The Old Man and the Sea

As literature entered the modernist period, classical plot and storyline gradually receded into the background, and accepted ways of opening, developing and concluding a story were consigned to the paper-basket of literary history.  This, as we have seen, was already a hallmark of Anton Chekhov’s approach to short stories. Style of writing became one of the factors that determined modernity, as did an individual perspective on reality, as the accepted rules of the traditional craft of writing faded.  A sharper focus was placed on everyday life as mirrored through the authentic and personal experience of the author.  This was called a “slice of life” approach.  As the short story form developed, emphasis was placed on the overall emotional effect or impact of the story on the reader.

The stories of Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961) fit nicely into this modernist approach.  The latter began his career as a cub reporter on The Kansas City Star where the style guide was succinct and clear, one might say even a little modernist: “Use short sentences.  Use short first paragraphs.  Use vigorous English.  Be positive, not negative.”  Hemingway kept this counsel for his whole career as his oeuvre bears all the hallmarks of that sage advice.  The novella The Old Man and the Sea (1952) is a fitting example of such a clear, precise and economical writing style, which is often called “spare” in the literature. Hemingway himself described his style as reflecting his famous “iceberg theory” – simple, direct prose with deep meaning beneath the surface. There is not a redundant word in a text that simply jumps off the page and comes alive with delight in the reader’s imagination.

Before space became the focus of our wonder, the sea presented an equally powerful source of awe for humankind.  Ernest Hemingway, like many a keen sailor, was besotted with the sea, and in 1934 he bought a fine fishing boat he named Pilar for some $ 7,500, the equivalent of $ 180,000 in today’s money. He was essentially the archetype of a “man’s man” who loved all alpha male sports and pursuits such as bullfighting, big game hunting, boxing, deep sea fishing, arm wrestling, war correspondence, even brawling on occasion and so on. His books are replete with such virile activities.  His writing style, which I have described above, could also be fittingly referred to as “muscular prose,” a style that is manifested in short, sharp sentences, crisp concrete nouns and sustained understatement.

However, here we are only concerned with deep-sea fishing.  Hemingway engaged in many Cuban fishing trips for much of his life, and in this short book, a novella, he has distilled much of his sea-faring experience for us readers.  The Old Man and the Sea was written in 1952 when the writer was 52/53.  It tells the story of an ageing Cuban fisherman, named Santiago, who battles a giant marlin.  And marlins are certainly gigantic, where the Blue Marlin, the largest of the species, can reach up to fourteen feet (4.3 m) and can weigh over 2,000 pounds (900 kg).  Santiago estimates his catch to be 1,500 pounds (680 kg) – still a magnificent fish.  Indeed, while researching for this brief review, I came across a famous photograph of Hemingway with his family, pictured in front of four blue marlins on the dock in Bimini, Bahamas, that dates from 1935.  This iconic photo shows a rare glimpse into his family life and his passion for big-game fishing from early on. 

 

Anyway, after 84 days without catching a bite, Santiago heads out to sea to break his run of bad luck.  Indeed, his devoted young acolyte or apprentice, Manolin, is not accompanying his mentor on this particular trip as his parents have insisted he change mentors because the old man has simply become unlucky.  On the eighty-fifth day, Santiago, the old fisherman, hooks a strong and determined marlin, and the novella recounts the great virile struggle between the man and the fish, between the man and the sea, between humankind and the elements.  To capture a marlin single-handed from one’s own lowly fishing boat or skiff would be the sign of a master fisherman for all traditional islanders.

The emergent themes in the novella are resilience, pride, love of nature and the wild, and, most especially, human endurance.  As such a distillation of humanity’s positive virtues, expressed in clear, crisp and precise prose, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and was instrumental in Hemingway’s winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.  Fitting accolades for any brilliant writer.

On the very first page, we read that Santiago was old “except his eyes, and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”  This sums up the pride, resilience and spirit of the old man, which are evident throughout the novella.  We also learn immediately that Manolin, his now former apprentice, respects, and indeed loves the old man: “I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel.  Why am I so thoughtless?  I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter, and some sort of shoes and another blanket.” (p. 15)

There is also great respect shown for nature, the sea and its creatures by the old fisherman, a profound respect that borders on a spiritual connection.  Notice the simplicity of the following lines: “Santiago was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean.  He was sorry for the birds, especially the small, delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought. ‘The birds have a harder life than we do … Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?’” (p. 22-23) Shades of St Francis here, at least a little in my estimation. Likewise, he truly loved the sea as the mother of life: “He always thought of the sea as la mar, which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her.  Some of the younger fishermen… spoke of her as el mar, which is masculine.  They spoke of her as a contestant or a place, or even an enemy.  But the old man always thought of her as feminine… The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.” (p. 23) Even on killing a tuna for his evening meal, “the old man hit him on the head for kindness” lest the fish suffer unwarranted pain.

Santiago, like Hemingway, was a great reader of the signs of nature, the direction and strength of the winds, the vagaries of the Gulf Stream, the behaviour and direction of the schools of dolphin and the flights of flying fish, and through it all he says to himself: “But perhaps I will pick up a stray school of dolphin and perhaps my big fish is around them.  My big fish must be somewhere.” (p. 27) That is Santiago’s big dream, the source and summit of his life as a fisherman.  His struggle with the great marlin is archetypal of the struggle of all alpha males to attain meaning and purpose in their lives, and a little less symbolic of all our individual struggles to find some meaning in our own lives.  That struggle is at once a strange mix of Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Hope and Despair, Fear and Courage and so on.  There really and truly is no chemically pure emotion, or indeed a chemically pure virtue.  For instance, let’s witness Santiago’s respect for the quarry he is about to capture and kill: “Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked.  He is wonderful and strange, and who knows how old he is, he thought.  Never had I such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely… But what a great fish he is, and what he will bring in the market if the flesh is good.  He took the bait like a male, and his fight has no panic in it.  I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am.” (p. 40) Or this realistic statement where deep feelings of love and the cruel nature of life overlap: “Fish,” he said, “I love you and respect you very much.  But I will kill you dead before the day ends.”  Santiago knows that he is struggling against a worthy adversary in the marlin, a great fisherman against a great fish, and he recalls once when he arm wrestled a worthy opponent for many hours long ago in the distant past. (See p. 58 – 60).  He also sees himself as a fighter like the great baseball player DiMaggio: “I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly, even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.” (p. 57) Later, talking about his wounded hands, Santiago avers that “It is not bad… and pain does not matter to a man” (p. 72)

The old man shows great fortitude as he struggles to land the great marlin he has hooked, suffers cuts to his hands, which he relieves by washing them in the seawater, and keeps the line appropriately balanced across his back by alternating it over either shoulder.  All of this requires not only great strength but great patience, determination and skill.  Also, his great experience and knowledge of the sea help him in his task: “The slant of the line showed he was swimming at a lesser depth.” (p. 44) Along the way, the old man talks to birds and flying fish with respect, and does so mainly to encourage himself in the pursuit of his bounty: “You’re feeling it now, fish,” he said. “And so, God knows, am I.” (p. 46) One of his hands becomes cramped in position, and he talks to it by way of inspiring himself to accept its need to recuperate and entice it to open. Contradictions fill his mind: “I wish I could feed the fish, he thought.  He is my brother.  But I must kill him and keep strong to do it.” (p. 49) Shades again of the idealism of St Francis’ love of nature tempered by the harsh necessities of real life.

Rarely could Hemingway’s spare style be said to rise to a poetic flourish, but on occasions, one is struck by a poetic passage: “He looked across the sea and knew how alone he was now.  But he could see the prisms in the deep dark water and the line stretching ahead and the strange undulation of the calm.  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.”  This poetic paragraph reminds me of Mary Oliver’s famous poem “Wild Geese.”

The kill is described clearly in Hemingway’s spare style: “He lifted the harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength…. He felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove it further…. Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and he rose high out of the water, showing all his great length and width and all his power and all his beauty.  He seemed to hang in the air above the old man and the skiff.  Then he fell into the water with a crash that sent spray over the old man and over all of the skiff.” (p. 80-81) Once again, the old man has contradictory thoughts, or as we say in modern psychological terms, he experiences some cognitive dissonance, or in Keatsian terms, "negative capability."  He feels both pride and regret, pride in his achievement but remorse for having killed such a great and beautiful creature: “I have killed the fish which is my brother.” (p. 81)

Santiago ties the great fish to the side of his skiff: “They were sailing together lashed side by side…” (p. 85).  Unfortunately, during the night, many sharks attacked the old fisherman’s huge catch, eventually eating the great marlin down to its white skeleton.  Again, with great courage, he manages to kill and injure many of their number.  At first, he feels very defeated and says he would prefer to be destroyed rather than defeated.  However, as he eventually makes it home to Havana, despite being much in pain and being exceedingly tired, the compassion and love of his fishing community show that they are proud of the old man’s courage, tenacity and indomitable human spirit.  No matter how bad things turned out, he still had the great white skeleton of the fish, “eighteen feet from nose to tail,” lashed to the side of his skiff to witness to his great and courageous spirit.  The novella ends as it started, with the boy caring once again for his mentor: “The boy saw that the old man was breathing, and then he saw the old man’s hands, and he started to cry.  He went out very quietly to go to bring some coffee, and all the way down the road, he was crying.” (p. 105) In short, we can be down or defeated, but never crushed when we have done our very best in any situation and when the community of which we are part wraps its love and care around us.  An exceptionally inspiring read.