "The fish is my friend too," he said aloud. "I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I'm glad we do not have to kill the stars.

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Excerpts

• It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.

• You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.

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Excerpts

• Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty. He seemed to hang in the air above the old man in the skiff. Then he fell into the water with a crash that sent spray over the old man and over all the skiff.

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Excerpts

• But a man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

• You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?

• To hell with luck. I'll bring the luck with me.18

Nobel Acceptance Speech

• Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate his loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

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Nobel Acceptance Speech

• For a good writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries for something that is beyond attainment.

• He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

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Nobel Acceptance Speech

• How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written.

• It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

• Santiago is considered to be Hemingway’s alter-ego – goes fishing in the deep seas hoping to land something.

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Harold Bloom

• Hemingway’s greatness is in his short stories.• A gentleness and a nuanced tenderness in The

Old man.

• Hemingway talks about the pride he feels in its aesthetic economy (read p.1-2, p.45 Bloom)

• While he is known for his art of ellipsis (leaving things out), the book (Bloom says) is “tiresomely repetitive”.

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Harold Bloom

• Santiago is too clearly an idealization of Hemingway himself, who thinks in the style of the novelist attempting to land a great work:

• Only I have no luck anymore. But who knows? Maybe today. Everyday is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

• Contemplating the big fish, Santiago is even closer to Hemingway the literary artist, alone with his writerly quest. (Santiago too is alone in the far off, deep seas)

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Harold Bloom

• Santiago’s ordeal, first in his struggle with the big fish, and then in fighting against the sharks, is associated with Christ’s agony and triumph.

• But here the fight is not against evil and Santiago comes to love and respect the fish which he comes to regard as his double.

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Carlos Baker “The Boy and the Lions”

• Manolin - the boy - stands for the old man’s lost youth.

• His dramatic function is to heighten our sympathy with the old fisherman.

• We watch Santiago through the boy’s admiring and pitying eyes – he feeds the latter with Martin’s help, gets him sardines for bait.

• Loves him like a disciple. Also the love of a son for an adopted father.

• Santiago keeps wishing he had the boy with him – (like a refrain) represents his lost youth. Each time, he dips into his own well of courage and goes on.

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Carlos Baker “The Boy and the Lions”

• As he is waiting for the sharks, Santiago has recourse to another sustaining image – a pride of lions he once saw playing on an African beach when he was a young boy like Manolo.

• Becomes a pleasant obsession, an image of his youthful experience.

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Leo Gurko – “The Heroic impulse in The old man and the sea”

• Emphasis on what men can do, the world as an area where heroic deeds are possible.

• Santiago’s universe is not free of tragedy and pain but these are transcended.

• Affirming tone in contrast to the pessimism of The sun also rises and A farewell to arms.

• One aspect of this universe is its changelessness. The action takes place inside a world that is fundamentally static.

• Relationship of nature to man proceeds through basic patterns that don’t vary.

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Leo Gurko – “The Heroic impulse in The old man and the sea”

• The processes of nature are purely secular in character.

• Hemingway’s figures are often religious.• Santiago is a primitive Cuban, religious and

superstitious but this is not relevant to his tragic experience with the marlin.

• Everyone has a fixed role to play. Santiago’s is to pursue the great Marlin – “that which I was born for”, the Marlin’s is to live in the deep sea and escape the pursuit of man. Their struggle is without animosity. On the contrary, the old man feels a deep affection and admiration for the fish.

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Leo Gurko – “The Heroic impulse in The old man and the sea”

• Sense of brotherhood and love in a world where everyone is killing or being killed, binds together the creatures of Nature, transcending the destructive pattern in which they are caught.

• Nature has degrees of value. The idea of depth – the deeper the sea, the more valuable the creatures living there.

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Leo Gurko – “The Heroic impulse in The old man and the sea”

• Two orders in every species – great and lesser marlins, sharks and Mako, heroes and ordinary humans.

• The theme of hero plunging into the great unknown (Moby Dick – capt. Ahab, lord Jim)

• After WW I, the traditional hero disappeared from western lit. • Hemingway avoided industrialized countries and was drawn

to Spain, Africa, Cuba where the ancient struggle and harmony between man and nature existed, they offered certain heroic possibilities.

• Drama of santiago entirely outside the framework of modern society and its institutions, culmination of H’s long search for disengagement from the social world and entry into the natural.

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Clinton Burhans• Epic individualism alongside interdependence• The theme of solidarity and interdependence pervades the

action – depends on the boy who gives him things which he accepts without considering it demeaning. Not a loss of pride.

• “Everything kills everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive.” Then remembers that it is not fishing but the boy who keeps him alive.

• Baseball – team sport – unlike individualistic fishing. Things about the game throughout.

• DiMaggiao the outfielder, a old champion who was later handicapped by a bone spur – source of great inspiration

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Delmore Schwartz

• For Hemingway, the kingdom of heaven is within us – moral stamina, stripped of illusion.

• Primary sense of existence is the essential condition of the pioneer – part of the American dream of endurance in a harsh climate.

• Santiago is the only human being in a narrative more than 100 pages in length

• Singular purity of will and emotion in the old man as he struggles with time, nature and death.

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Joseph Waldmeir• Reading of the text as a Christian allegory – the old man is a fisherman

and a teacher, he has taught the boy not only to fish but also how to behave, about pride and humility.

• Trials with the marlin and sharks, he spits blood• When he reaches home, he lies on the bed “with his arms out straight and

the palms of his hands up”• Fishes are symbols for Christ – Christians used the Greek word for fish –

“ichthys” to talk about Christ during the first three years A.D. Use of the fish symbol to recognize a fellow Christians in an era where Christians were persecuted by Jews and Romans.

• 7 and 40 key are numbers in the bible – old man fished for forty days with the boy, trial with the fish for three day, the fish is landed on the 7th attempt, 7 sharks are killed etc.

• At the same time, God’s aid is never really expected. Man must depend upon himself.

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Robert Weeks• The animals in Hemingway are marvelously real and have a solidity of

specification – they move, sound and look like real animals. Hemingway disapproved of Thoreau, Hudson (nature writers) and deplored Melville’s rhetoric in Moby Dick. He was criticized by others like Faulkner for his devotion to facts and his unwillingness to invent.

• But in The Old man, and the Sea, it is different - there is a certain romanticizing.

• The adversary animal is always a male. Actually, not possible to recognize the sexes in marlins. So H. resorts to the fakery of having Santiago identify him as male. (read p.56 – bloom)

• He also invents other details about the fish and about the mako sharks – a lot of which are wrong (mako is not the fastest fish, doesn’t have 8 rows of teeth – just made more menacing than they really are)

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Other Critics

• Claire Rosenflield 81-82• Sheldon Norman Grebstein 96-98• Linda Wagner- 106 -107